Retronauts - 203: A Tale of Two Tribes

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Jeremy Parish talks to Martijn Reuvers and Collin van Ginckel about the history of their development studio, Two Tribes, a company that bluffed its way into existence in the sunset days of Game Boy and became indie game pioneers with Toki Tori and Rive.

Hey, Volks, Jeremy Parrish here to let you know that Retronauts is moving. That's right, as of March 1st, we'll no longer be part of the Podcast 1 network. We've decided to move over to Libson. Your podcast subscriptions should automatically update to reflect this change. But just in case, you can find us at Retronauts.lipson.com. That's Retronauts.L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com, beginning March 1st. Not too much will be changing otherwise. There'll be no more political ads,

and you'll be able to listen to us on a wider array of platforms, including Google Play and Pandora. But otherwise, Bob and I will continue to bring you new episodes every Monday and every other Friday. And as always, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you at Lipson. This week in Retronauts, you got your toky and my tori. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. You know my voice. And this week, it's another developer interview with, I don't know, I'm pretty excited about this one. It's a little studio you may have heard of called Two Tribes that may or may not actually exist anymore. You guys are going to have to clear that up for me. But yeah, I've got both of the

founders of the company live and on Skype from the Netherlands. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Yeah. That's a, okay. So if there's any kind of like weirdness with the conversation, it's because we're speaking to each other from thousands of miles apart. But that's technology for you.

It makes these things possible. So guys, why don't you, why don't you please introduce yourselves? Are I calling you first? Yeah, sure. So my name is in Dutch, Colin van Gingel, or you would maybe say Colin Van Gingel. I'm one of the two co-founders of Two Tribes, and in the last 17 years, I've been mostly working on the design of our games. All right, yes, my name is Martin Reufersh, which is a little bit difficult to pronounce in English, I guess. I'm a co-founder of Two Tribes as well, and for the past, I don't know, 18 years, I've been working on mostly programming and early on, mostly,

business development and trying to get new projects signed and everything like that. All right. And I have been writing about video games for the past 18 years, so that brings us all together. But yeah, actually I'm, like I said, I'm excited

about this podcast because you guys, I don't remember who it was exactly, but Two Tribes was actually the first contact I ever had with a game publisher or a game developer. I think it was me back then. I think you worked for OneUp, right?

This was before OneUp. This was back in, you know, like 2002 when you guys published Tokitori for Game Boy Color. And I had this dinky little, you know, personal blog. It had like two or three hundred readers a day. And I wrote about Tokitori. And a few weeks later, someone from Two Tribes wrote and said, hey, thank you for the nice review. It was really cool for you to review the game. And I was like, wow.

I feel legitimate. That's really great. Must have been a good rating. Yeah. I really liked the game. I thought it was at the time I thought, wow, cool, a puzzle platform on a portable game system. What a great idea. But now that I've actually spent a lot of time exploring the history of Game Boy, I'm like, oh, wow, a puzzle platformer in a handheld. What a great continuation of the great Game Boy tradition from the very

beginning. So I've got a different perspective on things now. But yeah, Tokitore was a fun little game. And I guess that was the first project you guys worked on as Two Tribes. Is that correct? It was the first game that we actually released. Like the history of Two Tribes, it starts in maybe 1998, 1999, something like that. And I was still in school. I was studying something with information technology, but it wasn't very interesting. So I spend most of my time trying to understand how the Game Boy worked. And I actually, like, even a few years before in 1992, I think, we made a small game called Egbert. And it was for the MSX home computer. And it's a system that was mostly famous in Holland and Japan.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think of MSX as mostly a Japanese phenomenon, but I know it did have some traction in Europe. So I guess you got caught up in that. Yeah, Phillips used to make those machines. And Phillips is a Dutch company. So they had easy access to the Dutch market. But I don't know. There's still like a homebrew scene for MSX. And for some reason, it's mostly Holland, Brazil, and Japan. I don't, I really don't know why. Well, Japan is probably... It was Sony as well, right? It was a mixture between Sony and Phillips, if I remember correctly. yeah and I think Microsoft is involved in there somehow so okay Microsoft made the the basic

the programming language that you got when you booted up the system yeah so but they didn't make the machine it was like a like there were Panasonic Sony Toshiba Phillips all kinds of different brands that were making MX hardware yeah yeah the the MSX was more of a standard than a than a system in itself kind of like what what Phillips did with CDI you know a decade later. So that's interesting. I don't really know that much about MSX outside of Japan. So hearing about, you know, people who did have experience with it outside of Japan

is always really interesting. Yeah, it's actually the system on which the first Metal Gear got published. Before, there was a NES version. They actually made an MSX version, which is, in my opinion, much better. It is a much better version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it was interesting to be the underdog in the home computer scene because everybody had a Commodore 64 or Amiga or something.

And I was there on a computer, that's where I met Martin actually, on our local computer club, where we used to copy games and make pictures and, I don't know, eat fries. Yeah, I was actually the one with Amiga and a Commodore 64. And, you know, he was the guy with the MSX, which is, in my opinion, it was always inferior to those other platforms. So we always got these same battles between which one was better. and in the end we ended up both with an amiga which is uh uh in my opinion still a very good computer yeah oh yeah yeah i mean it definitely for the time it was yeah it's hard to beat the amica yeah so but to continue my story uh when i'm in 92 we released uh gbert for msex but it was i did it together with a friend of mine called stephan sadafinski um and then a few years

i just i don't know i didn't make any new games or any any other uh projects uh maybe i was too busy with school, I don't know. So when the Game Boy, a caller came out, it looked like a portable MSX because the specifications are really, really similar. So that was why I decided to just ask around if there were more people who wanted to work on something. And actually, I think the first idea was to make a shooter, a little bit like a gradius or art-type style shooter, but with a dragon.

I remember making artwork for it. And it was supposed to be like a gradius style game, but with adventure elements and collectibles and stuff. And then it turned out to be quite difficult to make that. So we decided, oh, we'll just port Egbert because we already had that. And we'll just make a quick project. And I think this is about where Mertine came in. Yeah.

Where he said, hey, can I join you? Yeah. I'm kind of curious to know more about egg. Bert. Like, what kind of game was that? It's basically, like, a rough version of Tokutori. Oh, okay. And it was much more violent as well.

I mean, it was made by someone which was a little bit younger, obviously. Colin was, I don't know, 12 or 13 when he started on the game, so it's pretty young. And, you know, Tokitori got killed pretty violently with blood, everything like that, and got shut down. Yeah. Yeah, so it was a little bit...

So we obviously toned that down for the Game Recallel version. But aside from that, I guess it's mostly the same. Yeah, it's, as you say, it also had four worlds, but we changed one of the worlds. And some of the earlier levels, we adapted to the new version because they were introduction levels and they were good enough. And some of the weapons are the same. And actually, if people want to play it, you can still download it. If you search for Egbert with double G on MSX and it's on the domain file,

dashhunter.com, I think. And it's made by phony and with an F. Yeah. Yeah. There was our name back then. So, but if you look for that, you can download it for free. Or there are videos as well. And you'll see it's pretty similar. But like Martin said, I was so young, I didn't even know what I was doing.

So it's something that just evolved into a game. So when we got the chance to make the Game Boy version, we decided to just go back to the original. see see what was working and what wasn't and we made a lot of tweaks and fixes yeah like and like colin said we thought it was like a quick and perhaps even a dirty version of toky tour of agbird because we already had the design and a lot of content but even with that we still spent i don't know two years on making the game i guess we started in 1999-ish and it was done in 2000 end of 2000 Yeah, I think so. It was released in September 2001.

Yeah, yeah, but then already it was sitting on the shelf for a pretty long time. So I guess, yeah, I think, yeah, yeah. So give or take, you know, one and a half to two years, I think we spend on an even while having a lot of content and, you know, the character and the design. So somehow we, and we didn't know it back then, but for later projects, we turned out to have the same problem for even for the last project. So we always think that we can do it pretty quickly And then we end up spending two or three years working on the game So that's kind of the same story We did have a lot of cool stuff in the game that no other game had

So I'm pretty proud of it And if you're just working out of your bedroom It doesn't matter too much That you spend too much time on it No, no, no, definitely not And we always wanted to make obviously the best looking game on a Game Boy Color, so we tried to push the most out of that little system

and actually when it was released, some commenters or reviewers compared it to a game where, I think a Game Boy Advance version of a game and I actually thought it was a Game War Advanced title because of the, you know, how it looked, but

it was just tricks that we did to make the game look better and run. Yeah, that was that was something that was something that was really struck with. Like it's a very, you know, kind of the presentation is very simple in the game. You know, it's a puzzle platformer, so it's kind of slow-paced and, you know, very, you know,

straightforward side view. But the animation is really high quality, and there's some really great effects, like, you know, transparency on the water. You really didn't see on Game Boy Color a lot. So that was something that definitely stood out to me. So the game came out in Europe before it came out in America. Is that correct?

Because I remember it came out around the same time as Shantay from Capcom in the U.S. So I feel like it was kind of, yeah, that was like, yeah, that was like. like mid-2002, but you said it came out in fall 2001. So, yeah, I'm kind of curious about the... It was released on September 11, 2001, or 12, I think it was, the day after 9-11. So it was, you know, bad timing all over the place. And I actually don't know anything about it was released earlier in Europe, but perhaps Colin knows. But I think it was all just one release day that it was September 12, 2011.

Okay, maybe I'm misremembering a little bit. I could be. I think I still know. I think McTain is right. It was released on the 12th of September in 2001 in America. And then maybe six months later, it was also released in a limited capacity in the UK. Now I remember.

There's a different box art for the UK version. It's slightly different. And I think they removed our logo or something. I remember being something weird with it. But it was mostly released in the US. And because the Game Boy Color was already being replaced by the Game Boy, fans. Capcom never published more, did more

than one production run. Right. I think our logo was blown up. There was something weird with the Factor Art. Do you remember? Ah, yeah, maybe. And one of the smiley had, you know, like very big lips, something like that. Something like that. I don't know. So that was a big

group who we obviously spotted that. But yeah, it was only released in a limited amount because it wasn't a bestseller hit, unfortunately. When it was released, obviously, like I said today after 9-11 I don't think a lot of people have games on it on their mind so that was kind of unfortunate and the Game Boy Advance was already out or really or announced or something like that so it was out already yeah it was it was out um I think it came out in

August 2001 yeah in the US so it had been out for like a month yeah yeah so it was all bad timing and yeah so had it been earlier like a year things could have been different but who knows. Yeah. I think one of the interesting stories from EU about how we got to have a deal with Capcom is actually a quite special story for me. Because we are just two Dutch guys working out of their bedrooms. And for some reason, we managed to get Capcom to release the game, make it, how do

promotion, go to E3 with Oketorri. And the funny thing is that we didn't really think about what we wanted to do with the game. We were just making it. And then when we were almost done, we're like, okay, maybe we should find somebody to publish it. So we went to people in the Netherlands to some other companies that were already more established. And we had meetings with them and basically they said, well, maybe you can get a few thousand dollars or euros or guilders that we still had before the euro. But that's about it, because it's a bad market. Please don't expect too much.

Yeah, and you have like a non-existing IP, so nobody's interested in it. So, you know, they didn't see a lot of it in it. And so we were pretty active in the hobby scene for a Game Boy development. And I think it was on ICQ or in a forum or something where we got in touch with a guy called Paul Braygill. It was ICQ. ICQ? Okay. And so he, we didn't know him.

We just had talks with him and he had pretty big words. So he said, oh, I could take your game and I could go to publishers and maybe we could strike a deal. Yeah, he already had, just to give you a little background, sorry, he already had a game company called Paragon 5. and I think at that time he already released some games so he knew a little bit about the scene and who to talk with or who to talk to and so he was willing to take on our game

because he thought it was pretty cool yeah so in the end we were like okay we're not going to make this work by staying in the Netherlands but we don't have any budget or anything to go to big conventions or the US and the market was pretty different because there was not much back then like not many there were no there was no indie scene nobody was making games of not many people were making games like we were doing um so in the end we just said to paul okay um this is what we we just give you the game you just go to e3 and i think it was e3 of 2000 um and then he uh he went to

he went to he had some meetings and he showed us uh he sent us an email saying well guys you can choose between Capcom, Konami or I don't know, there was another one I don't remember which one and we were like, what? We can choose and so basically

in the end we ended up with Capcom because Konami wanted to change the license and add different characters and stuff and Capcom actually believed in the original ideas in the original concept and the way the game was so didn't want to

attach calimero uh to to the game or it's just something that is in my mind i remember because i thought it was calimera that what's sorry george actually curious george okay it was a monkey is curious george a monkey hmm yes curious george is okay i think they were i could actually i could actually see that working but i'm glad that you were able to keep the original character yeah yeah but the weird thing is um like we still stayed in holland so we set up our company because you need to sign agreement so it needs to be all official and everything went smoothly sort of but we never saw Paul and we never saw the people from from Capcom and at some point they sent us a contract and we're like all digital yeah yeah it's all digital and why well let's just sign it and see what happens

and then i think we got silent for for a few weeks and then we were afraid that we did something bad or that we like signed away or that people were just pulling franks on us because in some weird way we were still thinking, well, perhaps it's just some friends of us that are trying to contact us through Internet and they're joking us with a fake contract and nothing is real in this. And this is all just something that is not going to happen to us.

Because we have never seen anybody, like Colin said, so we've never seen Paul or Capcom or anyone. So it could still be like a very elaborate hoax. But fortunately, it wasn't. No, I remember one evening we went to the ATM and we got our bank card from the from our newly set up company and we just put it in and that was we did not have any money so it was always zero which was our our bank account so we we put it in and we just said okay give me a hundred guilders so it's like 50 dollars or something and then

it beeped and we got money and I think we went to get a drink or went to the movies or something from the money oh I think we we checked our balance and it was because back then it was not easy to do that through the internet so we checked for balance and it was i don't know 50 000 on there and it was just big and it was like oh holy crap so this is real so this is for us this was the start of um of our company actually yeah that was the moment that we actually had faith in that we could do something like this yeah yeah and so so to this point you guys were not really incorporated it was more just like a couple of guys putting together a game and hoping you know that they'd find some way to get it out.

Effectively we were because we did establish a company like Colin said, but we did that mainly because we had to work with an American company, and we were told by a lot of friends and family. Like, Americans are very scary people to work with, and they sue all the time, so you better lawyer up and, you know, at least set up a company that if they go after you, at least the company goes bankrupt and not use you personally.

So this is the reason that we set up a company back then, and not necessarily because we wanted to make more games. I think the decision came a little bit later. Yeah, if you have money, why don't you start a company? Yeah. There was sort of the reason behind it. Yeah, then we found out that it was actually possible to sell the game, and then we set, I think we sat down and thought,

okay, if we can do this once, why can we do it a second time? And I think this was the start, and that was after Tokitori one, obviously. of Three Tribes, which is a different game, unfortunately, that never got released. Actually, it was never finished. Yeah, so I'm actually really fascinated by Capcom from this period because it's like this, you know, large kind of first-tier game publisher that was really taking a lot of chances on kind of unheard-of original properties,

which no one was doing back then. Like, the Game Boy Color was kind of a wasteland. Yeah, there was this sweet spot that we had. back then that Capcom was actually taking on risky projects just to see if anything was going to stick or not. And we were just lucky. And I think Paul played a big role in this one as well to convince them to take on the game. So I think it was the combination of the fact that Capcom was trying, you know, unproven

IP, which was pretty cool. The fact that Paul was able to convince them that it was pretty cool. And another very big factor was that the game was almost ready. I mean, we spent a lot of time on the game, and it was polished, and it looked fine, and audio was there. It was in no way a demo, so it was a ready project. So when they saw that, obviously, they made the decision, well, there is little to lose here. We can just, you know, put it in production and see if anyone likes it. So I think a combination of those factors made them decide to take on the project.

Jeremy, do you know if the way forward had the same? idea behind that or that they feel that Capcom was doing the same thing as we feel? Yeah, I mean, I've talked to them a little bit about that and I think they're really grateful that Capcom was able to or willing to kind of take this risk on them. And it is something that is, it does really feel like sort of a slice of time.

But, you know, if you look at Capcom's library from around 2000 or so, not just on Game Boy Color, but also on PlayStation, They were putting out stuff like One Piece Mansion and just like these these kind of esoteric niche games that they would never publish now. Like Capcom's business now is very much about like what's going to sell a million, two million units. But at the time, yeah, like it seemed like they were kind of willing to put themselves out there and just try different things. And I feel like it was a system working in a good way where they had these, you know, these big hits that made a lot of money for them like Resident Evil. dino crisis and Mega Man and they were able to sort of parlay that to be able to take risks on smaller companies and I'm sure you know if if no one had bought Tokitori it wouldn't have

bankrupted Capcom they could afford to you know take a chance on that so um so that's really cool it's it's you don't see a lot of corporations doing that now and I guess they don't have to because there is an actual vibrant indie market at this point like that is a niche of the industry that's that it's not just a niche it's like a a sector of the market. But at the time, there was nothing like that. People are now able to sell their games themselves. And obviously, that was not possible at all back then,

because you needed to have a publisher just to make those cartridges in the first place. And actually, you needed to be an official developer to make games as well, which was we were not an official developer. And this is a story by its own as well. Because like Colin, I think he already mentioned during this call that we were in the home brew scene. So we basically made everything from the tools that were available on, you know, through the internet back then. So nothing was official.

So when we submitted it to Nintendo, actually they asked us, how can you do this? You're not in our list. So what is this? So they kind of mistrusted us or they thought, well, how can they pull this off? So we were, we launched a game about a chicken. and an ag. If I can interrupt you? Yeah, sure.

Because the funny thing is, when we contacted Nintendo, we were actually wanted to become a developer for the Game Boy Advance. And we said, oh, we already have Game Boy Caller experience. And they said, oh, that's good, because then we can fast track you

to become a Game Boy Advance developer. So then during the call, they said, what's your name? And we said, two tribes. And they say, you don't exist in our systems. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true. But we did.

make a game. They said, no, that's not possible because you have to be registered. So for some reason, we got past the security checks at Nintendo or something. Yeah, but I remember that we still had, we had calls with Lodcheck, which is the Nintendo checking system to make sure that all the, you know, the data that you submit and the game that you submit is valid. And we had that during Tokitori. So we actually had calls with them and but I don't know how they how they flagged or how they didn't see that we were not an official developer but my my point being now it's easy anyone can anybody can make a game but back then you needed to be an official developer to make games and I'm talking about chicken and eggs

obviously which whichever came first you know it's not really possible to make games if you if you're not an official developer so how can you start being a game developer which is a very difficult question, obviously. So we solved that by just going, well, making it ourselves through homebrew. And that was our way to, into the game industry with a bit of luck, obviously. So you kind of bluffed your way in. Yeah. Yeah. You could put it that way. Yeah. And obviously, we didn't know what we were doing. So no. We were just making a game that we think was really good. We just polished the hell out of it. And I guess people liked it. And they They have faith in us that we could actually deliver a game.

Yeah. So you mentioned that you began development on Game Boy Color because it reminded you, you know, technically of the MSX. But was there a sense that like you needed to be on a different platform instead at the time? Like did you, did you, you know, at some point during the development of Toggi Tori, were you like aware that that Game Boy Color was kind of, you know, not too long for the world because Game Boy Advance was in the wings? I'm just kind of curious, like, did you just feel like, hey, we've got to stick with this the entire time, or was there always, was there ever any kind of uncertainty about, like, is this the right way to go?

I don't think we had that at any point. I think all the other platforms back then that we were playing were either consoles or, well, that's mostly it. And we considered them to be out of our league anyways. So I think the Game Boy, Collar was just a perfect fit. And the Game Boy Advance, I think it was a little bit later. and Colin mentioned that that we wanted to make our next game on the Game Boy Advance but because Tokitori was on the shelf for quite a long time I'm not even sure if we were aware during the end of Tokitori development that the Game Boy Advance was even coming so

okay so once the game came out once Capcom published it I mean at that point were you guys part of the system were you official developers at that point did you get kind of grandfathered in no no no no no I think this is what Colin tried to to explain earlier. So this is the point that we wanted to be an official Nintendo developer because we have been using the homebrew scene all the time, but we wanted to use official tools because they can be pretty fast and much better documentation than Homebrew documentation and everything

like that. So we wanted to do it officially and then they found out that we were not an official developer. So yeah, we had to prove ourselves by showing that we already had a game out there. and they fast-tracked us. No, actually, this is an interesting story because they didn't. They denied us access to devs. Oh, I forgot that. Really?

Yeah, because back then you had a company, and I think it's now owned by Sony. It was called S-N systems. Oh, yeah, with ProG and DG. Yeah, and they made, like, deaf kits that you could buy if you were like an official developer by Nintendo, but it was not the same as a Nintendo developer kit.

So they were like, they had an alternative project for people who wanted to make games for Nintendo systems and so what we did is just we said so we were denied by Nintendo to become a developer and at essence systems you have to prove that you're a developer but basically we just sent an email and we said

okay guys this is what's going on we're making a game and we need more deaf kids as soon as possible when can you deliver and for some reason they didn't even check and we just got like next week or the week after something like that we got the DevKit in the mail so that

even after that we had to apply like a year later or something we applied again at Nintendo and then they were like okay maybe maybe we can allow you to be part of the developer program I forgot that part of ProDG yeah so we actually bullshitted our way into a DevKit

yeah yeah actually that Def Kit was pretty good as compared to the system that Nintendo brought out back then, but you know Yeah

Yeah, that was nice felt good Yep Thank you. So, okay, so you said once Tokitori was out, you guys decided, you know, we're a company now, we're going to, you know, pursue this. So, so, you know, what did you sort of set your sights on beyond, uh, beyond Game Boy Color and, you know, is your next, your next ventures? Well, the next venture was the Game Boy Advance. So, uh, we came up. with this other idea, called Three Trives,

which is a, you know, where can you compare it with? I think it was Golden Sun, or was it, Golden Age, Cullen? Yeah, the Golden Sun. But the Golden Sun was more like a traditional RPG. So Earth was a bit more like... Open world-ish. A bit like Zelda Four Swords, where you, like, it's like an RPG, but a lot of puzzle elements as well.

Yeah. But with a lot of physics and stuff, so you could just jump on and overstate. stuff and you can throw stuff and you can snack things. Yeah, you could pick up sheeps and throw them away and there were chickens and it was a very open world-ish thing with puzzles. I think, yeah, yeah. And we spent a lot of time for a vertical slice just to make something that was

looking very good and played very good. And I think we spent two years on that and we started in 2001-ish, 2002 and it was, I think we stopped working on it in 2003. And I think, but I'm not sure. because it's been a long time, that we only tried to sell it to Nintendo because we thought, well, okay, we already managed to sell a game to Capcom.

This game should be Nintendo worthy. So we spend a lot of time on that. And again, as with Tokitori, at the end of the development cycle, I think Nintendo already had the Nintendo DS on their radar or something like that. So the game, Advance was already, you know, a little bit not that interesting for them anymore.

And we only pitched it to Nintendo in Europe. We actually went there with our suits and everything like that. And we had a very nice presentation. And then they really seemed to like the whole concept of three tribes. But obviously, they needed to have clearance from Japan to do it. Because Japan, at least back then, took on all the projects. And unfortunately, they didn't want to take it on. and how stupid I think in hindsight we just decided okay well if they don't want it then it's probably not good enough and well we just we're not going to continue with this so we we kind of abandoned the whole project yeah it's kind of silly yeah yeah so we did that's a shame it yeah it sounds like a really interesting concept for a game or you know like a really interesting project do you have do you have any like I don't know stuff online yeah there's still still screenshots and and and and

and movies on the internet, I think there's, we collected them and put it on our two tribes website as well at some point. I think if you even go to www.3tripes.com that you can actually see some of the artwork from back in 2004. Let's do that. Yeah, it's three dash tribes or I think it's like that. It's still there, but it says missing plug-in because we don't have flash. Yeah, it was made in flash, I think, back then, because that was the leading thing.

but there should be some movies there as well. No, that's the end. Yeah. Oh, I mean, now it's the end. Yeah. Yeah. But we can obviously send that to you if you're interested. But the whole thing is because we were kind of green to say we were just starting as a company. So we figured, well, if we can make a game, we can make it again. But we didn't have any experience with timings or how much time, actually something that you're making from out of nothing. would cost. I mean, there was no engines back then that you could use, so we had to make all the technology ourselves. We had to come up with a completely new design, with mechanics that weren't unproven, and with a very, you know, limited, limited platform. I mean, it's not a PC where you can throw all kinds of things at and ask the user to upgrade if it's not working fast enough. So it was just a fixed thing. So I think two years, with only two people, two or perhaps three, we had some interns and people working on the side for us.

It was just way too small for even a very good vertical slice, let alone a full product. So I can imagine that if Nintendo would see that, that they would think, well, this is cool, but to make this into a game, it will take so much more time. And, you know, the Nintendo DS is already coming out pretty soon-ish. So this will be too late. So, yeah, that's just how it went, and we decided not to port it for the Nintendo DS because I think back then... Actually, we did.

Yeah, we did, but we didn't do anything with it. I think we had one programmer who tried something with it, but I don't remember that we were actively trying to look back then for a publisher. Yeah, we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we had the same, like, demo running, but on the DS. The DS was, like, a Game Boy Advance in 2D. It was pretty similar. Wasn't that much later?

I think it's 2004 or 5, when the DS... came about yeah then we we decided to give it like one last attempt just to try and secure a publisher so we I remember making discs with like a nice covers and but I think that was

after yeah sorry that we're discussing this because it's just I've been 16 years ago and but I think because yeah I mean in 2003 we stopped development on the game I think because I went to to do my graduation

thing or how do you say my master thesis and i did not you i did not program anymore for that game so i think the development aside from some content or or other things stopped around 2003 and we picked up other projects and later when the ds when we were more affluent on the ds i think we picked it up again tried to see if we could still pitch it but it was in my opinion too late yeah yeah i think something like that happened so yeah one interesting thing i was just looking to see if I can actually find the page for three tribes. But when I look at the page shorts, it looks like we've been hacked.

There are scripts that go to cheap Nike AirMaxshoes.org. Oh, my God. And I wonder for how long now. Maybe 10 years, 20 years. Yeah, it could be. But it's very interesting. Anyway, but yeah, so we have been hacked. All right, this is interesting.

I need to check that out if other sides of us have been hacked. But, you know, this is not very important right now. good so but yeah that was already so it was 2003 when we kind of stopped developing that game i went away to go to phillips to do my uh my master thesis and colin uh went on and then i think we started on worms world party for the nokia engage around that time yeah i think was because that was one when we uh when i was away so yeah yeah and so that was our next big venture i guess yeah before we uh jump into kind of you know life beyond toky tory and game boy advance uh i did want to ask you one thing about the name uh you mentioned you had a game called three tribes the company is two tribes where do the name come from is that a reference to the song two tribes or is that a coincidence i think uh yeah you can tell about um you you tell the story yeah i i i remember um like people asking me like what is what is what is the name of your group We didn't really have an answer.

But you have to present yourself in a certain way. And I think before, or actually when we released Tokitori on Game Boy Color, we actually worked with a team of two other people as well, or three, I think. One was a programmer, and he was really good. His name was Mikhail Frissert, I think. Yeah. And the other one is a friend of ours called Lauders van Klavena. And Laudence worked mostly on the, like, external artwork, so the box art or the logo or things like that.

And I think because back then, Laudence and Michiel, they were also part of a demo group on the Amiga. And so you had their side and our side. So it sort of made sense to do something with that are two separate factions. So that's why at some point it became two tribes and it sounded okay. And so it stuck, and I don't have a really interesting story. But it wasn't, it wasn't a Thompson Twins reference? No. Yeah, so like Colin said, it was, and just because of, we used that name, two tribes.

Internally, we had like natives as a mailing list, or it kind of made sense to make a game that revolved around natives and, you know, forests and everything like that for our sequel to Tokyo Story, which was just, waiting for a better name to come along. Yeah, yeah. Because Tokitori, when we pitched it to Capcom, it was still called Egbert. Like Colin told you that he made it on the MSX. And, you know, the name Tokitori was just, I think we submitted 10 different names for Tokitori

before Capcom chose Tokitori because they came up with all kinds of different names because they didn't want to use Egbert because it was already, I think it was already like an IP on the PC called Agbert in the US, so they could use that. So they came up with all kinds of weird names that we really didn't like. So I don't know how we came up with the name. I think one session when we were eating somewhere, we coined a few names and we put them in an email.

And only for, I think, months later, we found out that Capcom already decided to use Tokiturion. And, you know, last minute, we had to change all kinds of assets because in our game it was still called Egbert. So this is how Tokitori came alive. I think Tokitori was one of the variations of one of the names that we had, which is a Kiroitori. And I think Kiroitori means just yellow bird. Yeah, exactly. And so when it became Tokitori, we didn't even know what it meant. So in Japan, people are always really confused.

because it means something like season bird or a time bird or happening bird, I don't know. And actually it means something in Finnish apparently as well, in Marketplace, which is kind of interesting, but it has nothing to do with a Marketplace or a Time Bird. Yeah. We only added a rewind feature when we made the PC version. Yeah. Right. It's nice.

Anything like that. Yeah. So, okay, so beyond, beyond this point, you guys, um, I guess worked on a combination of a combination of, you guys, um, I guess worked on a combination of, a combination of, of original ideas and contract work for other studios? Yeah, well, mostly we entered the phase of contract work, work for hire. We still try to pitch our own original ideas, but it was very difficult to get them signed. So it was mostly pitching for, you know, request for proposals. So we had an idea of a certain, that could tie into a certain IP.

and then you know you give a quotation and they say yes or no so this is i think from 2004 or 2003 onwards to 2008 we we've been working mostly on that premise yeah i guess so i guess up until the release of the the ds and the we yeah i think mostly yeah i think yeah i think weware was the one that made us realize that we could do something ourselves as well so um so this is a big jump, obviously, from all the way from 2004, to releasing our own games again. Right. But it was very difficult back then to do anything yourself. Yeah, that's something I've heard from a lot of small developers, as that the, you know,

the middle of the last decade was kind of a wasteland. There just weren't a lot of opportunities for people with small ideas. You know, I guess you could make casual games on VS, but otherwise it was pretty much work on bigger package products for PlayStation 2 or GameQ or Xbox. So yeah, I've heard Wiiware was kind of like a big sort of jumping off point for, you know, smaller studios. Xbox Live Arcade as well. I think it was earlier than WeWare, but we were not able to get us signed because Microsoft was pretty tough on allowing content on their platform. And we tried several times to get, for instance, Tokutori on there.

but it was not possible. So all those years, we've been working, it's not that we did like packages or anything like that. We always made something that was original for us, but it was tied to an IP. Unless, of course, you count in worms, Worms Open Warfare, we worked on that. We basically took Worms World Party

and we tweaked hell out of it and added some new modes and everything like that and really made it shine, I guess. So we always, even if it was, a game that was already out there we wanted to add something extra instead of just porting it and releasing it and be done with it but but the other games like Garfields or Rubik that we did in 2006 and 2008 they were all you know made originally and usually with very tight deadlines as well so because that was

the case with working with publishers as well they always wanted to have something done yesterday so that the money in retrospect was good because these days it's very hard to make a decent buck in my opinion but it's a little different discussion so the money was good but the deadlines were just crazy it was just stressed all stressed out all over the place and I think it was lucky that we were that young back then because I wouldn't be able to do that anymore now I think I would just say well I don't want to do this by so it was a different it was a different time I I remember when we got back into development

for Nintendo DS that it felt like a liberation because we were making games for mobile phones for a few years and I really didn't like that that really sucked

yeah like right now it's okay you just make something for iOS and Android and that's it yeah even though it gets more complicate it again yeah there's so many different versions that you had to make so yeah it was really fragmented if you made games for mobile phones back then you basically have a good idea and then every

device that you had to support made the execution worse yeah like there were for instance we made golf games and when a when a golf ball is very far away we would just render it with one pixel just one white pixel and i remember there was one device that could not make a white pixel um yes stupid things like that yeah or just you know game gameplay uh technical things like you have a D-path and you assume that you can use up and right and up and left at the same time But no no no not all game or not all devices support multiple Key presses so you can think well I can I can go you know sideways or in with with my game But I cannot do that if the guy if the device doesn't support that so yeah so you can come up with awesome ideas only to find out that it's not working on

some weird device that we don't even have in Europe. Because I remember that at one point, one of our contacts, he sent, like, I don't know, 30 or 40 different phones with all kinds of adapters to our office. And we had to test all these games or one game on all these devices. And you had needed to have all kinds of installers for that. And it was just crazy. It was really, well, it was really not where we wanted to be at that point.

I remember when like the Nintendo DS the hardware is it's pretty horrible like even for the time it was pretty horrible

one of our programmers said that he thought Nintendo bought it on a from a street vendor in Singapore yeah yeah

it was the joke that was running in the office yeah yeah because it was a street vendor with sunglasses

Colin yeah yeah yeah and a long raincoat yeah yeah definitely

but the the hardware was like really limited what you could do and Nintendo has a way of making cheap hardware that is not like top of the line but it's like the battery life is good and in the end you make it work

but at least it was like one platform with proper controls that you could actually one spring size use yeah you could use diagonal inputs which it's crazy that you're happy with it but we were so so burned out by the mobile phone business that we were really happy with stuff like that and touch input which was kind of interesting of course

yeah yeah and the mic yeah yeah I remember when we when we started the S development we started to hire some more people and at some point we maybe we had like four or five people and then we did some pitches for I think it was for cartoon network cart racing

or something and we made a pitch and I think they didn't take it but we got Garfield instead like a month later. But then the publisher said, well, we want to do, I think it's called due diligence. So we're coming over and we want to see how you guys work and see what your

technology is like and who are the guys behind two tribes. And then we thought to ourselves, well, we're just like four guys who don't really know what we're doing. We were working with one guy in Norway and one guy in England and we never really knew when they were there. Yeah, I think we had, back then, at one employee, I think it was Hassel. There's one guy that we needed, or not even him. But we had a few interns that we were working for us before that, and they already were gone.

And so we, like Colin said, we had an office which was kind of empty. But there was a big publisher coming over to see how we were working if we were able to take on the big project. Yeah, so what we did is we just bloated ourselves and just like, With the death kit for the Game Boy Advance, we just, like, bullshitted our way to the contract. So we asked every intern we had in the last few years to come by and, like, bring their old machines and a keyboard just to show that we're making music as well. Yeah. And we rented a car because nobody had a car, so we could pick the guys up from the airport.

Yeah, it was a very good car, and it was, you know, a very luxurious car because we knew it was a guy from America, so we had to, you know, please him in any way. so at least that was the discussion that we had on the office. So they came over, and they were actually pretty impressed. So we put up a really good show. And I remember there was one name too. And he said he was the audio specialist. And so he booted up his computer, and he tried to play a track. And then the computer said, I do not have enough power to do this.

Yeah, nothing of memory. Oh, crap. Yeah. So we were, like, the whole time they were there. I think they were there for a full day, maybe longer. We're like, oh, they're going to figure us out. They're going to know this is fake. But in the end, they approved, and we got the project

and that got us back into proper development for games. Guy from the sound, he could use his mouse, I think, going back and forth, you know, making moving on the screen. But if you touched anything, it was just going to crash or, or showing that it was not working. So he was just sitting there, moving his mouse, not doing anything. It was kind of interesting. But we were not like a boiler room.

We knew that we could do it, but we also knew that if the guy would see that we were just two guys in the Netherlands, or three, and two guys abroad, he would think, well, it's pretty cool that you guys are doing this, but we do not have faith in you to execute a big contract like this. because it was, I think, Cartoon Network Racing or even Garfield that he needed to make a decision on. And we knew that. So we just took a gamble with ourselves, like, okay, we know we're not going to disappoint you,

but you're going to say no if you see the real thing right now. And in the end, the game was good for them. So we proved ourselves right to make a good decision on this. But it was a nice example of bullshitting your way into. into something. Yeah, I guess it's one of my favorite memories. So with the contract projects you did, you know, with other people's IPs,

are there any that you're particularly proud of that you think, like, we really brought something new to this property that no one would have thought of before? Proud of? Well, actually, I think Worms Open Warfare, even though it was the most frustrating project that I ever did. I think we made

until that date the best version of Worms, in my opinion. So I think Team 17, which is obviously the creator of Worms, we're very happy with what we did back then as well. So I'm very proud that we were able to beat them, actually, with the very small team that we had back then. And that was the Engage version of Worms?

No, no, no, no. That was the DS version, the Nintendo D.S. Oh, okay. There were two versions for Nintendo DS. They were called Worms Open War. Forefare 1 and 2. Yeah. And one was made by a different studio and I think it got like a 3.0 on Metacritic or something.

Yeah, it was very horrible. It's pretty bad. And then Team 17 decided to use a different developer for the second one. And I think they were making the PlayStation portable version, which is way more advanced hardware and more capable of a lot more like features or, how do you say? It's better. And in the end, I think if you now look at Metacritic, we have the same. have the same rating for the DS and the PSP version. And that's something to be proud of, I think.

Yeah, and I remember because our technology was pretty much non-existent when we started the project. I think we had a 3D engine from the guy from the England called Adrian Brown. But other than that, we didn't have anything. So we basically started again all from scratch. and there was a first step into leaderboards online play and all that kind of stuff which was kind of difficult

and I also remember that Nintendo didn't have much experience on the DS for that as well at least not in the volume that we wanted to do it so they actually had to come up with lot check requirements for this specific title which made they actually invented new requirements that were imposed on other developers later as well So for them it was all new as well.

So we not only pushed our own boundaries further, but I guess we kind of pushed the boundaries of platform holder as well, which was something in hindsight that I am pretty proud of. Yeah, considering the way you guys got into, you know, being official developers for Nintendo, that's a pretty, that's a pretty impressive leap there from not even on the books to, you know, kind of changing their processes. I think we started on Worms at Wormford 2 in 2005. or six, something like that, and around the time that we were finishing the project, we had 10 to 15 people, including interns, of course, so we were at the top of our game, to say.

We were very big and fast, and I think we could do everything. Except ship on time. Yeah, well, that was a big problem. With Garfield already, we didn't touch on that, but Garfield was a project that we had to do in, I believe, nine months or something like that. But originally we had way more time, like one year, but suddenly the Fox, I think it's the publisher, the movie publisher, they decided to push forward the date. So instead of launching in September, they wanted to have the movie released in July or something like that. So they basically gave us two options.

We canceled the contract and you don't get paid anything anymore. Or you guys can work faster and you have to. three months less to use to complete the project. And obviously, we wanted to complete the project, but it added for more frustrations and not so much gold-plating that we wanted to do. I think actually it was supposed to be nine months, and it turned out to be six months.

Yeah, or something. We still had to make all the technology and stuff as well. And I remember when we did the demo that convinced the publisher to let us do Garfield, It looked pretty good, but we spent like one week on it. Then after like five or six months of, like four or five months of development, it still looked worse than the demo that we did in a week's time. They were really worried about that.

And then everything just came together very fast. But it's just, this is so, I think these days that's still true. There is such a big difference between a vertical slice that looks and play nice and the final product. It's just something that we found out back then. as well. I mean, vertical slice is nice, but to get to a final game that is, I don't know how many hours playable, it's just

a whole different ballgame. At this point, you guys got back into developing your own original properties, I assume. Like, you know, once a little bit later, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So, because we had some experience on the Nintendo DS, we were still trying to do something. I recall that we were working on a prototype called Rewind, which was an unreal shooter thing.

So around that time, we wanted to see if it was possible to sell that to that idea to publishers, which was very hard to do. So we were still trying, but it was really not really possible. So we were just continuing. Always trying. Yeah, we were continuing on the path of work for hire up until 2008 when we released, or when the publisher, I think it was called The Game Factory. they released Rubik's and that was our introduction to like full-blown consoles

because it was a Rubik's was a dual title for the Nintendo DS and for the We and that was I think our biggest stress project ever so we we had to make a game in nine months something like that calling yeah for two different systems and it was all composed of mini games which was I think the big thing back then um so we had to come up with 12 different games for two platforms um you know six six games for platform it was just crazy and on top of that we didn't have any technology on the we and remember back then there were no there was no unity or anything like that that you could just tap into and you know and you have a game running so we had to make everything ourselves

and that was a a big one so we what we wanted to do with garfield we wanted to do it again with Rubik's but that was just I think it was too much I remember crying like I had an anniversary like dinner somewhere in like a fancy new restaurant and I was just crying the whole dinner

yeah it was just too much it was just too much yeah but like my kind said we were much younger back then and then you don't really know where your limits are so you just keep pushing pushing and then all of a sudden it's it's just there's no stopping anymore

you just start to cry Yeah, I think right now there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of people talking about crunch in the games industry. And I remember back then that it felt like having fun with friends, because everybody was working for us, even up until the end, they always said it felt like a family. Yeah. So I remember when we used to like, I don't know, like four weekends and four weeks after each other, like continuously. And at the end, you're really tired, but you're also really happy because you made it. So back then it felt like a good thing, but now I know it's not because I've, like, after that multiple times, I felt like totally burned out because of a project. So I'm happy it's being touched up now by, like the press and reporters doing research on it.

Because it is a big problem. It is. yeah but i i also talk to uh to to the guys that are uh that they work their office and usually they don't have any of those crunch times anymore so it was something that was kind of uh prevalent back then more i guess than it was right now at least for the people that are companies now yeah yeah yeah yeah but at least those those big companies like guerrilla games and everything like that they don't have the the type of weeks and weeks of uh you know overtime that we had back then It was just, I think, an example of because our technology was not there yet, that we had to continue working on that like in overtime because otherwise we were not able to finish the game in any way.

And, you know, bigger companies might have more financial resources to just say, well, we'll just delay this. And back then, this was our lifeline. If we didn't make a milestone, the publisher could say, well, we're not going to pay you anyway. and then it's just the end of your company. So there was a lot of stuff at stake back then. But the biggest thing that was on stake, obviously, was our health, and we kind of took that for granted. Yeah, but that's, I mean, you learn about stuff.

Yeah. I don't want to do that again. So that was 2008. Yeah, from here on, it's a pretty easy jump to 2009. Actually, I think we started to 2008 for working for, for Weware. We were already trying again to go on Xbox Live Arcade with Tokitori. We were working with older, I mean, there's been multiple versions of Tokitori throughout the years. The first one obviously being on MSX and then later Game Boy Color, but we also released it on Windows

phone. That version was made by friends of us called CodeGlu. They're also based in Netherlands and they were founded around the same time that we found at two tribes. So they made a Windows phone version because it was running on Windows, we used that one as a starting point for the Xbox Live version of Tokitori. Yeah, we went to Microsoft

and talked to them, say, look, guys, we want you guys to release this game on your platform, but because it wasn't original, because it was already on the Game Boy Color and or Windows phone, they were not really interested, perhaps also because there was no multiplayer in it. And they had all kinds of checklists that you needed to comply with before they were even allowing your game on the platform. So we shifted towards to Wii, because Nintendo announced their digital downloads store for the Wii.

And obviously back then in 2008, the Wii was already out for two or three years. and it was big. I mean, there were, I don't know, 70 million units sold. So for us, this was the big thing. I mean, if Nintendo announces a digital platform, and we were still pretty cozy with Nintendo because we have been working on the Wii, on the Nintendo DS and the Game Boy color,

so we figured, well, this is our big step, so that made us decide to go for, to make something ourselves again, to see if it was possible to make money out of that and it was partly because we wanted to be independent everybody wants to be independent I guess and also because we found out that it was much harder to get work for higher projects with decent budgets

at the end of 2008 around that time because earlier it was pretty easy to get you know I don't know just saying three to 500,000 euros for a for a project, which is pretty decent if you want to work on that with a couple of guys. But back then, I don't know why, but the whole thing just dropped to ridiculously low prices, at least for the publishers that we've worked with. I think they discovered that it's difficult to make money on the Wii.

Yeah. Because many units were sold, but third-party software doesn't really sell. Yeah, you get a lot of shovelware and all that stuff. So they would just, well, okay, well, the prices just go low because other developers could make it cheaper, I don't know. So it was very hard to get a decent buck on there. So there were basically two reasons that we made the step into publishing ourselves. One of them being it was harder to get money for work for hire. And the other one, which is obviously the one that we want to tell as much as possible, that we wanted to make our own games and be able to release

them. So finally we could work on our own IP. So there was the big transition back then. Yeah, but I think we're kind of scared to do it with something new. Of course, yeah. So we ended up doing Tokitori again. Of course, yeah. Ever returning chicken, recurring chicken, yeah. Right. But you guys started developing Rive around that time, didn't you?

It just took a long time to come together. No, no, no. No, we did make a rewined, which is, well, we could say that at least some ideas that ended up in Rive were, we worked on early in 2005 but we completely abandoned that project rifles not started on until 2013 okay so the the research that I did was incorrect

I'll go correct Wikipedia yeah the thing is that when you have an idea for a game and you cannot make it at least as a designer it stays in the back of your mind until the time comes that you can actually do something with it. So the core idea for rewind was that it was supposed to be like a short game. It was a 3D on-rills shooter for Nintendo DS.

But it was supposed to be a short game where there was a time loop element where you would play a section and then you would rewind time. You would replay the same section, but it would be different this time because you learned something new or there was an event that happened in the past that changes everything in the future. And so when we decided to do Rive, the project name was still Rewind. But then we decided, well, let's just make a 2D game out of it and see how we can do the time travel thing in 2D as well.

And then we started making the game and we tried to get the element into Rive, but it didn't really work out. And so in the end, we ditched it and we just made Rive into the best shooter that we could do, that we could make. But without the demo of Rewind in 2005, it would have been a different game. Yeah, and perhaps we wouldn't even have started on that game, because the whole idea of reusing content and rewinding, collecting energy, that was something that we started on, early, somewhere halfway 2013.

So because we already had that idea, so perhaps we completely made a different game if we were not, had we not been working on it in 2005. Yeah, so your research is partly right, but it wasn't in like active development. Yeah, but it was not in 2009, because then in 2009, we actually did some other games. We also started on the iPhone. We were one of the, you know, the earlier people that were having a game on the iPhone. And for the Wii, we also tried something called demolition because there were a lot of physics-based games back then

and we always wanted to see if it was possible for us to make something like that as well. So we spend a lot of time making, again, a pitch for Nintendo and other big publishers to make a game in which it was awesome to blow things up and make videos of that. So we had this crazy idea that it was awesome to capture those videos. inside the game and publish them on YouTube. Back then, that was pretty, you know, novel because there was not possible in other games.

But the game, again, was just like three tribes. It was just way too big. And it was very difficult to even get a vertical slice done properly. And unfortunately, that was never, you know, never took off. So you guys end up going to be able to be. So you guys ended up going with Tokitori 2 is your first kind of big, self-published title, right? And that's a much more, you know, I would say a larger, much larger scale game than the original Tokitori, not just in terms of visuals, but in terms of the design of it

and the structure and everything. In 2009, we released Tokitori for the iPhone, and I think in 2008 we had Tokitori for Wiiware. And after that, we started to see if it was possible to pick on, to take on projects or games from other developers that were, for instance, on the iPhone, but we're not on Wii or not on Steam because in 2010 we also released our games on Steam. So we wanted to act as some kind of,

I would say, a porting company, but not necessarily. We wanted to improve games that other people made for other platforms, but we're not able to make those games on other platforms. So, for instance, Edge is one of the games that we made for Steam and for the WiiU.

And I think there was another platform, another big one that I'm just getting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, and the developer of Edge, he only made it for the iPhone, but we thought it was a pretty cool game. So we contacted him and, well, we worked together to see if it was possible to pick up his game and release it on other platforms. And we did that a number of times because back then, Unity or tools that are, you know, more cross-platform, they were not as good as they are right now.

And almost nobody, or at least compared to now, nobody was using that. So we were kind of having a head start because we were able to have an engine that was running on the iPhone, on the iPad, and on the Wii, the Wii, on all those platforms. So we were able to make a bridge. So between 2009 and 2011, we did a lot of those projects. But, you know, the designers and the programmers even as well, they were kind of fed up with porting and improving other games. So they wanted to do something for themselves again. And this is basically how we started with Tokitori, too.

I remember around that time when I would go to, conventions or something and I would introduce myself sometimes people would say oh you're the guys who made edge that's really a wonderful game yeah yeah yeah yeah I would feel like yeah okay we made it better than it was

we improved it we made some new levels but it's still not our game so it felt like like we were not like I don't know personally it didn't feel as satisfying as satisfying as making new things or

feels so I guess that's why Why, when did we start Tokutori 2, 2011? Yeah, 2011, yeah. Just after we did some games on Steam. Yeah, we kind of abandoned the iPhone back then because there were too many games coming out there. Yeah, there was free to play mostly,

and that's not what we like doing. But I remember, because Steam was pretty good back then. There were not a lot of games. I guess there were maybe two or three hundred games in total on Steam. and now you get 200 games every week and we were pretty fast with making our existing games for Steam so within a year we had three games and every time you would put on a sale

you would sell like 20,000 copies or something and right now you have to struggle to sell something like that in the lifetime of a game for a lot of titles so I think because we were feeling good about ourselves and we thought it was a good market to be in and we had some extra funds we thought okay what do we really want to do if we want to make an original game what what does it feel like what do we want to do and i i guess

toky too was the obvious choice yeah because we had so much to thank for tokitori because they i mean it started our company and it like got us in the right direction again with that we wear and yeah doing our own thing yeah and we'll give it a go we always felt that, like you said as well, Jeremy, earlier, like Ah, Tokutori again. We always felt that we were doing it a little bit too cheap

by taking Tokitori all the time again and again and again. And so we thought, well, we owe it to the fans of Tokitori, which were a lot back then, to make something that was not a cheap sequel to Tokitori, like just a new

version with some new additional items and be done with it. So we wanted to make a game that was from scratch better than the original. So this is how we basically started to Tokitori. And, you know, in hindsight, there's a lot of hindsights here. I think we shouldn't have done that. But, yeah, that's a different thing. You cannot change the past, obviously.

So kind of, I feel like your sort of big self-published games have been Tokutori 2 and Rive. Can you kind of talk about, like, what you want to? to accomplish with those games and, you know, what you think you did well, what you could have done better. I'm curious to kind of, you know, hear the post-mortem on those projects. All right. Well, I think Martine, like he just concluded with, we shouldn't have done that. And that's because after Tokxori 2 plus was released, or took 32 and later Tokritory 2 plus, we went bankrupt.

Yeah. So that's a bit of a dark side of our, or dark part of our history. But the idea for Tokutari 2 was that we had so much more knowledge and there was so much more going on in game development these days. There were so many more genres and so many more inspiration to choose from that we decided to try and make something that would satisfy players of the original. So we set out to analyze why Tokutari 1 was interesting for people. and one of the things is that in Tokutori 1

everything is always fair so if you look at the level you see what it is and you look at your items and in theory you could just think of a solution before you even start playing and so one of the like there are many games that when you walk around sometimes there is an enemy that comes out of nowhere

and kills you or at some point something that like a door that doesn't open but is shut for some reason that you don't know, like the Resident Evil games. You have so many doors that are shut that you don't know why.

You need a magic key, Colin. Come on, you need to understand that. I need a red key for the red lock. Yeah, yeah. It's a blue key for the blue lock. Yeah, you cannot blast with a shotgun through those wooden doors, which is really stupid.

So, yeah. You need a small key. Yeah. So what we decided for a Toketori 2 plus early on is that everything needed to be logical. So everything needed to be needed to adhere to the rules that we make and in the end what we created

is sort of like a living and breathing ecosystem of creatures that have like predictable behavior and if you combine those behaviors with each other together you can how you say you can solve puzzles and you can get Tokitori to places that he could not reach otherwise

but the most important thing is that whatever we do we always keep it consistent so it has to be really honest it has to feel honest for the player to solve the puzzles so I think that was one of the things and the other thing is that Tokitori is really useless so in Tokutori 1

on the Game Boy we had a jump button but he would jump four pixels high and the lowest barrier is 8 pixels yeah we actually allocated a button to it because people said oh I need to be able to jump. I need to be able to jump. And we said, it's useless, but we made a jump button anyway. So for a Tokitori, we decided to keep the same, like, uselessness of Tokitori and just figure out, what does the chicken do? Well, he doesn't jump, he doesn't fly, because he's too

fat. And so we just give him two simple tools. And one is to whistle, because, I don't know, chickens don't really whistle, but he has a beak, so it made sense. And he could stomp because he's really fat. So if he stomps on the floor, it creates a shockwave. And if he whistles, there is a range within where other creatures can hear him and respond to him. And so the idea was to keep it simple like that. Just two buttons. Just walk around. No jumping, no acrobatics. No text. Ah, yeah, no text. That was interesting as well. And also no text. We wanted to make a game without any text and just let the in-game events guide you to the next part. Yeah. And the, observations of the player, you know, if he takes notice of the environment around him and

he learns of the creatures, what they do, how they react, he also would be able to figure out what to do, how to solve puzzles without us handholding and telling him what to do. That was the idea and that was the goals that we set for the design. And the funny thing is that back then a lot of people complained that it was too confusing. Like, where should I go? What should I do because we don't tell you what to do. And I think now there's a bit of a renaissance of games doing that, like the witness pretty recently. Basically, it doesn't tell you anything.

It just puts you in a place and lets you figure it out for yourself. And so we still have like a WhatsApp group, a chat group with people from our, that works for two tribes during the years, throughout the years. And when the witness came out, they all said, it's like Tokitori too. without the chicken. So a lot of the principles in Tokutori 2 are also used in The Witness and in other games since then. And so I think we were on to something, but I think Mertain mentioned the text because in

the end it was a mistake not to use any text at all. Because sometimes people need at least some clarification on what something means. So you can have really good items, like graphics for icons for where you have to go, or you can put, like, subtle references to places. Like, in the background, we would have pictures of mountains that you had to go to. So it was always possible to figure out what to do next. But if you missed the clue, you couldn't really... Yeah, yeah.

You didn't know that you would miss something. So, yeah. In the end, it would have been better with a little bit of more texts. Yeah, but, you know, one of the things that I think the biggest problem that we had with Tokitori 2 was that we just didn't have enough time because the money was running out of we were running out of money it was as simple as that

we were pretty good on finances when we started with Oketori 2 because otherwise we wouldn't have taken on a project that we would figure would take at least 12 months but for it to take two years was just a little bit too much and I remember that

I had this talk with Colin I think it was in December 2012 and basically the game needed to be launched back then money-wise so we sat down and we played the game and I said well I I understand now that we cannot release this because it's just to be honest it was just shit it was not there yet you know so it was everything was coming together but at such a slow pace that we that it was not there yet so we had to make a lot of concessions um in terms of design and play testing and everything like that just to get it out of the gates

And I think from December to April, because we launched it on the Wii on the Wii U in April, it's just four months. And I think the version that we released later on Steam, which was in September, which took on almost half a year longer, which much, much better. And I think if we had like one more year extra, all those things that people really don't like about Tokitori early, in the early version of Tokitori 2, they were, we were able. to find those issues and address them had we had more time for that. So it was just a combination of being too, we took on a project that was just too big, again with technology that we needed to make ourselves for the set time that was just too short for our goals. I mean, Tokitori, I don't know how much, how many hours you can play in that, but it's way more than 20, I guess, if you want to solve all the puzzles and you start out as a fresh guy,

which is crazy for an indie title that, you know, so while working on a game like Tokitori, we buried ourselves, basically. We didn't take any attention on the changing market. Steam was, I mean, we were pretty close with Valve. We've worked on the Portal 2 announcement back in 2011. We actually went to their office and were part of a small development team that was promoting inside our games an IP of Valve, which was awesome. But in two years later, you know, in 2013, we haven't been releasing any games at all on Steam.

And suddenly, we were expecting there to be, you know, a lot of buzz from Valve around Tokitori. But, you know, they moved on. And a lot of other people were tapping into Steam. So we were basically putting on, how do you say, blindfolds. and we just worked on Tokutori for two years, not paying attention around us, and just feverishly working on a game. So that didn't help either.

I guess in exactly two years' time, Steam changed from being a super-closed ecosystem to opening up. And so actually when we released Tokutory 2 on Steam, we decided to do it inside the summer sale because that was the one way to guarantee like a front page ad because otherwise you would drown in releases anyway. So by the time that we were

releasing Tok Story 2 for Steam, we were pretty scared of the market already. And by the time we started, it was like the best, yeah, it was the gold brush. It was the best market ever. Like everything we did was Gold. Yeah. Golden. So it was kind of difficult to see the market change and not being able to release it yet because we were just not done or we're just not ready with it yet no no and another thing I mean

compared to to other games that have no text and everything like that I think Tokitori in hindsight might have been a better game had we not tied it to Tokitori but to a different kind of character

with a different setting I mean we wanted to solve that problem that Tokitori just looks too cute for it you know it's a puzzle game but it's a very devilishly difficult puzzle game. I mean Toketori 1, I remember one guy who was having almost nightmares and

it was dreaming about Tokitori, about solutions and everything like that. So it's definitely not a kids game, perhaps the first levels they are able to be played by little children. But later on, it's just very, very difficult. This was a problem that we always have with the IP, and we wanted to address

that for Tokitori 2. I don't think we did that. Perhaps we even made it worse because the game is it's not hand-holding anymore, it's not explaining anything, and yet the puzzles are perhaps even more elaborate as compared to Protogatory 1. So I think if you just judge the game by its looks, it's a different title.

So people might not spend as much time on the game as they would have been had it had a different look or anything like that. Yeah, it doesn't really communicate that it's an open, world puzzle adventure. No. Which is difficult to communicate, of course. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's one of the, I think, mistakes that we, or one of the things that we should have had addressed, but we didn't. So, yeah, there was a lot of things that were going wrong with Tokutori. But it's always easy to talk about things that are going wrong. perhaps if Tokitori sold awesomely, we could have had the same discussion and saying that we were

awesome in taking the chance and that, you know, it's just the coin flipped the wrong way for us, so. Yeah, if we released it a year before, which was the intended release date, it could have been much different. Yeah, yeah. But you never know.

No, no. So, all right, so by comparison, do you feel like with Rive, you guys, you know, accomplished what you set out to with that game? you know, found greater success, both, you know, commercially and creatively? No, commercially, it's a different story. I mean, yeah, I can tap into that for just a brief moment. The difference between 2011 and 2013, at least on Steam, was very noticeable.

Between 2013 and 2016, when we released it on Steam 4, when we released Rife, it was even worse. So all the platforms that we release it for, PlayStation 4, and, you know, all the, the others, they were not anywhere close as we had with the earlier seals that we had, I don't know, in 2009, in 2010 on Steam and the Wii. I think even Talk Story 2

did much better than Rive at the beginning. Yeah, it was going down. And even the game itself, I think Rive for me is, I think, the best game that we've ever made, that we ever made, because everything just fell together. People might not like it, but I think

there's not a lot of things design-wise that we could have done much better. But the whole landscape changed. And somehow it was commercially okay, but not, it was, let's just put it this way. We cannot make a new game out of the income that we made for that game. So it's nice to close a studio where we are right now with that last game. I mean, that's just it. But it's not a sustainable business model.

That is not for us. So I guess that comes to the point. of why you guys have closed down. But before we talk about that, I would like to talk about, you know, kind of what you feel you accomplished with Rive, you know, on the creative side. Like, it's, it's definitely a different kind of game than, you know, people might expect from your earlier work, especially something like Tokitori, which is very methodical and slow-paced. Well, not just the cute element of it, but also like the speed of it. Rive is very frenetic and it's very, very intense and very kind of unforgiving. Like, if you're not very careful about

how you play you'll get overwhelmed by enemies and that's it but it's it's like super fast super fluid uh really different yeah like can i before uh calling gives his perspective which is the big one because he's the designer i think for me um what i what i wanted to do with this project is because we just went through a um um bankruptcy so there was a lot of frustration so it felt really good to make a game that in which you could just blow up everything shoot everything to pieces and release that anger. So for me, it helped that we could finally shoot things and not be puzzly and all those open world things anymore.

Just easy shooting things. For me, that was a very big plus point. So that made working on the game just really awesome. Yeah, I, um, so what Mattine said is I worked on the design mostly of Rive. So it's like level design, enemy design and overall game design. but I remember making Metain really unhappy with an interview a few years back and it was an interview when we announced Rive and people asked me like why are you making Rive and I told them that I had like an epiphany that at one point I was looking at what we made

with Tokitori 2 Plus and that even though I think it's a really good game I mean people who like Polsigames really like it and it's not super successful but I really really stand behind the quality of it but yeah definitely the version that is available right now which is much much better than the original that we released in 2013 but you know yeah but what i said in the interview is that i i wouldn't have bought it myself if i was a customer and and if i walked into a shop or i saw the like the PlayStation store or something i wouldn't have bought tokytery two plus which was a bit of a weird revelation for me because i spent two years of my life making the game but in the end I concluded that I wasn't making the game for myself

but I was like I had an intended audience and I thought we have to make people happy who play Tokitori the original and in the market there's a lot of stuff around Metroidsvania's now so maybe we can use that as well a little bit so with Rive the big difference is that we just wanted to make a game that we liked ourselves and because we went bankrupt we had to let go of all the people we had

and I think when we went down we were with 10 or 12 people and in the end we had one guy making artwork for us and he was working for us for like six years already and it was just me and my time so instead of having to manage a studio we could just say okay

we ran through a tough time but now we're creatively free to do whatever we want yeah we already had an engine as well even though it was the Tokitori engine and it was you know based around tiles and chicken but we were able to convert that and get a head start

instead of having to build everything again, ourselves again. And that was the big hold-up for Tokutori too. So that was one of the things that we wanted to guard or safeguard herself against going, redefining the whole engine again, saying, look, we know what this thing can do, let's make a game that fits into that and get the most out of the engine instead of recreating the wheel again. And so I think one of the other things that allowed us to do that is that when we had to let go of the other people, in the end, we still made a few ports of our games for Wii.

And I think that provided a lot of the income for us to allow us to actually work on Rye for as long as we did. So this is a big thank you to the guys who actually stuck with us till the end. even when they heard about us going down and that they were going to lose their jobs they still stayed for weeks until the very last moment and they they helped us make Rive as good as is today so a big thank you to those guys yeah so what do you guys foresee for the future I mean you know I know that two tribes was was officially closed down and at the end of 2016 but you are still supporting Rive and you know the switch version just came out a few months ago, I guess like half a year ago at this point. So it seems like there is still some

kind of two tribes thing happening, even if you're not, you know, like an entity right now. Yeah. Actually, I am still working. I never stopped working with, for two tribes. So there's a little bit of difference there. I said I did. I said I did, but I never did. So I continue working because Nintendo announced obviously the switch platform. And I, I said I, I think it was a very interesting platform and we wanted to make the loop or how do you say the circle complete by, you know, finishing on a Nintendo platform and not on a PlayStation or on Steam. We started on the Game Boy, so we wanted to end with a Nintendo platform as well. And it just fitted, you know, when I tell this story, it just fits because Nintendo released the Switch. And I think it's an awesome platform.

So it didn't make any sense at all to make all those games and not to be on. switch. And we also saw how many people were enthusiastic about the switch way more than they were enthusiastic about the Wii. So at least from my perspective, I wanted to add some extra time to get all those games on the Switch. So I'm just still working within two tribes. But the difference being that we're not taking on any new IP, new projects or anything like that. do you guys foresee yourself working on new projects maybe not under the two tribes name but you know like continuing to work in game development or do you think it's time for you to move on and you know you've done what you set out to do i'm done with it um i i like the games industry because it's a creative place to be in um but i i don't like the uncertainty of working on projects for two years and not knowing if you'll make any money back yeah that's that's a really shitty thing there's no uncertainty anymore it's it's just certain that you're not going to make any money no that's not true there are people that are better than we yeah but for us that's the certainty

that's what that's obviously i know that there is success out there because otherwise there wouldn't be in so many studios but for us the the certainty is um it's not it's not going to happen so we need to realize that and and accept that so we're dinosaurs yeah we're dinosaurs and i mean um we've been unlucky for some times but but i think right now we're completely out of what is hot and what's not and the technologies we're still using the engine that was

that we started on working with the English guide that I told you about in 2006 or 2005 so it's different of course but it's still based on that original engine from back then and we're not having a studio like a guerrilla that has 300

people a lot of them being coders that is able to make an awesome engine and do everything with it. So we're always limited with those things and it doesn't make the development of games any faster. So for us to change to a different engine would require just too much and we just don't feel doing that anymore. So we have from a creative, sorry? Yeah. So for us, from that point of view, yeah, we're dinosaurs. We're kind of slow in adjusting or adapting or taking on new new things yeah and for me from a creative point of view um it's it's kind of um how do you say

demotivating yeah yeah that's yeah um okay yeah it's kind of demotivating to um to like to put your heart into a design and to to know that it's the best that you can do um and in the end um if it's it doesn't have to be a commercial success for me to be happy with the end product um But, like, the uncertainty that you get while you're making it, that, oh, maybe this one is not going to be as good as I expect, or maybe people will not care. Or, like, my conclusion is that we just don't really know what people want, because a lot of the things behind our success or failure

or whatever you want to call it about our history, it's never been that we know exactly what people want. We just know what we want to make. And it looks like people who are having a lot of success now, they just know exactly where to be in the market. and like when which genre is going to be hot or like the small niches that they can play perfectly and that's also a large part is marketing

and that's what Mattine also said about Tokxori 2+. It's like from a marketing perspective it's a bit difficult to sell a cute looking game that's actually like a really difficult puzzle game. So I guess we never really, really understood how to make that work and that's okay because it's one of my limitations and I'm okay with that.

But that's why I don't want to take another gamble on something that I don't feel I have a good grasp on. Yeah. But that's it for me personally. I mean, now you're saying that it's you or me or it's always easy to say that's, I think I said this before. If you have a success, it's easy to say or pinpoint perhaps why you have that success and what you did right and everything like that. But if you don't have a success, it's pretty difficult. to lay a finger on what it is exactly that you did wrong if the game is pretty good. So you could always say, well, blame marketing, you should have done this better and you should

have done that better. But we've been in this market for almost 20 years. So at least something, I guess, we should have learned and applied. And we've had our contacts within Valve or Nintendo or everything like that. So I think compared to other developers, we were already above a lot of them and still we were not we're not able to make money to support new games so the question really is is there something that you can do to to guarantee success in this industry and I think the big publishers know that because they are you know taking on the big IPs and throw real big money at it but I think the indie developers I mean you sure you always have these guys that are very very good at marketing and everything like that but I think a lot of those things also

come down to just being lucky and perhaps it's just easy for me to say that but that's what I really feel because I know that we're not making shitty games and I know that we we could have promoted them better in some ways but like I said I think we already promoted them better than other games and there have always there has also been examples of people that didn't promote it at all and yet it became a huge success so so what it is that is actually making a game great it's just one of those million dollar questions that

in 20 years I'm not able to answer yeah yeah and so not being able to answer it but knowing that you're not making any money out of it it just makes the decision to to not take on any new projects very very easy actually

all right well that's um yeah I can certainly understand it's a depressing end a little bit yeah but I mean it's I think it's a reality of the industry that doesn't really get addressed that much is, you know, it's tough out there. And for every success, there are lots of studios who pour their hearts into their work and just don't strike these days.

I don't want to interrupt you, but it's kind of frustrating to be in the industry and not being able to release all those. I don't want to be the negative guy, you know. But sometimes when you read all those messages, it seems as if there is, you know, money everywhere. And the reality, at least for us, and I know that there's, we're not alone, is that it's not like that. I mean, and somehow only the, you know, the big awesome stories, they, they tend to bubble to the surface and, and especially because you're with these NDAs and platform holders don't want you to talk about shitty stories, you know, about bad sales or

anything like that. If you sell a million copies on a switch or everything like that or anything like that sure you can put it out there and and i'm sure nintendo or steam or whatever they will like it because that that's awesome right but if you say well i sold i don't know 1,000 units on switch or on steam or anything like that i'm sure that they will give you a call and say you should not publish those numbers they are hurting our platform so you you always get these biased things from from within the press that i'm not very happy with so yeah it's it can be if you're from from the outside or if you're thinking about, well, I want to make a new game and I'm willing to go into this industry, well, sure, try your luck. I mean, I'm not saying that you shouldn't try. But be

prepared, there is a difference between trying a game and in your free time like we did back in 1999 and hopefully you're successful, but building a business out of it and making sure that you are continuously successful, that's a whole different game. And that's really difficult. So, yeah. I think for me, after we decided that Rive was going to be our last game, we went to a few more conventions to a game developer conference and GamesCom. And one moment in particular stood out to me when I realized that I was just a dinosaur. It was just too old to be in this industry.

And I hate Clicker games. I think Clicker Games should not even be called Games because it's nothing. Well, I actually liked them, Colenso, but yeah. Yeah, it's not my cup of tea. So I heard about a guy who was making his game, and I ask him, how do you finance your game? And he said, well, I'm making this game, but to finance it, I made a really good clicker game that's free.

But in the clicker game, there's a Twitch button, and if you click the button, then you go to the development feed where we work on our other game, and then people can press the button to donate money to the development of that game. and he got like 10,000 euros every month just to work on his game. And I hate clicker games with a passion. I think it's so stupid. And this guy just makes it work.

And he just made a really good clicker game, which is apparently possible, to finance his game he actually wanted to make. And for me, that was a sign that I should just quit, that it was a good decision to stop because I couldn't even have thought of that. I don't know how Twitch works. I don't know how to see how many people are viewing my stream. I don't like clicker games. I don't want to stream my development all day long

because if I pick my nose or something, people will see. So for me, it was just like, we're too old. Like, I'm turning 40 next week. And it's, I don't know, it's time for something else for me. And I guess the clicker game moment was my moment when I realized that it was a good decision to stop. Yeah. And I think after 20 years, for me it's a little bit different.

I don't want to quit right now, but like I said, we're not going to do anything new anymore. So I'm still working on some switch things that we will announce later. But, yeah, it's not going to be Rive 2 or Tokutori 3 or anything like that. And like I said, I don't see that there's any reason, unless there is a publisher coming out and saying, look, guys, we have a big bag of money for you. and you are making awesome games and we want you to take all the time that you want for making this awesome game or sequel to Tokitori or arrive

and then perhaps Colin and I should have another talk but the reality is that that's not going to happen and if we want to do self-financing it's just no it's not possible well even though you know this this podcast has kind of a the story has kind of a sad end I mean yeah you guys have put together some really great games It was like Tokitori and Toki Tori 2 and Rive are all really, really great stuff.

So, you know, it does get to that, to that point that, you know, you're not making bad games. It's just, you know, getting the market to realize, hey, there's some great stuff out there. It's difficult. But I'm glad we have these games. Like, I have great memories of the original Tokitori. And, you know, you guys in a way by reaching out to me to, you know, comment on that review that I wrote, whoever wrote that email, like, that was a... That was a little push for me to get into the games press at that point. Oh, well, awesome.

So, you know, to whatever degree, I... That's right, yeah. I feel like I owe you guys a little bit. Thanks. Well, you've repaid it with this podcast, so... Yeah, well, I'm glad you can get your story out there, and I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, whatever you guys work on next, even if it's not necessarily video games.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, we'll keep you in the loop, and yeah and you have to yeah you have to give your consent because now we cannot spam you anymore oh yeah yeah yeah yeah on the GPA yeah once that email comes please you guys you guys have you guys have the thumbs up awesome thanks all right so i think we'll wrap here but um just to kind of conclude do you guys want to let everyone know where they can find you online what kind of projects you're working on that they can look forward to et cetera et cetera yeah well everything is is you can view everything on just two tribes dot com or

for At2Trap's games on Twitter. We're mostly active on Twitter and the website. And we've released a few games on Switch now. So Rive is there, but also Tokutori 2 plus and the original Tokutori. So take a look at those games, please. And like my time said, we're working on, I think, two other Switch games that we haven't announced yet. But they are from our back catalog.

And Tokutori 2 will get an update in Tokitori 1 as well. So, and yeah, like I said earlier, when I took on, you know, the Switch projects, I wanted to end with obviously the best versions of those games that we've ever made. And I think if you look at Metacritic, for instance, Tokitori 2 versus Tokutori 2 that was released on PlayStation 4, it's just almost a full point higher. So we added a lot of extra stuff just, you know, to make it better. So the games that are now available on Switcher. Even if they already got it, it's still worth checking it out on the Switch.

Definitely, yes. All right, well, it's great you guys were able to kind of, you know, I guess to a degree, end on your own terms and, you know, go out with sort of the definitive versions of your creations. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we did. I'm really happy with how we wrapped it up. Like, it's a game that we're really proud of. And I still play it sometimes, like, two years later on, two years after wrapping up the design.

So I'm pretty happy with it. I mean, when we completed Tokutori 2 and we went bankrupt, if we would have ended back then, financially, perhaps it would have been better, which is a crazy answer, I guess. But, you know, you know that I'm saying that because we were not able to recoup all the money that we spent on Rive through the sales, because otherwise we would have been able to make a new game. So, yeah, financially, it probably would have been better after bankruptcy to quit the studio. but that would have been completely, you know, from ourselves, from our own perspective, that would have been just like a very bad time. And I think by ending with Rive, with the bang, you know, shooting everything and making a game that we finally want to play in by ourselves, it was just the perfect ending,

even though it wasn't commercially, okay, it could have been more perfect if it was commercially successful, but, you know, it wasn't like that. At least we were happy to make it. I've been working on that game for almost three years with a big smile on my face. And with Tokitori, you should have seen me back then. It wasn't all that pretty. So, yeah, that's, at least that we did. And he is a pretty guy. So I'm an awesome pretty guy. Thanks, Colin. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Right. All right, guys. So that's not that that's at an ending after all. So thank you. No, definitely not. Thank you both for your time, and I look forward to seeing, you know, what's next, the final projects for two times. Thank you.