NZXT PODCAST - #133 - Special Guest: Rick from Hunt Showdown!

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

This week on the podcast, we have Rick, Senior Community Manager of Hunt Showdown, joining us today! Also... we've come to the conclusion that a hotdog is a TACO based on the Cube Rule. Look it up. Tune in live every Thursday at 10AM PT on twitch.tv/NZXT and send your questions to: [e-mail]

One and welcome to episode 133 of the NXT podcast, the official podcast of the NXT community. This podcast is recorded live every Thursday at 10 a 10 a time on the official NCCC Twitch and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike. Today, Ivan is out. However, I have the senior community manager for Hunt Showdown, Rick Taylor. Rick, how you doing? Hey, how's it going, Mike?

I'm doing good today. Thank you. How are you getting on? So for those that don't know, there is a Hunt Showdown Video Awards thing going on right now. If you guys want to learn more about it, it's exclamation point hunt. Learn a little about it.

We're actually going to talk about it soon enough. But first, I want to go through some introductions with Rick. First, Rick, do you want to explain who are you and what do you do? Yeah, sure. So my name is Rick, as we've said. I also go by Iceman 2K on all of our socials and on our Discord. And I am the senior community and influencer manager here at Crytec working primarily on Hunt Showdown. So I have been here for five years.

Actually, today is my fifth anniversary at Crytech. And yeah, it's been incredible. And currently, like I said, I'm the senior community manager primarily. So I look after a lot of our communications work. So our communication strategy, managing the other community managers. I manage our official Discord. And I also manage our official Night of the Hunter Partner Program. So quite a lot on my plate, you know, as well as like working very closely with the community and other streamers as well.

So, you know, yeah, it's, it's been, it's been an incredible five years. And it's nice to be able to share that with people today. I didn't even plan this just out of nowhere realized, hang on a second. It's been five years. And it's just so happens. We get to talk to you today about it. So I'm really, really happy to be able to share that with everybody. Boris, I mean, what was your process into getting into the company at first?

Like, what was it like looking for a job or you just suddenly just wound up here? No, I had actually been actively looking for a job. So I have been in the industry for 11 years. I started out working in customer service for BioWare, way, way, way back in the day. And I worked on the MMO Star Wars, the Old Republic. And that was my first break into the industry purely from a customer service standpoint. I had worked in customer service for years before that.

So I interviewed when they popped into Ireland all of a sudden. And I got very lucky. And I was amongst the first like 40 people hired for the company. So I ended up working there for several years. And it went from BioWare to EA. And while I worked for EA, then I became like a base. community manager for Battlefield. So I ended up running like Battlelog and everything like that and managing the volunteer

moderation team and everything. And I was there for about five years in total. And then I needed to take a bit of a break due to some family issues and, you know, personal things that needed to take care of. And then, you know, after a bit of time, things, you know, things, I wasn't needed as much. So the opportunity for me to actually, you know, get back into the. the industry for a while. It was there. So I started looking around and one of my friends was like, hey, you know, job going here at Crytech. Any community managers from my friends list that are

interested, let me know. So I let him know. Pretty simple. And yeah, I went through the interview process and I think within two, three months, there I was living in Germany. First time living outside of Ireland, which was, you know, quite a daunting experience. You know, it's been amazing. I'm very glad I still think back to this day, people ask me, you know, I'm happy I moved here. I'm like, it's the best decision I ever made purely on the basis of leaving where I had grown up, leaving that kind of comfort zone and everything like that. And then, yeah, so that was my journey into Crytech. So it went from customer support to baby community management.

And then from baby community management to regular community manager to where I am now, five years later, as the senior community manager. So, yeah, it's been a journey. How scary was it going from Ireland to Germany? Like, was it, was it, like, was it your family a little scare? Were you by yourself? And, like, how was the move over? Did you just basically just pack up everything shipped it over?

Or did you just, like, start a whole new fresh when you're there? It's kind of a mix of two, really. So when I first moved over, I mean, like, it was all kind of very quick and a bit of a shock. So my parents were a bit, obviously, we're very worried. You know, I've been living near close enough to them for pretty much all of my animals. life, you know, an hour or two away at max. And this was, you know, a whole other couple of countries away. So yeah, they were, you know, obviously they were a bit concerned. For me, it was like exciting and scary at the same time. It was kind of like, okay, I can't wait. I've always actually, you know,

since I was like 18, I'm like, I always want to live outside of Ireland for a period of time. I don't care how long or where, I just would like to. But at the same time, it's like, I didn't have a word of German. I didn't know the city I was going to. I didn't know. anybody in the city I was going to. My closest family was several hours away in a different city in Germany. So at least I had somebody somewhat close by, but it wasn't, it's not like it's very easy to just get there all of the time, especially when I'm starting a new job, looking for a new apartment, you know.

And so it was basically a case of like when it came to like leaving. It was packed up half of my stuff. Not all of it, just half of it. So like all the clothes, half of the collectibles, the stuff that I could fit into two boxes and not like just just you know who knows what's going to happen who knows if i'm going to end up being there for six months or a year or five years or you know at the time so it's like don't take everything just to be on the safe side also saves a bit of money sold my car back home moved here and that was it you know um and yeah it was it was scary i mean it still is from time to time you know kind of

think back it's like i mean you know i'm familiar with ireland it's it's a it's a safe place i can i know everything. I know everybody can go nowhere I can go, nowhere I can't kind of thing. So coming to a different country and trying to figure all that out, it's a bit, yeah, it's a daunting experience. I mean, but I say it's daunting, but it's like something I highly, highly recommend to absolutely everybody. So even if you only do it for a month or six months or whatever, live outside your home country because it's such an incredible experience. I mean, just being, just here alone in Frankfurt in Germany, it's a very cultural city. People from, all walks of life all over the place.

And it's, it's absolutely amazing. And getting to see all the different things that get celebrated throughout the year. This is not something I would have experienced in my home cities. You know what I mean? At least not to the extent that I do here. So yeah,

it's been a roller coaster. I've loved it. You know, I, I just, I can't really say, mine, I could say plenty bad about it.

But, you know, primarily the good, fire, I weighs the bad when it came to, to get anything over here. here. Definitely, like I said, best decision I ever made was taking the chance.

And, yeah. So for those that don't know, there's Hunt Showdown and Crytech. Do you want to give a little brief explanation of the two real quick? Yeah, so, I mean, Crytech is the company that I work for, obviously.

We are the creators of a number of different games, primarily known for the Crisis series. and right now we have released well within the last year or two we have released the Crisis Remastered series

which was really awesome to be able to get to work on that we've released a number of VR games as well in the past with Warburne's in the Germany journey and the climb and the climb two some really awesome VR games and now our main project and our kind of like our headline project

is called Hunt Showdown which is a PVPVE first-person shooter, you know, extraction-style game. So it's based in the 1890s, well, 1895, to be specific, in the Louisiana bayou, and you play a bounty hunter that is fighting off this plague that has ravaged the land and has, you know, just destroyed people, turned them into monsters roaming around the bayou, you know, destroyed crops and animals and everything like that. And your purpose is to hunt down these evil monsters that have spawned throughout the bayou. And you do so by tapping into this thing known as the supernatural known as the dark site.

And by doing this, you're able to finding clues. And these clues will lead you to a bounty, which is like a big, scary, bad, ugly boss target that you have to kill. But you have to remember that while you're doing this, there's also up to 12 other people, well, 11 other people, including yourself on the map trying to do the same thing. And these are made up of like teams of one, solos, teams of two or teams of three. And basically, like I said, your goal is get that bounty, kill it,

pick up the token, and then try to get the hell out as quickly as you can. So that's the PVE side of it, and then the PVP side. Like I said, you've got the 12 players per map. And yeah, you just run around, try to track down the boss and try and kill as many hunters as you can along the way. and that's that's the kind of the basic premise of it you know there's a lot more to it than that

the game is incredibly detailed um but that is just kind of the basic gist for anyone who doesn't know but that is hunch showdown and that's our flag project at the moment so uh something we've been working on for um four and a half years yeah i mean as as someone that has played many many many different types of first person shooters battle royals everything like that hunch down was probably one of the most unique that I've ever had the chance to experience. It is insane. If anyone here has not seen any gameplay or anything like that, look up Hunt Showdown, gameplay. There's a ton of creators out there. It is probably one of the most unique shooters I've ever had because sound is super important to game and not only that is that the weapons,

they're not like fully auto weapons like Call of Duty or 8.5. or anything like that, your shots count and slow reload, movement slow. So it's a very methodical, like, game. Like, if you shoot, you miss, you can either stay in the same place or you can run around flank. It is probably one of the most methodical shooters I've ever played. Highly, highly, highly recommend looking into it because it is fantastic. For sure. And at the moment as well, we're actually, just to put it out there, we're actually going through one of our biggest events to date.

so far. It's called Serpent Moon. It's really awesome. And as I see someone in the chat, you know, all of it with a bucket full of snakes or with a pocket full of snakes. And that is the premise. It's based around a snake whole theme. I don't want to spoil it for anybody who's like either currently playing it or plans to play it or plans to actually try it out. But basically we introduced our first battle pass with four different hunters, which is an evolving hunter. So it actually goes through four stages and you get to actually, you know, once you've unlocked it all, you get to pick which one you want to use. And, you know, several weapons. And it's, you know, it's, it's really awesome. It's great to have this like extra progression element to it. And then we have

the new mechanics of where you have to burn snakes at an altar or snake tokens at an altar. And it's great the snakes like can actually poison you and cause bleeding damage as well if you're too noisy when you're trying to collect them. So it's really, honestly, it's a really, really awesome. event. We've seen a lot of people have been enjoying it a lot. We reached our all-time peak of 38,802 players as well a couple of weeks ago. Like I think that's our first or second day into the event. We broke the peak or previous peak by about 4,000 players concurrently. So that's like huge achievement for us. Something we're very, very proud of and very proud to see that, you know, that just changing up a couple of things about an event can bring a lot of, a lot, can revive people's interest. in the events along more, which is really, really cool. Yeah, because just that's so much of a mechanic, because, you know, you had the base game. The base game is already fun enough,

but you guys release events all the time, Halloween, Christmas, and especially now with snakes. Like, it is probably one of the, I've seen a lot of events for a lot of games, but they're, this particular events that you guys do, it's so in depth, but also it's gratifying, but it's not also like teeth grinding and annoying to grind. You know, there's a lot of games out there where you just have to play and people end up just hating it because they have to just go through hours and hours of gameplay just to do it.

However, during this showdown, I mean, Hunt Showdowns events never made me feel too grinding. And I've always had a good time during these events because it always adds a little bit of extra flare because, you know, most of the time you're caring about, you know, killing the other team and trying to extract with a bounty. But with these events half the time, we're like, I got to loot. I don't care. I'm looting. I hear snakes. I need to run. Where's the snakes?

Run for it. You know, it is very, and it's a very attention grabbing thing as well, you know. And it just, it mixes it up a bit, you know. You get those good fights for like, hey, who gets to get to the altar first?

No, I'm going to shoot you while you're banishing yours and I'm going to steal yours and I'm going to banish them myself. You know, and it's just, it brings a nice, a nice few new elements to it. You know,

and the new time of day as well, the serpent moon nighttime is just absolutely beautiful, you know. And it's kind of it, you know, we're setting ourselves up for for future events as well you know we we would this year we've been kind of trying to keep a bit of a bit of a concurrent line going between the events so like the next one will be an even you know follow up again and uh you know we've with some other stuff planned

as well that we hope that we'll catch people's interests you know one thing we did say this year is we understood that with our previous events that they kind of could actually be a little bit repetitive at times. So we decided to try and mix it up a bit and we want to continue doing that to make sure that keeps them fresh every time. It keeps people wanting to come back and wanting to play more, you know? And so far, so good. What was the thought process between this event, like making it like one of the biggest events, especially the battle pass? It's huge. What was the thought process between going from like this big battle pass that you guys are, you know, it was the first time you're releasing to comparing it to like the other events?

Like, what made you want to change that? Well, a lot of it, like, you know, the previous events were very time restricted, you know. And I mean, we got a small few events for a short period of time. And if you played, you played, you got them awesome. If you didn't, well, you know, you know, maybe they'll come back again in the future, you know. And we got a lot of feedback that, you know, people wanted them longer. They people wanted more rewards. They wanted more to do.

They wanted, you know, something to keep them wanting to come back all of the time. And we were like, okay, so how do we do this? And this is what we ended up with. I mean, we've done, we've introduced some other factors that kind of help people coming back, like the charity bonuses, the, the, uh, the first bounty extraction bonus. But we've kind of thought the, the battle pass was a good way to go. I mean, obviously it is a good way to go from a monetization standpoint, which is something we actually touch on in a video of our own, uh, that we created a few months back about, uh, just solely on the topic of monetization. Um, it's, it's, it is good for that, of course, you know, um, which of course, you know, monetization makes sure that the game. keeps running for a long time to come.

And I mean, we want to continue releasing many, many free updates for this game for a long time to come. So, I mean, it gives us an opportunity to be able to look after that and make sure that we can keep going as we are. The other side for it, it gave us an opportunity to actually give more rewards, you know, and span it across more time so that there was a lot more depth to it. And this is the thing. A lot of the feedback lately is, I mean, Hunt is a four-year-old game. We have some veterans there in thousands upon thousands of hours, you know, and we need something fresh, something to keep them interested, something to keep them going. And even for, you know, to interest new players, you know, sometimes they're not always going to be interested in an event we're doing. But if we, you know, do it a certain way like we have been with the Trader Moon and the Serpent Moon event, you know, that works a little bit differently.

It gives a bit more umph to it, you know. So, but one of the main things is to try and actually give as much back to the players as we possibly can. you know and I mean you can see that with the amount of rewards that we have in this battle pass both on the free and the paid side you know if you're if you're just playing for free you get like I think two of the hunters and a bunch of weapons as well you know and a couple of instances and a couple of blood bonds and I mean if you do pay you get a load of blood bonds back you get all of the weapons all of the hunters I mean there's a lot of options with this event and that was kind of one of the main focuses we we had a lot of stuff that we created and we wanted to just get it out there just to just to do to have it be accessible. And the thing is, we always see as well that whenever we host events, I mean, events are one of those things that bring back older players who are like, oh, we've got to go back and see what's new and try out the new stuff. And that's the thing.

It's like, you know, we look at it as a way of kind of re-invigorating the community as a whole, not just the existing ones, but the ones that have been with us and may always be interested, but just waiting for something more interesting to do, you know? And that's where Serpent Moon comes into play. and just, you know, it's done exactly what we've needed it to do, you know. It's been awesome fun. It's given people a lot more to do. We've even seen some people in our community who would be, you know, generally quite critical of us, have been very kind of like, yep, you're on the right track.

Keep it up. Keep going. You know, and that's really, really, for me, that's great to see, you know, I mean, we love people being critical of us, you know, as long as it's constructive, of course. but it's really, really nice to see as well with those people who are critical are coming to us and going, yeah, you're actually, you guys are doing all right. Keep it up, keep it up, you know.

And that's been happening a lot more lately as well. So, you know, I mean, look, it's not perfect. There's a lot more that we could do to, I know we're planning to do to make it far better than it actually is. But right now, I mean, it's pretty safe to say Hunt is probably one of the best states that's been in. And it's one of the best points of time to pick it up.

There's so much to do. so much going on. Yeah, it's a bit tough when you first get into it. But take a friend along and trust me, you'll have a whale of a time. It's such a blast to play it, especially with friends. Solo is fun and intense as hell. And if you like that thing, then go for it, knock yourself out. Expect to be walked all over for a little while before you start picking things up.

But trust me, going in with her friend is one of the best things about Hunt. It is just so much fun, the crazy, you know, apologize for the language, but the crazy shit you get up to. So, but yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, you pretty much hit the nail on the head with, it's definitely a tough game. It's not like a standard first-per-st-street-work-you-pick it up.

And if you have experience in it, you're going to do well. This game, it takes a lot to learn, a lot to learn. However, it is probably one of the most rewarding games to play. And if you guys, if you guys get really into it, like for me, it took me about maybe 15 to 20 hours into the game to understand like I get it I understand like it's very very like I'm starting to understand how to game works how to think how to move movement you know flanking everything like that and then after like I hit like the 30 hour 40 hour 50 hour mark I'm like okay I'm in this I understand then I'm hitting 100 200 now I'm at the 300 mark now and I'm just like oh god my life you're getting there

I'm getting there you're getting there you're getting there you know but you're You're right. Look, I mean, look, it is, it is a steep learning curve, but it's probably one of the most rewarding steep learning curves I've ever kind of encountered in a game for a while, you know. And, I mean, we see that as well from a bunch of the streamers that I actually currently play Hunt. This is like their first shooter, like the first shooter they've ever played.

But because of how it handled the mechanics of the guns, the, so the pace of it, everything like that, it just sucked people in, you know. And that's something that I really, I'm always happy to see. And that's the thing. you know, it's tough. Don't get me wrong. But it's also easy. It's easy to get sucked into it.

It's easy to just get into it and kind of go on. And as long as you don't take yourself too seriously with it, Hunt is probably one of the most fun games to play because it puts you in all of these instances where you just have to laugh at yourself so much for the things that end up happening and the things that come out of it. I mean, we've seen some crazy stuff, especially from some of our content creators,

you know, getting random shovel kills and axe kills from across the map kind of thing, you know, firing crossbows up into the air and hitting somebody randomly out of nowhere, getting killed by doors or by a meathead smashing a gate, which was a new one. Yeah, that was the clip the other day, which was a brand new one to me. I didn't even realize that could happen. But hey, there we go. You know, a meathead on its death rattle can smash a gate and kill you if you're low enough health. So, you know, I mean, it's, Hunt has so many unexpected things.

that there's kind of come out of nowhere, you know. So it's, yeah, it's, it's been, like, it's just been, I'm just kind of thinking back the whole five years going through all of this. It's just, it's been incredible to see it develop the way it has and come to the point it has now, you know. Yes. But, like I always say, for anybody, give it a shot. It might not be your thing. If it's not, that's fine. It's no problem.

But give it a shot at least. It's definitely worth it. So you talked about, actually, I want to go into that a little bit. So you've been here for five years now. So how different was it from the beginning of when he first came in to like now? And like what changes have happened throughout the time that were the most significant to you? Wow. Yeah.

Well, I mean, like you said, I've been here since kind of the start, even like pre, you know, pre whatever people get to see. live so even like early alpha stages so I saw a hunt during a very very very well I won't say a very very different time but a very early stage you know and since then I mean we've released two maps two bosses custom ammo a bunch of different new world items a bunch of new AI I think we're up to like seven or eight different times of day um we We've added, you know, a lot of, I'm just trying to think this kind of so much has really happened. I mean, we've added weapons like the bomb lance, you know, which is just absolutely bizarre, but fits perfectly for some reason in Hunt. It's just like, yeah, but that's natural.

But I guarantee you, you go back and people were like, they can't remember when it was introduced because it just feels like it was, it's a thing, you know? I'm just like there was like the one thing you we mentioned actually before we came live on the stream was that the boats didn't the boats and the extraction points didn't have any audio cues when anyone was nearby we didn't have imulators we didn't have water devils the water was safe to go in you know you could just walk through it no problem the only thing you had to worry about was like crows and and ducks and that was even the ducks were kind of much much later into it as well it was kind of mid early access when the ducks came in. So it was like you, the only thing you had to worry about was crows. That was the other thing. The crow spawns were like significantly more because crows were the only animal attractor that was placed around the map. So, you know, before we had ducks, it was just crows everywhere.

I don't imagine that. Yeah, they, I don't know, what else is there? Hunters used to, they used tier one hunters used to have 100 health. Yep. tier one hunters used to have 100 health while tier two and tier three this is before like legendary proper legendaries were in there like well we had like one or two um but tier one hunters had 100 health started off um so they were literally every game they were immediately one tap to most weapons was the sparks in the game at that point yes yes so so the whole one tap to a sparks um was a was a big big thing back then, but it was, it was just your one tab to a Sparks or a Winfield or a nugget or an anything, really, you know, what else was there? I think, I think, yeah, BD said it in chat. There's no matchmaking, no trios, female hunters were, we were something we always wanted from

the very, very start and long before, but due to the amount of work, it was like, you know, with remodeling and everything like that, it took a bit longer, but that was something that wasn't in the game for a period of time. I mean, we're very happy with the fact that it's there now. And with the legendary hunter cast with the amount of women and bad women that we have in that cast, it's really awesome, you know. But yeah, like the different tier hunters, you know,

there was no shovel in the game. You know, I mean, the shovel only kind of came out in the last year or so, but like no pitchfork. The world didn't have the axes and stuff like that. Tomahawk wasn't a thing that you couldn't throw the axe. for very long time. Yeah, I said the no imulator, no water devil.

There was no poison doctor, you know, the AI that drops the health kit and can poison you. There was no poison doctor. I mean, we had no other variants of the AI. It was just the basic ones. And at that time, like I said, there was no water devil. There was no imulator. The assassin was like, I think,

when we just came out of early access, I think, or just before early access. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole lot of other things as well that I'm just, you know, I'm just, you know, kind of trying to think of and wrap my head around. Half the traits didn't exist, you know?

I mean, I think we're hitting like 35, 40 traits or something like that. We started out with 16. Yeah, 15, 16 was, like, literally the amount of traits you had were the amount of trait slots you had was the exact amount of traits that were i think there was maybe one more or something like that so it was like you just basically picked what order you got them in so yeah um bear traps i don't think bear traps were in from the start that was something that got added in a bit later as well i think um there there was also like refractoring of the audio as well i mean

there was a lot of things done to um kind of like clean up the audio and improve it and as well with the steps of like your enemies and your partners and everything like that. No, yeah, early, very early days. No book of weapons. All the, all the weapons were unlocked through the bloodline because there was so few of them. And the book of weapons became a thing later on

where the different variants got unlocked as you progress through them. Yeah, it was all, yeah, it was different. Prestige 50. There was no Prestige 100. It was Prestige 50. And we ended up doubling it because somebody reached it too quickly.

That's not why we doubled it, but we had planned to anyway, but it was like somebody did it very, very quickly. Fiel Spawner was one of the first to get 50 and then get 100. So, you know, it was like you're crazy,

crazy, crazy, crazy person, but fair play to him. Like, you know, he has a poster in the game, actually, a wanted poster with his face on it.

So that's pretty cool. That's also something. That's an awesome trivia. That's actually something from, a long time ago as well, you know, technically speaking. So, yeah, things have changed. You know, I mean, custom ammo was probably one of the biggest things. Scrap Eak then as well, you know.

The DeSalle map kind of brought a whole new, you know, a whole new kind of like atmosphere to things. Yeah, I mean, a lot of shit's happened. Yeah, that's incredible. That is one thing that I also like, that is an insane amount. of updates in just five years. I think everyone here can know

one or two games out there, big games too, that would take them years to get one or two of these updates, right? Like, not even, not even just like small little bug fixes. I'm talking about like events. Yeah.

Like weapon adding. And we have pretty big updates when we do them, you know? You guys get to make sure. Very frequently. We do. And we also try to fix this. Like if we,

if we, some issues crop up that we need to try and get sort of as quickly as we can. We're generally pretty quick to try and get half fixes out on them as well, you know. So it's, there's a lot. There's a, we've done a lot. It's, it's, and the, the hunt team isn't huge, you know. I think we're averaging about 100 people, excluding like, with that you kind of generally, that certain teams are kind of studio wide,

so they're involved in everything. But just the specific hunt team is about 100, 110 people thereabouts, you know. So, I mean, to be able to like do all of, of this in the in the four and a half years that we've been doing it five years it's pretty insane you know uh it's a bunch of dedicated people we have um working on this game a bunch of people that love it like it's their own baby kind of thing you know um me being one of them of course um yeah it's just it's come a long long way and i just see as well there's like people going on about no gamma slider no f ov slider no gung slinger you know um i mean there was no like opacity sliders for any of the AI you know um i mean there was no like opacity sliders for any of the AI you units there was no highlights uh like you couldn't turn the highlights off um uh there was yeah i mean like we we did it i don't want to say it's a completely different game because it's not it is just to evolve so much and and evolved in the right way uh over the the many years it's been out it's it's become a little bit less like a little it's it's still a hardcore game but it's a little bit

less kind of right the moment you're in, you're dead, you're screwed and you're never going to have fun. You know, it's, it's changed a lot from that. And that's what we found back at the start. A lot of people had issue because they just came in and they got shit all over. You know, there's no other way to put it. And it was like, okay, well, this isn't fun. And now I feel that we're at a state where it's a lot more fun. You know, you get that little buffer period at the start to learn your stuff. And then you get a little bit more into the thick of it, you know. And if you do well, then you do well. If you don't, then, you know, still try and have fun and kill stuff along the way.

So that's my attitude. So because I've been play, I've played a lot, not as much as some streamers. I've played a hell of a lot. But, yeah, I think I'm like 1,200 hours or something like that now between. Not enough hours. Excuse me. Well, when I look at some of our streamers who are like 5K, 6K, 7K hours in the game, you know, it's like, you know, I have 1,200 between my main account and my test server account.

So it's like 600 a shot each. Plus then there's a couple of other hundred hours that I've been, you know, just to help out with testing and stuff like that internally. Yeah. So you have any favorite content creators that you want to shout out? Because I would love for people that haven't seen the game to watch some of these people. Do you have any people do you want to shout out real quick? I mean, we have so many awesome content creators, you know.

I mean, there's even a, there's a couple in the chat. like just now is he like a failish there she's a fantastic streamer she definitely go and check her out she's a lovely lovely human being but then I mean we've got all the guys in our partner program so you've got the

the likes of PsychoGhost and you've got Grandfather Hermit and Nino and Gunsmack and Vombus and Pixels and Archie and Bree and Bearkey and Kirti and Yusef

and just the list goes on and on, like two angry gamers, play quite regularly as well. You know, and then, I mean, I look down my list. We've got like average Joe, even our own community, our social media manager, Beedy Boy, he occasionally streams. You know, we've got, we've got, yeah, there's just too many people to really name off. Geith, obviously, as well, you know,

that beautiful voice from Australia. You can't forget him, you know. But these are old people. should definitely give a shout out to. And Krook as well in chat, he's, you know, he's a, he's been branching out into the Hunt Showdown, um, seen quite a bit over the last few months. And, you know, he's, he's more of, uh, streamer. He's a C of thieves, uh, streamer. He's a C of thieves partner. Um, but he's an absolute legend of a person. So you should definitely go check him out as well. But like, look, basically my, my advice is, you know, because I don't want to leave anybody out because like I said, there's so many awesome creators. And I'm not like picking favorites because, you know, I love them all in their own way. But, uh, if you really want to, want to, want to go and watch a, uh, a good hunt streamer, just open up the hunt directory and click on anything. And you'll pretty much find that 90% of the time, you're going to have some decent fun and you're going to find a decent streamer to watch. So, and that is for sure.

What I love about especially, I'll definitely ask you, since you're a senior community manager and how you interact with the actual community, the hunt community is probably one of the most wholesome but also funniest, like groups of all time. And like the reason why we have, for those that don't understand why we have these hats, if you look on the subreddit on Hunt, it is all about every single thing that has. You add a cowboy hat, no matter what it is. It is by far like, it's such a simple thing to add. But God, I laugh so hard.

It's all. When I was making the three, I'm like, well, I got to add the cowboy hat. That's like, it's all the hunt. It is a hunt meme. I mean, one, what do you can even actually. So I will give one shout out. It's to the hunt meme account, the main one of the primary ones. There's a few.

Sorry for not mentioning you all, but Biu Times on Instagram, these guys, they, they use these hats all the time on everything. And it just immediately makes it a Hunts Showdown meme. It's perfect. So, you know, yeah, we have to have the hats. It wouldn't be, we wouldn't be allowed to talk about Hunt Showdown without it, you know. So my opinion. I kind of want to also go into community. So you work in community.

So what is an average day of working in the community? working with this fantastic fan base. Like how does what is the average day about this? So the best way to answer is there's no such thing as an average day. There is none. Do you like, yeah, do you generally do a lot of the same things on a regular basis, but there is no such thing as an average day.

Generally, though, we'll say it starts out, you know, you wake up, you go online, you check your emails, see what's, see what's exploding, see what's on fire, see if anything these. to be put out. You know, you check the messages on the internal work programs. You see if there's anything that you need to start immediately the moment you wake up and get going, you know, and then you kind of go and see what the hell's happening on the community, in the community. So you go through all of the social channels, you go into the Discord, you kind of have a look around, you start looking at feedback, start seeing exactly what people have been saying for,

you know, maybe you've had an update the night before and you need to get an overview, get some details on sentiment for the higher ups, you know. So you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you go trolling through. We use some tools as well to start looking through stuff like that and we kind of get an idea and how the community are feeling. Communicate that up to our higher ups and they kind of go, okay, so what do we have to do based on this

feedback that we get? You know, conversations then start about you know, some, you know, future addition A coming in one point, whatever, you know, or, you know, let's talk about this and it's joining meetings to help out with that

to give a community, was a community perspective because that's one of the things that I'm here for and the same with the rest of my team is that we're there to speak on behalf of the community. It's like, yes, we work for the company, but our voice or we use our voice to speak on the behalf of the players

and make sure that they are heard in the right way within the studio. So that's what a lot of our day is, is listening and reading and talking and interacting. And then for me, then I obviously, like I said at the start, I kind of manage a lot of the other community managers. So I have like five or six community managers. So I help them out with whatever

things that they've got going on. And I also do a lot in the partner program. So I'll help the partners with whatever questions and queries they have. You know, we'll try set up things like, you know, some like with the Serpent Moon event, we, you know, we set up something like an early access for them to do some recordings and everything like that for when the day, the launch days came out and everything so that they had some, some content. So we'll, you know, try to organize things like that. You know, start looking at other influencers. and seeing, you know, like if they're, you know, playing Hunt, trying convince other influencers who've never played Hunt to try and come and play for a while, you know, and just kind of

basically try to foster the community as much as possible, you know. But the opposite side of that then is, like I said, we're heavily involved with a lot of the development processes, which is really, really good. I myself and Benza as well, we're included in a lot of the day-to-day conversations that go on about, you know, addition A and addition B. and that and you know how is this going to be taken and so we're very very hands on and I think somebody else is like what does a community manager do and honestly the only real answer I can give is a little bit of everything because we do a little bit of everything we are the main

points between our players and our developers we speak on behalf of our players we speak on behalf of our developers and you know we make sure that what we're communicating is up to scratch and enough for everyone to be able to understand what we're doing, why we're doing it. And yeah, just try and foster and grow the community as much as possible and keep a nice and welcoming place to continue coming back to. You know, so that is that is kind of the day to day. I mean, obviously then there's different projects that have to be done in around that. Like when we have new events coming up, we have to work on like myself and Benta with the

rest of the team. We'll work on like the plans around what we're going to be. doing on our social media, what we're going to be doing on all of our channels to kind of communicate this effectively, make sure it gets the reach that we needed to and everything like that. And yeah, I mean, we and we also, we work with the customer service guys as well. You know, we help them a lot with like reporting of players in terms of like cheating and everything like that. So, you know, we work closely with them and we work closely with all of the development team, the live producers, the live designers, the grain designers, the level designers, the art designers.

You know, we we have input in everything because the people that we work with value what the community say. And they know that we speak for the community and do so in the best way possible, you know. So, I mean, look, we might not always get it right. You know, you can't please everybody all of the time. But we do our best to make sure that our community's voice has heard as much as possible within the company. Because we said it from the start. we always wanted hunt to be built with the community, not just for what we thought.

We always wanted the community to be involved in the development. And we've shown that over the years that we do know how to listen. We do know how to make sure that the community is heard, you know. So, yeah, that's the kind of the every day. We have our hands in absolutely everything because we need to be. We are the, we are the, the, oh, I'm trying to, trying to think of the word. We're the front runners. We're the ones that get it first.

Everything that happens in the community, we're the ones that see it first. But I would be it myself or Ari or BD or Violet or, you know, Yvonne, Leonardo, all the guys on my team. We see it first. We're the ones that have to get on top of it. And we're the ones that have to make sure it gets followed up on. Okay. So, wow, that is a lot that you do. it may be a little hard to choose out of like this fat of everything you do.

But what is like your favorite part of working? Like what was the one thing that you find like rewarding or you just love doing? In general, it's hard to kind of pinpoint one thing because they all, like I said, they all kind of interact very quite often. My favorite thing about in an impede, I think this, I think this. It's not the same in every company, but my favorite thing about Crytech is the fact that my opinion matters. Is that if I have an opinion on something, people will listen. As long as I have reasons, as long as I am putting it across in a constructive manner,

as long as I am not just going, oh, I hate this, this shouldn't happen. You know, people listen. People pay attention. And this is something that I'm very, very thankful for that it's, you know, it's, you don't get that everywhere, you know. I mean, and that's not to knock anybody else, but it's just that we get to work so close with the developers. And I think that that's probably the best thing for me is that I get to be so hands-on with so many aspects of hunt at the moment and all through its development. It's been that in itself has just been one of the most rewarding things, knowing that I have an influence on how the game actually progresses. I mean, I'm not saying I make it do this or make it do this, but to know that my opinion actually matters and is factored into things.

and especially because I try to do a lot of what I do by not just my own personal feelings, but primarily based on what I hear from the community on a regular basis. So it's just being able to be a part of that. But if I have to pick one thing that I love the most about Hunt, it actually is the community. Because you mentioned it a while ago,

the community is very, there's a lot in it that are very, just kind, genuine people. And I've had the pleasure of meeting quite a lot of them over the years through game conventions. and, you know, community parties and everything like that. And it's just, it's, it's been amazing. The community is my favorite aspect of it. And that's not trying to be cliched.

Oh, the community manager's favorite thing is the community. It's a genuine thing is I do love the hunt community. I've never experienced a community like it. There's so many different, just so many different everything in this community. And I think it's so awesome that so many people can come together over a video game, just for their mutual love of a game like Hunt. And the fact that we're able to have an impact on people as well is really huge. You know, I mean, I actually have a story from Twitchcon.

And Beattie will remember this one that we had someone come up to myself and Beattie to thank us. And we were like, this is okay, why are you thanking us, you know? It's like, you know, you help me really a lot during the pandemic. You know, there was a lot of stuff going through a really rough time and your game helped me. I found friends. I found something I enjoy doing and helped take my mind off things. And they started crying in front of us. And me and Bidi are like, yeah, no, we have stone hearts, but almost crying ourselves, you know.

And it was just so kind of sweet to kind of know that something we've helped create has had that kind of an impact on somebody. And that, I think, is kind of one of the best things about it, knowing that what you do is. is more than just something for people to play. It can be an escape for people. It can be something that helps them get through the mundane, through the day to day. You know, and I understand all too well. I know all about that. With, you know, mental health issues are pretty serious and something that should be taken very seriously at all times.

So, but knowing that I work on something that helps people when they feel like that, that to me is, that's huge. absolutely huge. Wow. That's, that's actually, I think, I think the effort and the hours and the sleepless nights and everything that you put in, I think getting that one thank you was probably worth it, right? Oh yeah, totally, totally. Highlight of the, of that whole, well, I mean, there was a lot of different things that went on at that Twitchcon weekend that were amazing, but that was just by far one of the highlights. It was an incredibly touching moment, one that I'm still talking about several months later. You know, that's how much. So, Yeah, it was nice. It was nice. I just, I wish some more of my team would have been able to share it at the same time, you know. But still just to be able to have someone come up to you like that and feel that way about it. It's, okay, I'm doing something right. And that makes me very, very happy, you know.

Makes it all worth in the end. Well, that's, that's an amazing story. Yeah. Do you have any other fun stories, anything that is significant during your time and your basically tenure at that hunt? I mean, there's been a lot of cool things done over the years. I think one of the cool, one of the really fun things that I got to do was we got to take part in a laser tag tournament against a bunch of other first person shooter companies that are based kind of in around Germany as well. And they had a meet up in Frankfurt in one of the laser tag places. So myself and Beattie got to be a part of that. And off that was just so much fun. We lost like miserably, unfortunately.

because we're more used to the slower pace to gameplay. You know, it's all a bit too fast and flashy for our taste. That's what I say now. But yeah, we had a lot of fun with that. I remember that we, did we beat Bethesda? I don't remember. I think, yeah, we beat one team. And then on our second team, we just, second turn, we got annihilated, like, ridiculously.

But I'm claiming faulty hardware and, you know, we're fonder of the slower gameplay, you know. So that was one really old. or something. We've gotten to do a bunch of different live events. We went to TwitchCon and had a, like, an influencer party at TwitchCon there just a couple of months ago. We were at EGX last October, which was great fun because we were like, you know, there was a huge amount of companies there. And we were one of the bigger ones, which was like, holy crap, that's an unreal kind of feeling, you know, everyone was queuing for hours to try and play on Showdown and play Crisis remastered. So that was.

was really awesome. And we always, like with the game conventions, we always get to meet a, like, a ton of lovely people throughout the industry, you know, get to make some really, kind of long-term friends, which we've done for over the last couple of events. We had Gamescom a couple of weeks ago where I had the chance to meet up with some cosplayers for Hunt. I had no idea that they were going to be there. They met us on the Wednesday like, hey, we have cosplays. Do you want to hang out with us? We walk around. I'm like, hell yeah. That would be awesome. I meet them on Friday. and there's two fellas is a red shirt and a random tier three and we're all just hanging out for the day and giving out codes to be game codes to people and you know it was like so much fun getting to do that and then i mean we had a couple of years ago as well at another games come we had a community event as well where we invited a bunch of the community to come have dinner and drinks with us and you know we've had a lot of a lot of really cool things that we've been able to do over the years i mean covid unfortunately got in the way of that quite a bit for a while.

But this year we've been able to kind of get back into the convention scene a little bit. That's kind of one of the things that I do really enjoy a lot about the job is getting to go to conventions because, you know, we always do. Our community management is all online. So getting the opportunity to actually meet people face to face and kind of give them, this is me in real life. This is, you know, and they get to kind of see that the passion, like especially when they, myself and BD are the ones that kind of get sent out into the wild the most. And it's like they get to see that our passion for the game. I mean, BPD's here for I think four, four and a half years are close to five as well. And then I'm hit five and we're still as passionate as we were about the game from day one when we started,

you know, and it's really good to be able to show that to people that that that's how we are, that we love this game and we want this game to be the best it possibly can, you know. So, yeah, it's, there's, there's loads of other things as well. I'm just trying to think, I mean, yeah, it's just been, it's been a long time, so a lot's happened. You know, I mean, we had the crisis, I think, for the crisis remastered launch party. That was hilarious because I was trying to do a live stream while they started a party outside. So everyone was dancing around the place while I'm in a really dark room doing a live stream with one of the senior producers for it. Like, you know, we're trying to talk and, and also, you know, we want to join the party.

So, like, we've done some pretty awesome things, you know. It's been pretty cool. It's been, yeah, it's been crazy. That is, wow. You guys have done so much. Mm-hmm. So after, since it's been so long since from the beginning, you basically, it's literally a whole different game to now where it is, is there anything you want to see hunt release down the road? Like, a crazy update.

It doesn't have to be, like, feasible. or is there somebody that you want to see down the road? I mean, I want to see more of what we've done. You know, I want to see more maps. I want to see more bosses. I want to see more AI. I want to see more ammo. I want to see more weapons.

I want to see more hunters, you know. I mean, all of the things that are there and continue coming, that's what I really want to see more of. If I was to be asked, like, what kind of personal little thing? Well, when I say little thing, it's not really a little thing. But when there's a personal thing that I would love, I would like to see custom lobbies of some shape or form. So the ability to create your own match with a group of your friends and stuff like that. And it's something that we have wanted as well since the start, you know, not just me and my team, but also the developers as well.

But it's a big undertaking. And it's something that we've kind of unfortunately have to push back quite a bit. just because there's so much work involved in it. And it would kind of doing that because the team is the size it is doing that would just kind of really take away from the new maps, the new bosses, the new weapons and everything like that as well. You know, so I hope one day we were able to do something along those lines. But yeah, I'm just, I kind of, I have to kind of be very careful about what I say because obviously I do know some aspects of what's coming in the future. And there's a lot of things that I already, I know that are coming. and I'm like, I'd like that.

So I can't say that right now. So the one thing I will say, the one thing I will say is, is keep an eye out for the next couple of updates. So we've, we've some cool things coming in the next few updates. So. I mean, I'm not a journalist, buddy, if you have any leaks.

Yeah, no. How about this? Leaks, I give you leaks if you give me a free PC. How's that word? And I'm joking. Disclaimer. If I abandoned the people, if I abandon the people, do I do it? disclaimer i'm joking no leaks all right you behave yourself so um i guess we're going to go into

just a couple questions from chat um these ones i'm actually very very curious about in general um from not not you for you um or not to for you is there any way to make the steps a partner's quieter sometimes they stop and i can't hear the other hunters do you think you guys would ever change the sound for teammates? I mean, the sound, it currently, it's balanced in such a way that it's very easy to tell your teammates compared to enemies. I mean, if there's an issue with the sound that is being encountered, I would say, kind of like, you know, try to record it and send it on to us and we'll have a look and

see, is there something going on with the mix or something like that, you know? I mean, generally, things can happen that can change the way certain things sound. I mean, we had an instance of it recently enough, but it's something that we can resolve, you know. So it kind of really does depend on the situation, but I don't think we're going to introduce anything where it will allow players to adjust the sound because of the balance that we're trying to create

with all of the audio together, you know? It's a very fine balance that you have to get because a person's ear can only focus on so many sounds at once, but the sounds need to be different enough and high enough to actually be noticeable, a degree, you know. So I don't feel that we'll probably introduce any kind of option to be able to to change that. We may end up changing that. You never know. We may decide, yeah, it needs to be altered. But if we get some feedback on it that something's not right, we're happy to look into it.

It's best just to kind of send it on to one of the community managers, put it in the Discord in the feedback or suggestions or the bugs, depending on what it is. If it's a feedback to change the audio or if it's possibly a bug to look into the audio, just post it in the appropriate your channel and see what happens, you know. So that's, yeah. Okay. And also another question from Natu4 you. It was about like the custom map thing about having, you know, this is a custom thing.

I know you guys pushed it back. But was there ever be a time where you, where we can have like 20 plus people on a map, 50 people, just like throw them all into like a crazy battle royale? It would be nice, but currently no. It's not possible. 12 is the maximum that we're able to have because of just the way everything is designed at the moment. I mean, maybe someday in the future, you never know. I wouldn't say never say never.

But the plan isn't to do that right now. That would involve a pretty big overhaul of the engine, actually. Because we have a careful balance in the game at the moment that 12 players is the maximum with all of the AI. and if you start reducing the AI to add it more players, then it's less of a PVP, e-game and it's more of a PVP, but there's a couple of AI around, you know what I mean? So we want to try to make sure that the balance is kept right.

So for now, it's going to be as is. We had an instance before where actually you could get more players per map and it caused havoc on the service. So for now, it's probably, yeah, it's not going to be a thing. But who knows? You know, we never know. It's always one of those things. if the amount of work is that can be done is there to justify it, you know, who knows.

But like I said, it would require a lot of work. It would not be a overnight thing. It would not even be a six-month thing. You'd be looking at probably a couple of, like a year or two easily just to be able to kind of get everything working the way it's supposed to. Because stuff like that is, you can't just go, right, let's turn it up to 20. Right. And see how it goes. The relentless amount of testing needs to go into stuff like that, not let alone just the relentless amount of coding.

that would need to go in to make sure it all works together correctly. Right, right. That makes sense. I was just hoping, like, you know, maybe you're like a maybe, like, yes, we're going to do it. But I understand that also, one, it would probably be a lot on the server itself, but too. It would probably be, it would change up the game too much at the thing. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, that's the thing. It would also, like, I mean, yeah, I don't think you could do. I think bounty hunt with 50 players would be a little bit much personally, you know. So, I mean, you'd have to do a lot more, including, like, increase the size of the maps to a lot for the player count, you know, and then you're kind of, you're branching out of, is that still hunt? Is that still in the kind of the feeling of what that you get from Hunt?

You know, I mean, and then are you leading more towards the Battle Royale style of gameplay then with that many players, you know? So I kind of think we're not, we don't classify ourselves as a Battle Royale. Yes, there are Battle Royale-esque type mechanics to it, to some degree, but we kind of fit into our own slot. and we like it there, you know.

So we kind of, that's, you know, we want to make sure that if we do add anything new or anything like that, it's that it still fits with the whole atmosphere of Hunt us in general. And I think branching out to that 50, you know, 50 per map mode might be a little bit too much of a stretch, you know. Makes sense. Makes sense.

I guess we have, oh, you know what? We have two questions left for the chat. If anyone has any questions for chat for Ricker over here, go ahead and just answer in chat. But from Crotock, actually, do you have any nicknames for your favorite guns or in-game items? For instance, I used to love the silence in the gong, and I call it the hush puppy. That's a great name, by the way. Hmm. I don't think I do.

At least not that I can think of. Oh, I'm trying to think now. that's a no I don't know I don't think I have any specific nicknames for anything in particular I mean I probably do and I'm just blanking because I'm not playing the game and I'm not yeah no I just I can't call everything by its actual name you know what I mean I don't yeah I'm not unfortunately not imaginative in that regard in many other regards I am but no I don't nickname my weapons I kind of I let the game the legendary's nicknames nickname for me um yeah Yeah. No. Okay. That's fine. Sorry, Crow Duck. Let's see. Sofa King. I know that name. I made sure to space it.

I'm curious. How does the hunt team feel about the new battle pass system slash changes in micro transactions in regards to player interaction and sustainability? I'm personally loving the new direction. Hopefully, it's both ways. Yeah. We have been, we have seen so far already. It has been good. I mean, we need to kind of give it a bit more time. We need to see how it works over the course of the entire two months of the event. So we're still, you know, we're about halfway through, a bit more than halfway through. So we've still got a bit more time before we see exactly how it's worked out for us. But so far we are pretty happy, especially with the player numbers, with the retention of the players as well in particular.

I mean, on the money side of things, obviously I'm not kind of privy to what it's doing or what we're earning or anything like that. But, you know, it's, it's definitely not a bad thing for helping our whole aspects of monetization. Like, like I said, it was something we discussed. A few months ago, monetization is something we're going to be experimenting with a couple of times or a few times. And yeah, it's, you know, this was an experiment for us. But so far, it seems to have worked exactly as intended. Perfect. Oh, actually, the question from Dave, right here. FSR DLSS have been implemented in Cry engine already. Do you guys think you'll add it into Hunt or I don't know if you can't tell us about that? Well, I mean, we'd like to for sure. We definitely

would. There's a lot of work to it with getting it added into Hunt. It's something we have been kind of working on it. Well, not specifically that, the DLSS and all of that stuff. It's just in general just kind of upgrading everything with Hunt. It's something that we're trying to look at, something that we've been working on kind of in the background as well for PC but it's also for next gen consoles or current gen consoles sorry they're not next gen consoles but the current generation of consoles so we are looking to make improvements across the board it's just a matter of time basically so we you know it is something on our on our radar something that we do plan on doing it's just going to take a bit of time makes sense makes sense all right and I guess we're

going to go into the little fun section this is like Probably one of my favorite portions of the thing is rapid fire. You can answer however way you want. You don't have to go in-depth if you don't want to. You can go as in-depth as you want. But these are a little bit more personality-based questions that I'd love to see, you know, the thought process of. So very, very basic ones for it to start off to kind of ease us in.

What is a game you've never played, but you wish you did? Aldersgate. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, I remember seeing so many trailers for it, but I'm never. never actually played it. Same. That's the thing. I have seen so much about it.

I know people rave about it and love it, but I've never played it myself. I'm kind of somewhat ashamed of that. So, yeah. But Baldur's Gate. That's what that would be my choice. I like that one. What is your favorite game of all time? Oh, people are going to hate me for this.

Final Fantasy. Which one? The series, but seven. Okay. Seven. Okay. I can respect that. Seven's good. I did not. I did not like it. I did not like it. I'm so sorry. Don't hate me. I just, it was not my, it was not for me at all. People hyped it up so much and it just like couldn't get into it. I found it I played it. Don't get me wrong. I did actually play it. I just could not get on with it.

It just was, yeah, I found it very, very boring. But that's, yeah, again, don't hate me. That's interesting. Okay. Then what about, how about, so that was your least favorite? How about favorite? How about favorite of all time? Uh, golden eye on the Nintendo 64. Ooh. Okay. So golden I, did you play on inverted or did you play the regular? No, no, I played regular.

Played regular. Yeah. No, I couldn't do inverted. It just didn't make sense to me. Okay. I know a lot of people had the, there's a big debate between like inverted versus regular and stuff like that. So it's very interesting.

Okay. Interesting. At least I think, yeah. No, down went down. I think at least I think so I yeah it's been a while I'm I'm kind of showing my age a little bit when I'm talking about that stuff but yeah it's been a while but uh no I played I pretty played pretty normally and I was fairly good at it you know at least by the standards of the people I hung out with anyway hey as long as you're not the worst that's all the matters I was definitely not definitely not there you go if you could remake a game what would it be and would this remake just want to be updated graphics or do would you want a whole change to it so I'd want a whole change to it so I'd want a whole change to to it, but the game was Conquers Bad Fur Day from the old N64 days as well. What was it called Conquers? Conquers Bad Fur Day.

Bad Fur Day. Yes, this was, for the time was one of the, it's one of those games that you should not let kids play back then, but, you know, no one understood anything because it was Conquers and he was all cute and he was a squirrel and everything. But Conquers Bad Fur Day was one of the funnest games I ever played. I was in hysterics the entire time playing it with my friends. I would love to see a full-on remake of that, where it's, you know, or even just a sequel to it with, like, today's technology.

You know, so Conkers was what was it, he was in the Diddy Kong racing games as well, you know. And in that, everyone knows him as this like, you know, sweet little like cart racer guy. In Conkers Bad for a day, no, it was not sweet or little. He swore a lot. He killed things a lot. There was just a bunch of different things in it where you kind of like teleported through different worlds and you ended up like doing one thing that was like from the Matrix and then another one from like Independence Day and stuff like that. I mean, it was like really trying to play on the videos and the movies of the time. And it was just absolutely, it was a fantastic game.

So I adopt that for sure. Definitely my favorite game of all time. ProTech, now I have recognized it is for Krotak's quote of, I am the great mighty poo. I remember that quote. Okay, so I do notice this game. What interesting game? You know what? I'm a lot of people, you know, bring up like, you know, some sort of Mario game or back.

This, this is a fantastic answer. Yeah. Yeah. No, that one definitely for sure. So. Let's see. What is a game you deem underrated and everyone should play? Sunset Overdrive.

Ooh. That's a good one. I loved Sunset Overdrive. I thought it was amazing. It was that really nice combination of skate and something really messed up where you get to shoot cool weapons with zombies. Or a form of zombies.

That to me was just fantastic. Because I love the skate games. I love everything like that. So this was that nice mixture for me. So I just feel, and it's still like going on Xbox Live and everything like that. It's still, it's people should definitely play that more.

It is fantastic. It's just funny because it didn't take itself seriously either. So any tips for people wanting to enter into the gaming industry? Always try even if you don't have the required experience. Always give it a shot. If you don't have any experience, look for entry level jobs such as testers or customer service.

That's how I started. If you see a job that you're interested in, you see something that you're interested in, try and gain some bit of skill in it, even if it's just picking up a program like yourself and trying to learn on your own. Show that you have passion, show that you love gaming, and you will, everyone can make it in the industry if they just give it a shot. If you see a job, go for it, give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is they say no, and then you try again. you always ask for feedback and then you try again. I am proof that you don't need a degree in game development to work on a game development team.

So just believe in yourself, get some experience, don't even have to go to college or university or anything like that, just something, find some courses online, learn how to use Blender, you know, stuff like that. Just do something for fun and then that's a really good way to get into it. But the main thing is that just try it. Nothing to lose. You literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And kind of going along with that, did you ever expect yourself to be where you are today? No. No.

I always hoped. I genuinely did. I, like from a very young age, I always knew I wanted to work in the gaming industry. But no, I never, ever thought I would end up where I am today. and I'm very, very happy I have. So mostly because I was young and I didn't know where I would end up. But, you know, I'm not so young anymore. And now thinking back, I'm like, yeah, this is probably a bit more than I expected,

a little bit further than I expected. But I feel very privileged to be able to have gotten to where I am today. You have an amazing job so far. Thank you very much. I appreciate that a lot. All right. Now we got some three, would you rather question. These are the fun ones.

Because it always gets to, it's always good to see, like, what your thought process is. So, would you rather only be able to go out during the day or night? Night. Night. Only at night. Yeah. Yeah. If that's the choice I have, I'd prefer to go out at nighttime.

Why night over day? Like, don't you want to be able to? No, I like, I like nighttime. I like, I like, I like seeing the stars. I like, you know, you get to see more, like, animals at nighttime as well, you know. just always feels calmer, more peaceful at nighttime for me. So yeah, I'd much prefer night. I like that.

Would you rather oversleep every day for a week or not get sleep at all for four days, but you feel as tired as you, like, haven't slept those four days? So no matter what, I'm going to feel the same amount of tired? I don't know, because you could oversleep, and you won't necessarily feel tired, but then not sleeping at all, you are straight awake for 48 hours,

or for four days for 96 hours. Yeah. Then I'm oversleeping every day for a week. Because I was kind of thinking, if you end up with the exact same exhaustion level, I will take staying awake for four days. But if it's not the same exhaustion level, I'd definitely take over sleeping.

So if it was the same exhaustion level, you'd stay awake for, you stay awake for four days straight? Oh, yeah, yeah. Really? Imagine what you could do in four days straight. I mean, you could watch so much TV. You should get so many projects done, so much stuff sorted. You could read a couple of books, play a couple of video games from start to finish, single-player games.

You know, I mean, there's just a lot. You know, you have the time to be able to just keep going, keep doing stuff, you know? So, yeah, I'd do that, but that's just because I'm weird and crazy. You know, but if I really think about it, I mean, I really, I prefer the oversleeping. I like my sleep. I definitely don't get enough of it, but I like my sleep. Interesting. actually I was thinking about that too.

I was like, that was a, there was a question back then was like, what superpower would you have? And, you know, a lot of people would say like flight, you know, teleportation. Someone gave me an answer of they wish that they could choose one to sleep. And I went, what does you mean about that? And it was basically like, if I need to get some work done, I won't feel tired and I can just do my work. But, you know, times where I'm like, I don't need to do anything, go ahead and sleep. I was not about how much making me yawn. sorry.

No, no, sorry about that. I was thinking about, like, if you never had to sleep, you know how much, you sleep, I forgot, like 20, 30% of your life away? Yeah, yes, easily. So if you never had to sleep, you never feel tired, you could just do everything. You'd accomplish a lot, you know?

You definitely would accomplish a lot, so. Maybe that's something, maybe someone down the road, please make it so that we don't ever have to sleep. Yeah. Oh, final, would you rather? Would you rather fight 100? duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck? I think I would have to go with 100 duck-sized horses.

You think you can take on 100 duck-sized horses? I never said I think I could take them on. It just said, which would I rather fight? Okay. You know, I mean, I never, like, that's the thing. I don't think I'd be able to take on either of them pretty well. I'm almost certain a horse-sized duck would demolish me, but I'm also almost certain

100 duck-sized horses would demolish me so for me it's a case of which would I prefer to fight which would I prefer to lose to I think a cuter way to go would be the 100 duck-sized horses okay all right yeah can you give me the game plan the game plan I mean would just be tried to swat

as many of them the way as I can you know or like try to distract them with carrots or some shit like that but yeah the game plan is just to kind of see what happens really you know just just keep swinging so you know maybe I'll survive maybe I get trampled to death by tiny

duck-sized hoofs I like that I like a lot that's actually probably the most reasonable answer I've heard because a lot of people get very overconfidenter like oh I can take on the duck or I could take on the no no chance no either way I'm

either way I'm pretty fucked if I'm honest with it. It's the only way to put it. Like, you know, I'm under no illusions of, like, you know, what I'm capable of managing. I don't think I can manage either of them. But, you know, we respect that. That's realistic, you know? We appreciate that. Yeah. So I'm going to say, I'm a little disappointed. I see you took out one of the questions. Oh, which one was it? I can, I can go back real quick. We. Sorry, it was just that I had a really smart ass answer for it. Oh, which one was it? the what uh is a was it is a hot dog a sandwich oh yeah i was thinking about if i should ask that

since we'll ask the last podcast but you know what i may just make this a weekly thing is a hot dog sandwich yeah it's a hot dog sandwich give it to me so okay a couple of different i have a few different perspectives here right so uh if if you go by the cube rule technically the hot dog is a taco unless you break it in half and then turn it on its side so that the the meat is like visible that way, then it's a sandwich. So according to the cube rule, that's it. A hot dog is technically a taco. So what I go by, though, is that a hot dog is its own entity.

It's not neither a sandwich nor a burger nor anything. It is his own subcategory of fried. No. I don't even know if it's fried. I don't know. Yeah, it's its own category. Hot dog is a hot dog, not a sandwich. Interesting.

But I like to. The cube theory one, though, a lot better. The cube rule, that it's a taco because of the shape. Can you give me a little explanation of the cube rule? So it basically comes down to the determination of the food is based on the positioning of the carbohydrates, so, i.e. the bread. So that if it's, you know, the carbohydrate is spread across the bottom, that's toast. So anything that's like all on the bottom is technically toast. And there's a lot of weird examples of it.

yes Johnny some thought has gone into this one so yeah so there's that it's flat and then if it's one on top and bottom then it's a sandwich but then you can put other things equate into sandwiches that are not actually sandwiches and then yeah it's like cereal is a

soup you know but it's also a salad because there's no curve you know depending on the thing but anyway there's a bunch of different things but one of the main things was the the shape for the hot dog it's you know the meat is in the middle and the carbohydrate structure is like that. So therefore it's taco. That is probably the best answer I've ever.

Cube. Cube rule. Yeah, QRule. I honestly, I only found out about it yesterday. I'm not going to lie. Because I asked one of my volunteer moderators was because I was going through the questions and I chatted to one of them. It was like, hey, you know, what's a hot dog?

Oh, I'm prepared for this. And he sends me this website, cube rule.com. and it's just basically a big explanation about what a sandwich is and what determines between, you know, sandwich, toast, tacos and a couple of other different things. So, yeah, it was very, very enlightening. I think it also made me slightly stupider, but it was also very, very enlightening. I'm not going to lie. You're not wrong. A little bit.

I'm not going to lie, I read through the whole thing and I'm like, wow, I really do feel stupid. So, fair no. But yeah. Still, that's, that's, that's the theory. But then I, my own theory is, it's like, you know, it's, it's basically, um, a hot dog is its own entity. It lies somewhere between a, uh, a burger and a taco.

Interesting. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hot dog. Okay. You know what? I, I, I honestly, I was not expecting this level of answer. And honestly, I think I am, I think I'm all bored. They brought scientific, like, receipts. And I think, I think I'm, I'm on board. I think you convinced me. Yeah, someone said it in chat that the cube rule is like the page is so long

and that it feels like someone's doctoral theory. And I think it probably is. There's a lot to it. I didn't read it all. I just read the bit about the sandwiches because that was the important part. You know what? I'm on, I'm, I'm, I'm on board. Yeah.

It's me. It persuaded me. That's it. Give it a look. You might as well. Cuberl. Look it up, everyone. And then I guess for the final question, one of the most fun questions I always asked at the end of the podcast.

You can go as deep as you want or not. Are you happy? It's an interesting question. And I think overall, if I was to give a very short answer, overall, the answer would be yes. I am generally quite happy. And we go a little bit deeper. As with everybody, you know,

we all have our things. We all have our stuff that goes on in life. I've encountered some health issues over the past couple of years. I've lost family members, you know, and other family members are quite sick. So there are some things in my life that do not make me happy, which is the same for everybody.

Nobody is, that's one thing that we all share is that we all have some things in our life that impact us in a negative way or make us feel unhappy. But if I think about the grand scheme, the everything about it, that it's not just these negatives and these downsides that are, that dictate how I feel, then overall I am quite happy. You know, I have a good job. I live in a good country. I have good health care. I work for a great company. I work on a great video game. I have a great family. I have two awesome cats. And the list goes on and on and on.

And that list is far longer than the list of the negatives. So for really, really deep, deep down, yeah, I am quite happy. I have gotten to do a lot of things in my life that I never really thought I would have the opportunity to do. and it's yeah it's been a hell of a right it's definitely had its ups and downs sometimes along the way I didn't even think I'd make it this long but here I am so and yeah like I said I've gotten to do a hell of a lot in my life a lot more than I probably ever thought I would when if I go back 20 years ago so yeah deep down I'm happy things have things have gone okay for me you know what I think I think a lot of people in this chat also agree you have done so much for the community for the game itself

you have to make sure to give yourself some credit on everything so well done amazing stuff and i can't wait to see you i can't wait to see what comes out in the next couple months couple years i can't wait to see how hunt evolves even more especially from how crazy it was in the beginning it's only going to get even quicker from there yeah yeah it's going to be awesome Like I said, we have a lot of cool stuff coming, even with the next update and the next couple of updates next year as well. There's a lot of stuff planned, a lot of stuff on the cards. And yeah, we think people are really going to be happy about it. And I just one last thing I saw somebody earlier on saying, like, give us one reason why we should play Hunt at the moment.

Like, Hunt, if you've never played it, Hunt is the best game you haven't played yet. It genuinely is. It is fun. It is terrifying. It is intense. And it's enjoyable. It's different. it's a break from the norm when it comes to shooters.

And it's just, yeah, it's just a hell of a lot of fun. It's very, very, very underrated. So that is why you should give it a shot. Judge for yourself. I think if there's anyone that convince to play the game, that's it. Literally, it just try it out, fall in love with it, and then you're stuck in. You're stuck in with it.

Pretty much, yeah, pretty much. That's exactly how it works. I think that is it on the questions. Do you have any announcements or anything like that that you'd like to end off on? The only thing is just to talk about the current competition that we have going on. You know, we have some awesome sponsors for that. So I probably should take a few moments to talk about that. So for anyone is not aware, we are running a contest at the moment called the inaugural Hunt Showdown Video Awards.

you can find more information on hunchedown.com slash news. It is the top news article there. Basically, it is a contest we are running for people to create content and enter with a chance to win some awesome, awesome prizes. And we're partnered with MSI, AMD. Hang on, let me bring up the list of stuff. So it's Alienware, AMD, MSI, and then we've got thrown some things in. And of course, our wonderful host today, NZXT, have provided a beautifully wrapped Serpent Moon PC, catered out to the nines.

I'm so jealous with what's in this system. I would kill for it myself. I'm not going to, obviously, because this has got to go out to the winner of what we call the Hunt Showdown Community Choice Award. So we have a bunch of different categories with it's a best Hunt Showdown Action category, the trailer category, the freestyle category, the community choice, and then the final one, which I came up with myself, the at least you tried category. So we want to kind of give the opportunity for pretty much anybody, whether you're an experienced video editor or you're somebody that's just

trying to start now and wants to throw in something just for the laughs. We have a category for everybody there. So, and we like I said, some awesome prizes from all of the awesome people and from yourselves as well, from NCXC. It's been really, really awesome to work with you guys through all of and getting to do the podcast with you as well on top of it. So, but yeah, so this is the kind of the big thing at the moment. Make sure you check out all the information for anyone who hasn't seen. We've also opened up our test server environment to allow people an opportunity to go and record in peace. So you can go away from the live game and hopefully get a server relatively on your own and unbothered

so you can get some decent captures going. We have given some couple of different updates over the course of the last few weeks, one on our YouTube and Twitter and Facebook. It's one of the shorts you can see. And we have given some extra guidelines. People wanted to know if they could use animated content that they create themselves, which they can. Wanted to see if they could use our trailers and take bits of them,

which they can, but have to make their own original creation out of it and can't just rip off our trailers. And there's a lot of other stuff to it as well. So like I said, hunchshodown.com slash news. It is the first article you will see there. And that is the big thing aside from the serpent

moon event that is going on right now. Perfect. Yeah. Everyone please participate in it. And like you said about the PC, I wanted to steal it. But they're like, no, we have to give it away. And I'm like, no, they don't have to know. Well, we kind of do have to know.

I totally agree. I've seen pictures of it already. And I'm like, I'm so jealous. I'm so envious of the person that ends up getting this. But I'm also, I will be delighted to give it out to somebody. It's the first time we've been able to do a big contest like this with a lot of other brands, you know, and big brands as well. And it's not just us giving out keys because we've done previous video contest awards. And, you know, we gave out some nice prizes, some hoodies and

t-shirts and everything like that. But this time we wanted to go that step further because we want this to be the start of something bigger. You know, we have some amazing creators in our community, not just video and Twitch streamers, but we have amazing cosplayers, artists, graphic designers, you name it. And we want to give everybody a chance to do stuff. So this is like we said, this is the inaugural one. We're going to have way more in the future with probably even just as cool awesome options for people. And yeah, we're really looking forward to getting to see what everyone creates. And that runs until the final date of entry is until the 20th of September.

you can submit your things on Facebook or Twitter by using the specific hashtags, which you can find in the blog. And it kind of looks like I'm reading off of something, but I'm actually not. This is all just coming from my memory. And the final submission date is the 20th of September, 12 AM CEST. So that would be German time. So yeah. Perfect. Everyone, please participate.

Win that Windows prizes. Win that PC. And then send me to PC when you win. nice try dude nice try i try send it to me all i'll send it to them and then they can just send it back to me oh it's just a return you know it's just yeah you just you just want it you can see it for a little bit but then i'm taking it at the end exactly got it um and i think do you have any other announcements anything you want to shout out um not just you know shout out to everyone that i get to work with shout out in particular to the guys uh guys and girls on my team the community and

marketing team. It's been an absolute pleasure working with everyone for the last five years. And we've got a really strong, solid team at the moment. And it's really, it feels good going into work every day, knowing that they get to work with such awesome people. So huge shout out to like BD Boy, Ari, Violet, Yvonne, Leonardo, Tori, Tim, Ashley, Porva, Hans, all of them. Even the graphic designers as well, Max, Sarah and Francisco, just every one of you guys. And of course, shout out to the devs as well for all the hard work that they put in. to hunt we we really appreciate everything you guys do so yeah just kind of everybody woutine we'll love that i guess i'll go to my announcements i'll go with these really quickly

uh like i said everyone please participate in the hunt showdown video awards uh basically there are some amazing prizes like the pc like we just said so please participate there's no harm in doing it go for it uh we are also participating in intel gamer days so if uh you know you guys want to take a look at it we have giveaways going on, game codes, pre-builds, stuff like that. Take a look at our socials. Take a look into it. Pretty awesome. If you guys want to be part of the N60 partner program, please go ahead and submit

your application. We have so many wonderful and beautiful people joining every single day, every single week, every single month. So please be patient. You will receive a rejection or acceptance letter. So if you haven't received either or, we're still into works of it. We only have really one to two people really working on this, so please be patient. We've also released a bunch of new stuff from our campus monitors, the 8-7 cases, function keyboards, lift mice, thermal pace.

We've done everything. So please check it out at nzxti.com. So for those that are also joining for the podcast, thank you guys for listening the entire time. For those that are here for the code, I see Motocord, being a little impatient asking for the code. instead of waiting for me. Wait, wait, your turn, sir. There is a code that will give you 500 extra entries.

By the way, most of the time when I pull these gleams, a good 40 to 70% of people are pulled, the winners that are pulled, use the code. So this is a thank you for everyone sticking around on the podcast. So thank you guys so much.

The code, I'm going to go ahead and put it in the chat, is Rick is the best. Rick is the best. No spaces. All caps. Rick is the best. And the only way you guys can get is if you put a heart in the chat for Rick right now. And if I don't see it, you're not being pulled for the winners.

There's no lie. There is no lie. I have to say, flattery will get you everywhere, mate. That's all that matters. We appreciate all the work you've done. And literally, I think everyone here can agree with me. You do so much amazing work for this amazing game. Keep it up, and I can not wait to see how far into the game.

Hopefully, the code is too long. I'm sorry. Look how many beat. Oh, the code is too long. It shouldn't work. Yeah. It should work. It should say saved.

Let me check. No, it should be that. Is it not working? Okay. You know what? Let me go ahead and change it. We will do. Oh, I was saying, yeah, refresh.

Refresh it. quick guys refresh your glean pages it should work what someone said it worked if it isn't then i can just redo the code yeah say it's work for you so refresh your gleams everyone i was like oh god do you have to make anyone yeah refresh it you're good because i have to put i have to put in the code at the end of the thing because i don't want people to guess the random code so go ahead and throw that in there but i think that is it thank you guys for joining us Remember, tuned in live every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific Center time on the official NZXT Twitch. And don't forget to listen to the previous episodes of Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud.

Please leave us a positive review if you like what you hear. And even if you didn't, maybe have any questions for us. Send an email to podcast at ncxte.com or tag at NCXT on social media. I want to say give a big thank you to Rick for joining me on the podcast today. And big thank you to Hunt, Ari Benz, everyone on the Hunt team for, you know, together and making this amazing, amazing time, helping you guys with the Hunt Game Awards and everything like that. So thank you guys. Thank you, Rick, and everyone, have a wonderful day.