Tech Over Tea - Just Make Games For Fun! | Jonniemadeit

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Jonniemadeit is a small game developer who has been making games for most of his life and in the past few years has released a few titles with a couple more coming down the pipeline like Uncle Unco a fairly casual game with a really cool style. ==========Support The Channel========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson ==========Guest Links========== Website: https://www.jonniemadeit.com/ Don't Let Him In Itch: https://jonniemadeit.itch.io/dont-let-him-in ==========Support The Show========== ► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson ► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo ► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF ► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson =========Video Platforms========== 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg =========Audio Release========= 🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss 🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953 🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM 🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw== 🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea ==========Social Media========== 🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9 🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow 📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/ 🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345 ==========Credits========== 🎨 Channel Art: All my art has was created by Supercozman https://twitter.com/Supercozman https://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/ DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm, as always, your host, Brodie Robertson, and today we are doing the third edition of the post-AvCon interviews. Today, we have Johnny from JohnnyMadeIt here, who you have a number of games under your belt. I did see there was one that you had already published on Steam that got quite a bit of traction, but the one that I got to play at Avcom was called Uncle Unko. So introduce yourself, talk about whatever you want to talk about. Thanks Brody, thank you so much. My name's Johnny. I'm basically a solo developer for Johnny Made It. We have other individuals that contribute to the project, but I'm the main developer of games within Johnny Made It. We develop games in Unity primarily,

and we have a lot of fun doing it. We just came back from AvCon where we met Brody, and he's been generous enough to have me on today. So thank you. Yeah, absolute pleasure. Like, even if I didn't like the game right i really liked your energy there was something about that like you were really passionate about your game and when you had me and shud come along talk about like some of the stuff that because there was some issues with um

especially uh plumbo where there were issues with like hitboxes and stuff like you were really really passionate to hear about like ways that could be addressed you've already thought about some of those issues yourself but it was just really cool to see someone who clearly really cared about the game and also had the ability to talk about it because there's a lot of people who are really good developers right but they don't really have that that um i guess public facing, the ability to really talk about it in a way that gets other people excited. Absolutely.

And I think, you know, it's no detriment to those individuals. I just, it's a skill. It's a skill to be acquired over time. Now that I'm 28, I have learned how to do that in the last few years. Whereas the earlier years in my studies and just trying to discover game development was just the hardcore programming and graphics and those kinds of things. out there to the people, I have to focus on all the other things that come with that. Marketing, publishing, you know, back ends of Steam, all those kinds of things, reviews.

And now I'm on podcasts. So things are looking up. So what is your background actually like in game development? When did you start? Do you have any sort of formal education in this space or is it all self-taught? Ah, that's a good question. When I was, I started developing games when I was a kid. I started on a program called Game Maker. I'm sure many people who have tried game development or have undertaken any sort of game development before have probably heard of Game Maker.

It's quite popular in the scene. Even now, people use it to produce amazing games professionally. I started using that when I was a kid. I saw one of my primary school teachers using it and I was just totally like a fly on a light bulb. I'm like, what a fly on a light bulb. I'm like, what's going on over here? And it was all very much just like a basic sort of Pac-Man clone that he'd made, but I was still just so infatuated by it. And so I decided, that's it.

I'm going to learn how to do game development. And it took me a few years to cross from 2d into 3d um that's always a big shift for many game developers i think um if they decide that they want to do that um adding that third dimension can be tricky um uh and um uh by high school i was probably working more in 3d than i was in 2d and And once I'd finished high school, I decided that I would go study at Flinders University. And I continued and did a Bachelor of Creative Arts, Digital Media there.

So a degree with a lot of focus in digital media as a whole. Okay. And I specialised in film and game development. So yeah, that's how I've come to be the artist that I am now and the game developer I am now. I've had a lot of amazing support over the years. Specifically, I just want to give a quick shout out to Shane Bevan. No, go ahead.

Go right ahead. Is there anyone you want to mention? Yeah, Shane Bevan from Flinders. My lecturer, he really pushed me over the edge. Got me through my degree, made sure that my work was great, and I was proud of what I was doing. And he helped me build

those foundational blocks to get a real good portfolio out there to the gamers. For anyone who may not be aware, there is a really popular game that was made in game maker um they've got on their website katana zero is made in that in uh in that project which is really cool i didn't know that myself until just now um yeah yeah hotline miami as well that's an that's

an older one yep that was totally made i believe in uh a really old version of Game Maker. So very like original Minecraft-y, like in the sense of the code base is very unique. But yeah, so that's how I started. And I decided that I needed to do more, to learn C Sharp. And basically things just started firing from there. And so now I use unity um very similar to i'm assuming both of the other developers that you have interviewed so far from i've conned

believe yes i believe both games were unity games um if someone happens to see this and remembers if blood reaver and i know end of ember is definitely unity i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure blood Reaver is as well. I think you're right. I think I spoke to Ewan, and he was saying that he's using, that he's the director of Hellbite Studios. Yeah, I think he's using Unity too.

It's really great meeting all these people and being in the space. And yeah, so coming from not doing anything you know uh never meeting anyone just kind of keeping myself going through primary school and high school doing game development and now that i'm sort of making it in my early career stage i'm meeting so many fantastic people who previously i thought there was nobody that liked to do this sort of thing right like and um i thought i was an outlier but actually in actual fact there's there's so many people who liked to do this sort of thing right like and um i thought i was an outlier but actually in actual fact there's there's so many people who love to do it and i just didn't

have my eyes and ears open and um i like to say to people i'm not a solo developer out of you know choice it was really out of necessity back then and now i'm looking to like just get out there and like meet people and uh and make bigger projects i've heard a fairly similar sentiment from the other people i've had on where they started doing this development stuff maybe they were younger and they didn't realize there was actually any sort of scene that existed in adelaide like you see what's happening in melbourne you see what's happening in Sydney, you're like, oh yeah, that's where everyone is. That's where everybody in the tech space is.

But there are these growing spaces that exist in South Australia as well. It's just, you need to find where they are. Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm sure you have seen that with the success of your main channel and, you know, trying to carve out your own path and your own niche within the online space. And how do you do that? You know, it's such a, you know, it's an oversaturated market at the end of the day. And you need to try to cut through and speak volumes

you know to your audience and i think one of the best ways to do that is do what a lot of the other game developers around me say and make games that you love first of all that you love because if you do that you love what you're playing then you're going to love the process of making it and also when the audience receives that product in the end it's going to give the process of making it and also when the audience receives that product in the end it's going to give you immense satisfaction as a game developer i think a lot more often than not people glamorize game development um they'll be like oh there's so much money and look at all these companies like anyone who says there's so much money is like yeah but if you are a solo dev that releases like among us sure but if you are if you're just like working at like a big studio like the the rate you get paid is very

small compared to a lot of the other tech space and then if you're all of the indie devs that don't sell really well like you like you know it's awesome if you sell a thousand copies, but like, it's just a thousand copies. It's not... I know. So my, for example, my last video game had some good critical acclaim. Got me, I had decent reviews on Steam and people really liked the product.

I'm very proud of what I put out. I still am. And I'm happy to announce on that particular project that i'm partnering with a publisher i'm not going to say who currently but it should be on playstation nintendo xbox and stuff very soon so that game name you see on steam that's going to be on other marketplaces that being don't let him in don't let him in correct yep it's a uh narrative driven horror game uh pretty um uh uh deep and like adult within its themes but um at the same time um uh it was something that i wanted to make. I'm very inspired still by things like games like Silent Hill

and, you know, Dead by Daylight, you know, most anything from PlayStation 2 era, PlayStation 1 era horror all the way to now. And I'm very excited to see what they're going to do with the the new uh bloober team is going to do with the new silent hill 2 remake but that is a really big influence for me whenever i'm making horror games which is more often than not um uh obviously the two games that you've experienced brody yeah i was gonna say you have a very wide range of uh game development interests yes i mean this is giving a newer thing i just wanted to make sure that i wasn't sticking to only one thing which was horror i just didn't want to box

myself in and um i figured the best way to do that was throw a kid's game in the mix because it's a totally a different contrast between what i've done before so just uh throwing a new idea in the hat if you will yeah i had your um website open before when like you're doing your intro so like this this page just looks really weird compared like if you think about like the just the general idea of the games you made because most people take like one sort of idea they're focused on and hyper focus on that like oh we're you know think of a company like um like from software for example like how many times can they make dark souls with a different skin and everyone still loves it um but like you have don't let him in and then i got a chance to play uncle unco then you have i'm not sure what beat driver is i've not had a chance

to that's a tempo uh driven uh game where you have to basically keep your car to a certain pace these are it's funny some of these are would say about 90% in the development production line. So Unkle Unkle would be one of those where there's just a few bugs. We're going to improve the UI, improve some of the controller and the feeling, and then we're going to put it online because we really want to get that one out to the people. We want people to see that one first. And then the other ones are like, you know, 70, 80% done. And Beat Driver's probably more about 60, 65%

the way through the production cycle. So we just wanted to show people what we're working on. So currently we're working on building trailers for all of them. So that when you click on each of the tabs, and we're actually, please bear with us, we're working on our website. We're trying to- I was going to say, the only one that has a link is Uncle Unko right now. Is Uncle Unko, correct. Yeah, us we're working on our website we're trying to say the only one that has

a link is uncle uncle right is uncle uncle correct yeah so we're basically we've been working on that for the last two weeks and so there's been a lot of graphics and a lot of coding um involved in the back end of that website um but we're just looking to really um showcase our work which we weren't doing before we were going out to like expos and talking to people, but putting it online where everyone can see it and it's all pretty looking. Yeah, that's a problem I have seen as like a consistent trend. There's a lot of people that don't have any sort of web presence.

I think the one that has done it the best so far is WitchwayUp, because they actually have, like, a guy to do all the marketing stuff, and then BloodRever, they've got their itch.io page, they've got a Steam page set up, like, they've got, like, everything already, but I have noticed that with a lot of the others, it's like, okay, we have a link tree and that's good right like that's a good start and a link out like youtube and like other things like that but having a website where you can direct people to you can like display your content the way that you want it displayed i think really does help in establishing some sort of online presence.

And then obviously making content on other platforms like YouTube, like TikTok, like Twitter. But then you get into the issue where doing that sort of work as well ends up being an entire full-time position itself. And takes away from actually working on the game that you want to work on. Oh, Brody, that is so true that is my biggest dilemma at the moment is is figuring out my capacity um within what i was doing previously which was basically developing uh games all day every day all into the night and then not focusing on any of those other things and um being in these spaces that i'm in now uh thankfully i've been um uh grateful enough to be um uh employed by catalyst games which is really great um they're another game studio here in adelaide working on a game

called dungeons and dining tables so i'd love to talk about that just briefly for a little bit towards the end because they've been giving me heaps of opportunities in this space. And they've also, particularly the director, Aidan, has been advising me on steps that I need to make in my business to make it successful. And more often than not, it is about social media. It is about a line presence and just making sure that uh we don't stagnate and um even it's just a small post then it keeps it keeps the

audience engaged and those kinds of things and um i would love to have the time to create lots of content. Like I would love to be able to make, write articles about my own games and those types of things. I just don't have the time. So I have to rely on fantastic people like you to, you know, hopefully see my games in an AvCon or a space or in the online space and reach out to me.

It's a very grassroots approach that I'm taking currently and it's working out great, actually. So I think just building those relationships with people, getting to know them, getting to know what they do, I think is the best way to also tell them about what you're doing right because like it's like just gives you an in well i think the reason why it works is because what you're doing is like the games are really cool like i haven't looked at don't let him in i did see like a little bit of some stuff like on youtube about it but when i got to play on kolonko like it's a very simple game but it's a really fun game like you have a a core game there that it's i don't i don't know

what your long-term plans are but like the little bit i got to play i can see what you're trying to do with it and i can see that like clearly there is a lot of a lot of like passion that's gone into it and you know the art style is really cool as well. Even though, you know, the art style is basically just MS Paint. Yeah, exactly. That's so beautiful that you've mentioned that. Thank you, Brody. Yeah, that's basically, you know, I don't know about my language here.

Anything that you don't want recorded, don't say. Besides that, as long as I don't get banned, language here but i use anything that you don't what recorded don't say besides that as long as i don't get banned it's your way to say it beautiful that's awesome it's kind of like the crappy art style you know it's like what we used to do as kids in the back of our books not to be like this is an amazing drawing to draw something funny, hand it over to your friend. You wanted to do it in a rapid pace, kind of like Pictionary. And then you go, hey, mate, look at this. And then they'd look and then they'd just start laughing at this ridiculous character you drew. And then they'd draw a moustache and then they'd hand it back to you.

That was kind of the approach for the art style i had to uh like sort of uh go back into my mind to set back to primary school and high school doodles um especially going from photorealism sometimes to doodles it's uh it's a bit of a jump but um it's one that i'm willing to do and i think i did it pretty gracefully um uh but thanks for that yeah the the i'm i'm happy with how that turned out. I get lots and lots of positive comments on how Uncle Unko looks. They're like, it's so jank, but cool. And like, yeah, it's exactly what I really wanted it to hit. So I'm really happy that the art came through.

So what actually went, like, because there's obviously a procedure that goes into making something that is like really Polished looking right like you'll go through a bunch of different iterations and try to make it look nice and clean like even in the case of Don't let him in where it has that like ps1 sort of style to it. There's obviously a Clear direction you're trying to go with there but what was the approach with doing the art with uncle uncle was it just like if this is the first thing that came to mind let's go with that or was there still that sort

of iteration on those designs uh there was definitely actually there was a i saw i found myself in at the beginning being caught up in the drawings because you have to do like three cell frames per thing and then they're always animating and looping. Very similar to Cuphead but more with an MS Paint line structure. So not like a clean Walt Disney, like a bad sort of doodle drawing. Right, right. And you need to do, well, I would have to do three frames per image.

And when I started, I was like, oh, this guy's hair's not good enough or this, that and the other. But of course, eventually you start to get into a bit of a flow state with it where you just start drawing so quickly and you go, that looks like a peanut. You know, it doesn't

really need to look like perfectly like you don't need to do shading or no gradients no no no multiple colors just one or two colors like a very simple shadow line and um yeah things started to take shape and uh when i did the first few assets and i started laying them in I was like this is great this is starting to feel like a pop-up book like um and you know like all with those hootie elements parallaxing as the balls coming through it just gives the sense of depth to the scene and um yeah that was uh that was fantastic I was very happy with the way that that kind of came through I think a lot of our process comes from what's next. You know, we started by saying with Unquanko,

let's make something simple. Let's go back to grassroots. I roll the ball game. So we quite literally put a sphere in Unity and started making a ball move around. And we thought, okay, this is kind of boring, right? Like it, making a ball move around. And we thought, okay, this is kind of boring, right?

Like it's just a ball moving around a scene. How do we make this a bit more exciting and engaging? And we thought, let's put arms on him. And like, then it would be really goofy. Right. And then he's like,

and me, like me and my friend were like, yeah, that sounds really funny. And then like, I would go through and do it and I'd show him. And then he'd be like, yeah,

this is really funny. And then we're like, what are the and do it and I'd show him and then he'd be like, yeah, this is really funny And then we're like what the original idea was we wanted to call him meat man and make him like a meatball like a saucy meatball that slaps things and There's so many weird and wacky ideas coming out of the studio But then we thought like it could be a bit graphic like we literally you know you think that meat man meat meat sack i think he's what he wanted to call him like you played instead of aguanco you play as meat sack right same game instead of being a fluffy ball you know you're kind of heavier you're. You know, you're more like Plumbo in that sense.

Because, you know, for the audience members, Plumbo was a follow-up to this Unko Unko. Just more of a technical follow-up where you play as a chewed up gumball named Plumbo who must go through his day shift at a pin factory and not pop his head so um these are very much along the lines of the ideas we like to put forth are like things that if i say something especially with the light-hearted stuff i say something to my friend and he chuckles lighthearted stuff i say something to my friend and he chuckles we go that's it that's cool let's roll with that um for some reason with plumbo he was initially delivering plums like instead of just flying around and then so my mate was like what if he delivers and then we like eventually like wait how do we make a mechanic about delivering plums like nah we'll just we'll

just make it like you know you have to dodge pins and that you have all these different contraptions that can try to kill you as a plumb as a gumball so yeah just back to that point of like things some things come out of necessity some things actually thinking about it now just come out of like um a bit or a gag that like one of us says each other just like meat sack it's kind of like oh yeah then we some of them don't fly and we don't roll with them of course i like with any ideas sometimes you're like that's a good idea at first or makes you laugh really hard but it's just it's not going to hit as hard as you think it is so you have to you know take it back to the boardroom and like sounding board it with people and and more often not they'll let you know

so what is the like when uncle and co is finished like what is the plan for the game to have content wise oh that's great um yeah so uh we're looking to make two massive run levels so um what i've noticed is that um with really young children I might need to make like a bumper mode quite similar to like bowling um where you know for children there's like two little rails on either side of uh the alley um so within this platformer of unko unko when you're moving down the level just having little walls for really young children um because I found that um I want like four-year-olds and five-year-olds to get further than they did right right um yeah so I initially made the game um for like uh we we

shifted the focus from Meat Sack to Uncle Unco when we realized that it wouldn't work with a young demographic or like Meat Sack just the name Sack I think in anything is probably not a good play I mean you know it has like we I think maybe one day we might revisit that because you mean it's it's the whole thing of like if you laugh it's probably a funny idea you know um but um we noticed that if we moved more towards uncle uncle a fluffy ball and we played around with art styles and we kind of landed on what we thought was really cool for him as a character and then as you said for the environments everything's sort of 2d and different so he has that contrast with him in the environment um that was um uh the big thing to be able to give it to my niece and nephew and say here you go play this enjoy um the fun little world that we've made um whereas before i can't

show my nephew and niece don't let him in I can't show them all these other things that I have been working on and I'm very proud of too I just can't show them off to right so I figured like I want to make something that I can um you know show off um and uh my little nephew Henry has been the best little play tester. Just a shout out to him. He's telling me awesome ideas. Kids have their best ideas sometimes, especially within game development. If you're a game developer and you have a kid play testing a game,

listen to every word they're saying. It's crucial, crucial information. Even though if it doesn't make any sense, it's like you have to decipher through what the kid is saying and like they're going to tell you exactly what's wrong with your game they've got no filter so yeah yeah that i can imagine is very uh very important something is very like clearly like this doesn't work like what happened why did why did this break like you're gonna probably know about it a hundred percent even if it's just as some as simple as something like uh the kid uh he's playing a game they just turn around like a mummy like what what's happened right like and then because they don't know what's happened they're so little that they're like moving this little character and he's

clipped out of the world bounds and he started like flying off into the middle of the ether and then it's like mummy mommy, what's happening? Right. And then, you know, sometimes the parents know if they're informed, you know, tech savvy parent, they're going to say, oh, your player broke out of the well bounds and now he's falling indefinitely in the ether. Right. But to a kid who doesn't understand that they just looked their

mom and go you know mommy or daddy what what's happened you know and you know the game developer's freaking out more often than not because he's trying to close his program and restart it the kid's like yeah no i know that feeling all too well like um in the have you ever played the um the jack and axta games yes i have absolutely in jack three there is a way that you can abuse the light form flight and you can clip out of the world um i have never i've never done that i do know all the abilities in those games i've never done the glitch i think if if you fly, shield, fly, shield, fly, shield, it resets... I think it thinks you're on the ground

and does the flight so it raises your height again. I don't know the exact technical reason, but yeah. I used that to clip out of the world and I knew that I could clip out of the world, but it's still... I remember doing this when I was seven or eight years old and it would still freak me out when that happened. What's going on?

Yeah, definitely. And then you have to revert to a save. I remember doing this when I was like seven or eight years old. It was still freaking me out when that happened. Like what's going on? Yeah, definitely. And then you, you have to revert to a save, but like a lot of indie titles, they don't have saves more like, and I think that would be something that I'm looking to have more in my game. With Plumbo and Unquamco, it's really great because it's all level-based. So it's all like, you know, do a challenge, you unlock the next challenge, and that's quite simple. You know, making an RPG with many items and elements like that

and being able to save that on the fly and read, like, as a programmer, save that at any one time and then have the player be able to click open Steam and he loads exactly up with his same inventory with his ammo count and his health and everything. It can be a challenge and it's always a per project thing. You know,

a saving system for a first person shooter game is very different to a saving system for a platformer game. You know, they're very similar in the way that they like work but uh you have to take a different approach so um i think with those indies who are struggling to have people play their games all the way through make safe states or allow your players to make safe states and try to focus on that because um i am myself always looking to improve that because players love customization players love uh not breaking their save files you know and like they love to when when they play they want things to be a certain way more often and as developer, I'm learning to understand this.

And of course, different gamers have different standards of how polished they need something. But, you know, I guess where I'm going with this is listen to your audience, you know, listen to what the the gamers are after whether it's a kid or an adult um uh find your target audience you know let them play it all the way through create safe states all that sort of thing and then they can really experience what you're trying to put out there as a game developer because it's so hard to get people to uh play your

game it really is um from a game developer's point of view um it's so hard to get people to uh play your game it really is um from a game developer's point of view um it's so hard to get people to actually uh take the time out of their day and to play it um i personally wish that i had more time to play others games like now with more and more responsibilities as I get older, the less and less time I have for gaming, which is quite sad because it's a pastime that I truly love. I still game where I can. I do it with my nephew and nieces now.

And it's fantastic because I get to share my love of gaming with them. And not just that, they're not stuck with the hardware that we had when we were kids. So they have like everything they could ever want at the touch of their fingertips. So it's just awesome being able to facilitate that for them, I think.

And having knowledge in game dev and just in Steam and just in general within video games, it's awesome to be able to help them with the technical troubleshooting every time they have something wrong. Like they're like, my menu's not working, my sound's not working, my microphone's not working.

And just being able to help them is really something that's fundamental within me. You know, like I really want to, like that's that teacher in you. I think everybody has a little bit of a teacher in them. And we all have a bit of a specialty and we just want to show other people what that is. So I'm 26.

So you're just a little bit older than I am. But what was the first system that you got a chance to play games on? Oh, that's a great question. Wow. Because for me, I had a PS2, but what was the first system that you got a chance to play games on? Oh, that's a great question. Wow. Because for me, I had a PS2, but I got it towards the end of the PS2 lifecycle, like right before the PS3 came out.

Did you have a PC in the home? So back then, I was living in rural Queensland. The nearest town was 30 minutes away. we didn't have an internet connection yet um yeah where was it where were you living in a place called um glenwood like 30 minutes outside of gimpy yep okay cool yeah yep and um my school had 50 students in it across all seven grades. Wow. So when did you come down to Adelaide? Just after that. So grade four, I was in Adelaide. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. And you did the rest of your primary schooling and high schooling?

Yeah, yeah, in Adelaide. Yeah, yeah. Did you study at all post high school? Yeah, yeah. I went to UniSA. I did a four year software engineering degree Oh yeah, beautiful, fantastic Do you

Do you Work as a software programmer? No, right now pretty much the main thing I'm doing is The YouTube stuff I have like another job doing Just nonsense at Coles Filling shelves It's just, it's there and

i'm so very close to just quitting that and doing this full time yeah yeah but it's just like there's that little bit of my head that's like is it there just yet like should i do it sensible i like that you're minimizing risk i think you know like i am trying to it's funny that you mentioned this um i'm doing trying to learn how to build a build a small business and uh through games and and and hopefully being able to sell games and good games you know that's the main the main thing and and try to figure out a an appropriate price point for that but um just yeah knowing your worth you know is really hard these days like um and you know but if you feel like something is really really taking off then there is definitely like there's the opportunity to run with it but at the same time

you have to have a cat that calculated risk and say like do like is it the right time and yeah more often than not it'll probably happen like it seems like it's probably already happening but like you know you're probably pulling off less hours to do more hours over here and you know your time starts to shift um I'm trying to discover that myself, Brody. I've got myself a, I've been scheduled in, you know, today and I'm continuing to build my schedule and meeting more contacts in the industry, yourself, all the other studios,

other journos and other marketing and publishing people. It's been really awesome we got sidetracked, I didn't ask you what your first game system was oh sorry, yes, beautiful I wanted to learn a little bit about you sorry, we did yeah, no, my first

console was we were really lucky in the sense that I had an older brother he had a playstation one ah trouble was he didn't let us touch it so we could play it maybe once every two weeks quite literally if he was not home and his dad was like and dad was like yes okay and then you know it was always like it's his console and it was so expensive yes, okay. And then, you know, it was always like, it's his console. And it was so expensive. That was so expensive back then.

So my dad was worried that us being little kids, we probably would break it or like scratch the discs or, you know, rightly so. I mean, I don't have them anymore. They're probably all scratched up and, you know, my dad was right. Yeah, but he had that. He had that all stashed away in his bedroom. So we would like open

the door and it would be like can they close up and it's like um it was in the playstation there with like his hi-fi setup he had speakers and everything you know he's a teenager uh in high school and um yeah you know uh you know he'd be listening to, like, Rage Against the Machine. And we'd be like, can we play the PlayStation? He'd be like, F off. And we'd be like, oh, okay. You know, older brothers, right? I only have a younger sister myself.

So, I was the older brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. F off, yeah. Same rules apply. Just inverse dynamics. Yeah, so my older brother, yeah, he could be a bit of a tyrant when it came to his PlayStation.

Rightly so, I mean, who wouldn't be at that point in time? But then my auntie and my mum, when my brother was, I want to say eight years old, was like, here's a Nintendo 64 and my brother was like whoa and so my brother had the PlayStation which was the high-tech thing that we could never play and never ever touch and then my brother had the Nintendo 64 which came out I believe it actually came out after the PlayStation um only just but the thing was the technology was a little bit behind but the games were um the games it was different titles

so you know because if we think about it like playstation was using cds before nintendo 64 came out with another cartridge console so do you actually know that um originally sony was going to be involved in producing nintendo consoles yep that's a funny yep and that's that's basically if we think about like one of the biggest what we think about the rise of sony quite literally as a game video game company it's basically because nintendo rejected the cd drive that they were developing for them and then they went okay well we made all this technology we're going to put it in our own game console and then they did that and the rest is history right and then like the market share just became huge for them and nintendo was like maybe we should

have taken the distro i guess it's the classic atari sega thing you know and it just keeps happening you know um i think right now there's a balance shift happening with epic games and steam it's like before it was just Steam dominating absolutely everything. Like, they were the video PC game guys, you know? Yeah, if you wanted to play... Well, they caught on because if you wanted to play Counter-Strike, if you wanted to play Half-Life, you had to do it on Steam. Like, that's the reason why they originally became such a big platform.

That's right. And then came, like, Borderlands and all these other companies started to literally follow suit because it was just such a good selling platform. So they're like, we want to distribute on that. And now Epic, they've got Fortnite, Lego Fortnite. They're going to be working with Disney soon. And all these other just massive companies are seeing Epic Games as a, I mean, we know that Epic Games is big business,

you know, and they're a big dog in the field. But I just think like, as far as a game developer's point of view and an audience member and a game player and just the lover of games, that there is starting to be a strange dynamic shift where a lot of the devs, especially if you're using the Unreal Engine,

and it's more and more devs using the Unreal Engine, they're going to go, I'm not even going to do it on Steam. I'm not even going to bother. I'm going to go straight to the Epic store because Epic is going to give them better kickbacks than Steam wheels. You know, we all know about these percentages that Steam take. We know about the percentages that some of these know about the percentages that um some of these other marketplaces take off of the artists at the end of the day sometimes they're taking 30 not

doing a single thing quite literally they all they do is allow for the hosting of images and videos and allow for a download portal that's quite that's it that's all there's also like steam cloud syncing um so i no sorry not for steam i'm sorry in particular after sorry let me uh let me backtrack something like google for example google play you know they allow you to host a thing like that and basically that's all they're doing and they're taking 30 of all revenue just from that alone. And they don't help with any of the marketing. They don't help with any of the publishing. They don't help with any of the backend stuff.

All they do is allow you to have the platform. And I know it might sound me being ungrateful. I just think these percentages are just too high, but not doing any of the actual creative work. They're basically going, you and your team of anywhere from one to 50 people, and they're making this masterpiece. Give me 30% of your masterpiece. You know, it's very, and of course, the more you sell, the less that percent becomes. But for this, you hear for indie devs who are just trying to sort of start in the industry, those fees can be a lot.

They really can be. Right. site in the industry those those fees can be a lot they really can be right um and um i don't think that those those fees necessarily justified with the current platform structure personally but um i hope that they improve with that and i think that back to my um my point of epic epic is offering a lot more incentives they're taking less of a percentage they're offering you know way more um sort of advertising and um promotion stuff you know i'm actually a unity fanboy so i hate saying all this stuff right i truly do but credit where it's due i do think that the epic store um is uh gaining more and more merit by the day if only they could get their dang downloads

under control and their server side stuff running correctly because it's so slow just you know compared to steam um so yeah there's a bit of shots fired there but you know um yeah so i but i do think it's something to watch out for i think the only issue with going straight to epic is there is i don't know because steam has such a it has such a fan base of it like people are a fan of valve and they're a fan of the steam store that there's a lot of people that have this like negative reaction to when something is only released on Epic. Like a good example of this recently is when the When all of the Kingdom Hearts games came to PC like when they released on Epic people like oh cool It's on PC like from the Epic Store. Yeah, whatever and then when they also brought it over to Steam recently people like

It's on Steam now. Wait, okay. I guess it's time to actually buy it like at the end of the day at the end of the day for me i would i i don't like there's as much lock-in with these games i would like the ability you know think about it like you buy a game on a console you bought bought a pc game back when you actually bought pc games and not just a Steam code, where it didn't matter which store you bought it from, you were just buying the game. Like, you could play it however you wanted to,

but now with all of these DRM systems and, like, I get it with, I get it why it's like this, right? But I don't like it. I don't like it. Yeah, I get it. It's okay to say that. A hundred percent.

I think that that's being open and honest, not just with yourself and like what we enjoy as like entertainment, but also like just being truthful about the matter. It's like, I don't like heaps of microtransactions. Have I bought skins? Yes. Do I like them? You know, the skins that I bought?

Well, sure, I bought them. But, but you know do i think they're inherently good i mean nothing's inherently good or bad but like you know um i think that some practices in some circumstances should be steered clear of and um it would be great if we could all have, every developer could have their own Steam. If there could be like a website hypothetically where any dev can start their own portal, almost like itch.io is a very good example of that, but there is some security issues with itch.io. But the idea is sound

where everyone can create their own like page. And obviously that's what happens on steam but it's basically more like you can have like a media fire backlink or something like that and i don't mean media just like a download portal right right where people's own websites because in that case then you just have a serial number for the game you know you don't have it going through valve you don't have it going through epic you're not you're not bound by i like to think of it like um it used to be region locking back in the day the region things and they used to go oh well so now you want to use this you have to use an ntscj

you know or you know you have to use uh pal we all had pal down here in australia for those who are watching internationally at least that was a technical reason why because there actually is differences in like hardware wise for that when we got past that though and there were still games being region locked like on the nintendo ds for example games were region locked there was no functional reason there was no function and you're right there there was a technological reason but even then that technological reason came about from competition sure sure you know it's always like um uh you know uh it's the idea of not everything used to fit everything back then it wasn't kind of like an all fits one you know sometimes i think like if you go down and you get tires on your car

you know you can get all these different tires that are like you know 18 inches and they're all going to fit you know more often than not because it's like a you know 18 inch tire hypothetically um and um or 20 um if you have four of those um uh you can um You can start to sort of quantify a bit more, I think. Like, otherwise, we can sort of, I think, get lost in it all, you know? Yeah, like, if you have something that's basically like you know 20 inches these are the 20 inch tire a mercedes-benz tire is going to fit on a uh ford right it's going to fit on that whereas back then you had ford mercedes-benz all these guys literally at each other's throats going i'm going to make my nut different to yours i'm going to make my bolt different to yours i'm going to make my bolt different to yours i'm going to change every little component of my hardware so that you can never use my hardware

with your hardware and vice versa and it really it's it's just like uh it's it's actually anti consumer practices that's what i guess i'm trying to get at here it's like kind of yeah i wasn't sure where you're going with that yeah sorry about that yeah so it's like but there is so much of that rife in the game industry right like anti-consumer practice like where clearly the game game is one at one way and then it takes so long for like you know either the industry to catch up and go okay we need one thing suits all you know for example region locking has now gone away more often than not but um you know consoles have gone backwards compatible non-backwards compatible backwards compatible non-backwards compatible

they what's with that you know what i mean like and once again, I get that a lot of these are technical limitations of hardware and those kinds of things. A lot of them are budgetary. But yeah, it would be interesting to see, like, maybe in the future, everyone's just emulating video games. That would be so bizarre, you know, when like, if graphic cards are like, you know, five times better than they are now, and we can, you know, emulate games, that's not good for business. But if people are emulating older games

that have already seen their sort of quote, unquote, heyday in that sense, people could argue, you know, they're losing, you know know capital on a remaster or something like that but there does come a point where when do we archive as well i think like you know i want to be able to play video games um from when i was a kid i have spent a little bit of money on getting a nintendo 64 with some old cartridges that i loved as kids right i bet you spent a little bit of money on that absolutely it's a bit expensive right now

oh i bought them just before covid so okay it was a very lucky time where they were still priced like medium and now they're sort of going up again in terms of um the collectible scene yeah walk into akashi's and find where they have the nes games and just look at the prices they have on them oh really i've got three hundred dollars for some titles really oh wow i've got a lot i've got a lot and um yeah yeah i bought i bought that i bought a super nintendo i bought a sega dreamcast um the dreamcast was so expensive and i bought it solely to play i know this sounds so silly but i'm saying it out loud now because it's true i bought a sega dreamcast for two of these laser guns that you have to use on old crt tvs and i've got a crt tv and everything just so i could play

house of the dead 2 on original hardware i could have like got it on the wii but then it the thing is like um i don't know if you ever remember those shooters on the wii brody whenever they would move those laser gun games to the wii it would always just be like, it would be like a fake version of a gun game where you basically just point that remote and it had so much latency. Whereas when you're in the arcade and you're playing, you know, classic, you know, um, a time crisis or something like that. When, as soon as you hit the trigger, the gun would like have a full haptic feedback in your hand and it would literally be instantaneous

feedback on the screen so like i got a dream cast because i was like i've got the nintendo i've got this i really really want to play that so um i saved my pennies for quite a while and i um i ended up getting that and and yeah, so I do love, I was raised on classic sort of retro games, I suppose. And like, I always want to continue my love for that wherever I can, but it's so expensive now. Yeah, I think when we talk about about emulation a lot of people are completely

willing to pay for games the problem is a lot of companies are just not selling them like there's no reason there is absolutely no reason why you can't turn the ps5 like why they can't they can't just have a system where you can just buy for like $5 $10 just like random ps1 and ps2 games that thing has the power to perfectly emulate that those those games and there are people that have like if you go into the uh the homebrew scene on the ps4 people have ps1 and ps2 emulators working on it there's no reason the ps5 can't do that as well and more often than not they're like more flawless than the pc counterpart because the hardware and architecture is even closer so it's like um sometimes there'll be like uh roms that

will run really really well on um uh playstation 4 back like emulation whereas if you try to run that hypothetically that same rom on a windows machine you might get some conflicts or just like more so graphical issues right like textures being strange and those kinds of things sometimes those problems are alleviated if you actually use uh sony's actual hardware but use an emulation inside of it but i couldn't agree more i think a real problem though is that like when they you see this from Nintendo where they will have these systems but then they charge ridiculous prices for the games it's like do you want to pay

$50 for an NES game like if you charge like $10 for it people would buy it and if they're not going to buy it from you because you charge a crazy price they're going to just find a ROM online because all of this stuff has been dumped online like all they're doing it's exploitative right it's it's it's exploiting nostalgia I think at the end of

the day like um we would tell you one of the questions you asked me was what was one of my first consoles and because the PlayStation was locked away in the forbidden zone with my brother. We got given the Nintendo 64. Me and my brother played so much Goldeneye, so much James Bond Goldeneye. Oh, best game. Do you remember what your first game on that console was?

Or is it just too hard to remember? Super Mario 64. Fair enough. And Banjo-Kazooie, I'm pretty sure um yeah uh because we would have got it probably towards the end of the life cycle which banjo kazooie was uh you had to have this little red expansion thingy to even run the game um yeah uh but uh those nintendo 64s they, they were something else. Yeah, me and my brother, we used to play a lot of Goldeneye because we loved the multiplayer.

We loved playing together split screen and seeing the power of that. And it was always trying to render three worlds. So it was always super choppy, classic split screen games. And now it's so good just just taking me back thinking about it um but um yeah goldeneye what we said just before about the exploiting of nostalgia um nintendo switch released like a goldeneye uh for nintendo switch and then it was originally supposed to be released on the xbox 360 but then they had licensing issues and so then that game was literally built all hd remaster

and then they scrapped it it was totally lost no one the game never got released it's really really tragic actually and then what happened was they revived it like this this this project 10 years later so it's basically there was going to be a remaster collapsed and burnt and then they started it again they bring this source code over again they actually did release it on the switch they had no online multiplayer which they did have in the previous version they've removed so much stuff they basically nerfed the entire remastered game, not just to fit it on the Switch. They just couldn't get all of the other stuff working because it used to be through...

The license issue was Xbox was going to do it through Xbox Live, through Xblah, and now it's actually through Nintendo. So Nintendo was like, we're going to... And they couldn't support the infrastructure for it in their backend service. So they basically went, here's a single- player version of your game,

remastered and stuff. Oh, and by the way, if you actually want to enjoy yourself, you have to buy like a $300 controller. And it's basically like a Nintendo 64 controller, true, but it's wireless for the Switch. And so I just see that and it's nostalgia bait. You're trying to get somebody to buy this controller

that they're very fond of. They're fond of this old... They're trying to, like, have a moment, right? Like, they're trying to... Oh, that's nice. You stop them from doing that with a redonkulous price point like that. I think it was, like...

I think it was, like, $80 or $90 straight away, but you know how Nintendo goes. They all got... Because it was limited edition, they all sold out straight away and everything got up to 150 literally 300 i don't even want to look at what the price is now for for for a switch controller of an n64 if anybody's watching this please do yourself a favor go on like ebay alibaba and just order a bluetooth one right you know It does the same thing. Don't give Nintendo your money there.

I do think, do give Nintendo your money. They do great work, but not there. Not with that controller. The problem isn't giving Nintendo your money, it's giving the resellers your money. And this is the problem I have with people who are selling classic games for crazy prices. You cannot buy that game

from Nintendo, Sony, whoever the game was originally from, because they are no longer selling the game. The only copies that are out there are these secondhand copies that maybe you find at Akashi's, maybe you find at eBay

or somewhere else. And it's got whatever crazy... Like, go look at prices for early Pokemon games. I've seen Pokemon crystal going for 500 yeah that's the kind of stuff that i'm talking about here we will see it we all see it like if you game collectors even especially i feel really bad for first-time game collectors i really do for like younger kids who are maybe like a little bit sorry teenagers sorry

should i say who go you know what i want to go and pick up some ps2 games i feel very bad for them i do because that's not an option for them anymore nope and so i'm the problem right i get it like i have a huge stack of playstation 2 games and stuff like that but at the end of the day i got them for me my brother and my family and my nephews and all the other kids in our family so i can be like here you go like check this out like um my nephew's watching harry potter at the moment so the other day i walked in i went here are all the harry potter dvds and i just slammed them down on the table then he's like whoa you know and it's like it's um same same so i've got these so i can show him right because otherwise he will never be exposed

to this art that i was exposed to as a kid if i don't expose him to it you know um in baby steps i'm not going to give show him silent hill, but he'll get there and I'll be like, you know, you're 14, 15 now, here's Silent Hill, you know, go play it, go and be spooked, you know, be totally spooked and enjoy yourself. Because really that's what video games, I think are about at the end of the day.

You know, when I started development, I was like, oh, video games are about at the end of the day um um you know uh when i started development i was like oh video games are about like passing the time that's what i always thought um it was more of a passive like you know um a pacifying thing right right now i get but yeah but that's what i thought about like you know even myself i thought oh like i've got an hour to kill i'm gonna game like it's fun um what would be your like general go-to like around then oh when i was now for that it's sadly it's fortnight it's fortnight i'm not ashamed to admit it you know like i am a little bit ashamed to admit it no i'm not i i i think it's a fun they have a winning formula there yeah i've come from games like call of duty on the playstation 3 like if we're talking about that mid-range sort of stuff call of duty battlefield you know um i do love shooters

um i'm not like yeah shooters all the way like and that's all i play like i've played kingdom hearts jack and daxter like i love platformers as well like um definitely like super mario was one of my first games on 64 so that really shaped it it was like i had super mario i had james bond goldeneye which was a first person shooter and that was really the call of duty at the time it was like split screen like jank fps rip developed by a company called rareware you know if you're if you if you if you know you know those guys especially back then were absolutely killing the game every single thing they made was a masterpiece like uh banjo kazooie conquers like quite literally everything they touched came gold and it was for these years um and and they

made they made so many different things um yeah i'm every time i get so enthusiastic when i talk about rareware because like they are a huge inspiration to me in terms of like they just they just kept doing it they literally had like you know they're playing t-ball they just kept doing it. They literally had like, you know, they're playing T-ball. They just kept hitting them over and over and over and they didn't stop. And then, you know what's remarkable is that they still exist. They still exist, Rareware. And they've made Sea of Thieves was their last game that I was,

like the last big game I was aware of. No, aware of. They made a Battletoads game in 2020. Wait, what? Yeah, yeah. And so there was the remasters that they did as well on the Xbox One, which I ended up picking up, which included Perfect Dark, but it didn't include James Bond because bond because of licensing issues with james

bond and nintendo and xbox and them not being able to get on the same page um yeah so um uh just um oh that's i'm looking through the game yeah i'm looking through a game list right now and it's so sad that after nuts and bolts they just became like the connect sports company for like quite a while yes that's right yeah it's really sad it's really it's i think it was the acquisition of my from microsoft i'm quite literally i guess if we when you just brought that up i'm like oh yeah that's about the time that they, the overarching idea changed and they shifted focus in a bad direction. But yeah, from where they were at that point in time

for specifically the Nintendo 64, just the catalog, just the catalog on that console from that company uh yeah ragtag team multiple ragtag teams of developers just you know uh delivering amazing amazing work um that's that is that is really inspiring i mean it's it's speaking about now when we first started talking about like all these weird games my four panels and stuff on my website i'm trying to recreate this stuff from when we were kids and we used to go into a video store and we'd see like four or five things like what's that yeah that's something that you just don't get to experience anymore there are so many so i didn't

really get that many games as a kid because my parents didn't have that much money but but we did go to blockbuster every so often and rent a game for like two or three days and there are so many weird like you would go in there and it's like oh you know there's there's games you've probably heard of oh look hey it's a ratcheting clank game oh there's jack and dax i i think i played through all of jack too my first time through Blockbuster. But... That is so good. Yeah, because you have to keep...

If you really love the game, you have to keep rehiring it. And you're like, before you know it, you're like, I spent like $35 to $40 on hiring this game. I probably should have... Yeah, exactly. But that's...

Hey, for those new kids. There's so many just garbage, bottom-of-the-bar barrel games I played back then like I probably like one that's for whatever reason sticking in my mind is I think it was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the PS2 or something

or maybe Goblet of Fire one of the two it was not good it was really bad and there's just first two games the first two Harry Potter games were really fun but those last two ones the ones that you just mentioned were garbage like I had that

as well there's so many other just random things I got to play through that and just you just don't get to experience that anymore because there's just the closest thing to that right I guess I guess you could argue something like battle pass is similar in a sense where you just get like a big a wide access to all of these games you just pick random things to play but it's not it's not the same right like

walking into a blockbuster or any of those other similar video stores and just grabbing the first the grabbing the first cover that appears interesting on the shelf you didn't look up what the game was you didn't have your phone on you didn't read the blurb what's the uh what's the game about yeah yeah yeah exactly pretty pictures and you're like i mean you see some guy with guns you're like oh this must be a gun game yeah where you saw like uh you know uh you know if there's a tomb raider like oh it's tomb raider or you know it's a new tomb raider that was always cool too sequels and stuff like coming out in the suit in the um in the blockbusters and the video easies and stuff like you know yeah video we had one around the corner they were called movie land they had like a few of those around

adelaide so they were very like mom and pop sort of video store back in the day and yeah it was awesome we were so lucky to have the guy who worked behind the counter he knew my older brother so we'd be like me and my brother would go in and hire ma and r stuff at like you know 14 15 they'd like yeah and like if it was really bad and the guy had like played it he's like this is r18 we're like 14 and 15 he's like normally i'd give you like gda like anything you want you know sort of thing uh but like i'm not going to do like this movie right like until you know like you watch it like you know uh and then bring get your brother in to come and get it for you like you know because it's like even he was my brother's

mate and he would give us a lot of stuff but he's like i need your brother to come in and get this movie like if you're going to want to watch it he's got to say yes because it's like i'm not going to say yes but um no i can relate like it was also just having conversations with those people because you would ask them what's new it wasn't netflix telling you what's new and like the streaming services and like uh steam being like what's new it was quite literally uh a person being like have you did you know this dropped did you know this came or you didn't even use the word dropped back then did you know that this came out you know like and um i think the first time i ever saw fast and the furious tokyo drift was from a video easy

yeah like i i i we we got it and we're like what the hell is who are these characters why this has nothing to do with Fast and the Furious. What is going on? Yeah, exactly. That was like Little Bow Wow, I think, was in that one, right? I think I remember that. It was like Little Bow Wow was really big at that point in time. So, yeah.

Sorry, I've got my brother doing some stuff in the background that's all good um yeah so um yeah no that's there was so many i remember a weird movie do you remember the movie called snow dogs i know the name i'm completely blanking on what it's about it's about this dude getting snow dogs oh yeah yeah yeah no I didn't know this yes what did you watch I watched this as a kid like twice or three times and every time I watched it I was like this is trash but you're a kid so you pass the time

anyway and you just kind of like I don't know you just put up with it I guess back then yeah we never had we never were lucky enough to have like foxtail or brawl band as kids we had the full dial up you know where you picked up the phone and it was like and you know you'd be like hello you know i'm getting messages beyond the beyond the ether and um you know um same with Foxtel.

Never had any Foxtel. So I would always be going over mates' houses and they'd be like, you know, you'd be watching like full Cartoon Network and stuff like that. Whereas like I was more exposed to like one was called Cheese TV and the other one was called something else. I can't exactly remember. Someone was saying it went to something else. else i can't exactly but when it went someone was saying it went to something else it was cheese tv isn't that the one that became toasted tv yeah that's it toast yep that's the one yeah yeah exactly yep so toasted like me and my friend were having a conversation the other day brody

about um uh 90s advertising and like in particular and how hard-hitting it was so these days advertising is so subtle it's always like through a short video where it's like oh like this coffee's really nice like it's always really subtle advertising and they don't want to like do it but back then it was like get your coffee now you know and like you like the one whatever i think about advertising um uh there's a couple things always come to mind these slip-slop slap ads yeah uh noah's caravan and um oh what was it Um I remember the It's like what 13006999

I don't know what the number is for It's a reading and writing Helpline yeah Good message there I think I couldn't agree I agree with you I think there's something funny

It's about old advertising and the way it used to hit and i think that like people are kind of trying to like get that back i don't know if you've seen these r.a.a ads of that weird bumblebee around the place like if you try and google it um r.a.a bumblebee uh launches a new campaign. Like, no, I've not seen this one.

I don't. Yeah. So basically if you go on Google images and you see, you see the little Bumblebee sort of mascot thing that they've created. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Yeah. So he's on a billboard, like fully spread back with like, you know, and it's like, it's very silly, but like fully spread back with like you know yeah and it's like it's very silly but like the funniest thing is i think that there's something about there's something about bad advertising right that works really well i saw this one video on on uh instagram and it was like the top comment spoke volumes and it was basically this guy had installed like a rotating sign.

Like, but the thing was, there was like a light pole in the way. So it would go like, it would rotate like 30 degrees or 40 degrees. Smash this pole, go back. True, go back. And then it would like do it again. It would just keep doing that. Right. And then someone's on YouTube and he's like video,

he's like, what idiot set up this, right? This advertisement. Top comment on it was like, it had millions and millions of views. And it's like, this billboard would have never got seen millions of times if it wasn't for like the stupidity of like the fact that this sign is constantly bashing into another sign.

And it was like, you know, it was almost, someone said like, whoever made this sign is constantly bashing into another sign. And it was like, you know, it was almost, someone said like, whoever made this is a genius, you know? And like, cause it's so like,

and so, yeah, I, you know, I, I, I think those guys are truly the marketing geniuses, the guys that come up with that sort of weird, wacky stuff that like,

you know, like Noel's caravans what a genius right like you know how do you for those of you don't know yeah i have a lot of audience in like america and stuff i have no idea what the hell noel's caravans is yeah so um a caravan is like a sort of like one of those trailer homes like a motorhome that you have on the back of your car and like there was this guy named noel who would sell them like and you know there was i don't know if it was a chain of them or whatever but yeah he had a little jingle and um uh can you feed the audio uh i can i should be able to find it uh no's Caravan. I was going to sing it, but I'm like, probably not a good page.

Here we go. 13 years ago, Noel's Caravan. Around 75% of all buyers who come to Noel's Caravan come on the referral of a satisfied customer. I'll send you the link if you want to check it out again as well. So come in and find out why. Oh, wow, the font. Around 120 new and used vans. Chances are you'll find the if you want to check it out again as well. So come in and find out why. Oh, wow, the font. The knowledge range of around 120 new and used vans. Chances are you'll find the van you want

and the price you want. Or if you want a custom-built van, you can't go past... There he is! There's the man himself! Yep. Oh, I love that so much. Oh, me too.

It's so... So quintessentially South Australian. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then... Oh, just Aussie. I mentioned the Slip Slop Slap ads as well. Like, those have been going on... I didn't realise how long those ads had been going on for.

It's a great message. I'm lost, though, in it now. I've got to be honest with that. See, that's the thing about the campaigns back then. Slip Slop Slap. Fantastic. Now it's Slip Slop Slap with a rapping cap. You know?

I got lost in the mix because I get it. It's all a good message. But Slip Slop Sl slap was easy to remember. Whereas it's like, chuck on sunnies, put earbuds in your ears. Cover yourself in, put lotion on its skin again or it gets the hose. I'm not sure why they've decided to change that. But I get that we know now more about the sun. Right. We understand the Sun more like it's it's a really catchy tune and like

gets the core message out there like yes slip slop slap see Ken's thought go out upon outside and don't get fried you know yeah it's good agree. I think now that they've switched it up a few times where I was like, I don't know about that. It's the thing about like them changing our childhood, right? In front of our eyes. It's like being like, was it hashtag not my? Hashtag not my Noel's Caravans. You know, they come up with like a 3D CG render of him and they're like, Noel's Caravans. you know

they come up with like a 3D CG render of him and they're like NOLS CARABANES and I'm like hashtag not my NOLS that's how I felt when so when I was like really young my favourite thing to watch was Bob the Builder so when I

in like recent years discovered they restarted it but this time with like some weird like 3D looking bulb they did Bananas in Pyjamas Dirty that was one of me and my brother's favourites and it's like they were men in suits that was the charm

and there was a rat it was a very clever rat and then like you know he's now a very clever 3D rat oh okay yeah I know i didn't know this i'm okay i probably shouldn't have said anything hashtag not my not my b1 hashtag not my b2 oh this this is gonna be an episode where nobody has any idea what the hell we're talking about yeah that's right

I apologise there's a lot of Australian nuance yeah so we apologise if you if you can't follow along with our madness Australian madness this is our blueys yes exactly exactly anyway that's a good that's a good one that's a good i like that yeah my nephew and niece they

really love bluey my uh i think i was gonna say my favorite thing about that is um there's a lot of American kids who are growing up on Bluey who are developing Australian accents because that's the only cartoon they're watching No, is that real? Yes That's

kind of cool You were going somewhere before I cut you off again Oh no, I was was going to say um uh if you allow me to just discuss for a short minute um a little bit about um what i'm doing in cbd at the moment yeah go ahead yeah i'll go back to gaves for a little bit because i can do that i can talk all day about like uh 90s pop culture and like pop early to Y2K pop culture too. And like, even like 2010s and stuff, I love to, to,

to take a dive back then and, and reflect, um, uh, you know, um, uh, a, uh, what do you call it? I'm trying to find the word sort of like a post-reflection um yeah of of what we experienced then and i do think that uh like bringing a lot of those things into to bring it back you know uh moose dry sand that was so crazy dude when i was a kid it was like i remember it was like bindis and all these other things but they're like look at this dry sand you can put it in water yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so like i literally i want to try to make my games like that i want them to hit as hard as the dry sand um like you know to me as a kid i was so

impactful i loved it i've never had any dry sand never got any amazing though right like you know all of those moose toys i swear that was the most affecting advertising i've ever seen kodakola could learn something from moose like i think they've actually banned most of those like uh practices of advertising to kids like the ones that we actually had where they're like you have to dry sand otherwise you're not cool you know like which is cool i'm glad that they don't do that like but at the same time i kind of a little part of me misses it at the same time it's a it's a catch it's a double-edged sword right right um with advertising is always always about that um but uh trying to trying to learn that being in a small business and um trying to move forward with what i'm doing now in adelaide

with johnny made it um my my company um we are trying to make release games so get things past the prototype stage into a sort of more completed state and then um put them up on steam um as we mentioned as i mentioned earlier um we're having uh some video games being put on playstation nintendo xbox so everybody every audience member please keep your eye out for those um it's a very uh affordable horror experience so if you're a horror guy or gal and you um want to jump in and play some uh like a cool indie horror game don't let him in is um coming out soon on those platforms. So yeah, please everybody reach out to me through my, through Johnny made it. And you know, general inquiries can go to johnnymadeit at gmail.com. It's that simple.

And yeah, thank you so much for listening to me ramble. And thank you. Thank you so much for listening to me ramble. And thank you. Thank you very much. I just wanted to say one more thing about what I'm doing in Adelaide, which is I've just been given an office space for six months. I'm looking to get more work out there, as well as continue to legitimize what I'm doing and move out of the the bedroom like move

out of that you know and and more into a an office of my own start to think about um bringing on more personnel to get the games out quicker because it's like it's kind of that and and also what we were talking about before of uh finding a balance of how do you like write the articles and how do you do all that um marketing material and stuff getting some personal on board to handle those big things and just get like a nice um a nice uh group of individuals with different skill sets so that i can focus on making games and business building while other, other people who, who love to do social media.

Cause I know there's so many people out there who love to do social media. There are any listeners right now who are social media people, please reach out to me via my email, which is johnnymader at gmail.com. Again, we are looking for individuals with those kinds of expertise. So, yeah.

I was going to ask you to do all that when we signed off the episode anyway, but hey, we can just chuck that in right now as well. Yeah, yeah. So what was the response like at Avcon so how do people like appreciate the game what do people say like do people bring up issues that maybe you weren't aware of already or point out things that you maybe were aware of that you were you know already working on absolutely you know uh all three of those things i mean uh one mean, one of the things that, you know,

when I was speaking to you and we were playing with the other two individuals that you were with on the day. I think I was there with Shud and Aiden. Yeah, I think on Sunday we were together then. Yes, yeah. They had mentioned, yeah, Shud had mentioned that the collision boxes were out, like they're cubes instead of being triangles within the pin factory. So I need to make sure that I fix those kinds of small feeling issues, you know, with the player so that he feels correct.

issues you know with the player so that he feels correct um and um yeah so a lot of a lot of just seeing a lot of advice on what people want to see but also improvements on how we could improve one of the ones in plumbo which was really eye-opening for me um and i've been relaying this to my developer friend is within plumbo um since it's a platformer you go um left right up and down sure but then there's a scene when you go from being like paper mario to being mario 64 where you start to have that third axis so you can move forward back left right up and down and when you add that that last vector which is forward and back or you add that last angle, so you can go up, down, left, and right, everything like that, that's when people didn't know that the inflate and the deflate changed buttons

because the way the controller has to be mapped, you're only limited to so many moves. So the control scheme has to change according to the specific challenge levels so if you're in um uh 2d view or side view everything feels normal but then when you go from being into third person or whenever those those special challenge rounds like pop up people were getting confused on i didn't realize there was a 3d segment i don't think i played that one yeah there are there's there's there's actually 15 levels in the game it's quite close to being um in a uh early access alpha state so that's basically what we're looking to get uh all of

our all of these these four projects that we have online we're looking to get this into open alpha states so that people can play them people can give them give us even more feedback than we know now but we're currently implementing a lot of the feedback that we are that we heard over avcon from you from other players and also from other developers which was crucial to be in that space um with other developers which is where i'm at now in the city i'm now in a co-working space with other game developers it's amazing to have that avcon is priceless for the opportunity in the sense that you get to go directly to the players like brody and you know and then that's actually how brody approached me for this interview. So I'm very grateful for that.

So just being there. Being in there and being seen is a big thing, I think. Especially in early Korea. Well, that's... With Avcon, it's very much anime and video game focused. There's that audience for both. But that's what I think is really cool about Sage and why I need to go.

I'm going to go next year. It's going to happen. I'm going to put it on my calendar. We've brought up Sage with one of the earlier guests as well, who I think was Hellbite was there, maybe. Maybe it was someone else. Yes.

Okay. I think I talked about it with Ewan then. Sage is a new convention like it started last year like this is very very very new um and sage yeah yeah there was a there was a there was maybe one before that maybe yeah maybe it's yeah but you're right like it's past couple of years yeah yeah it's right only yeah that's why it is everybody there is focused on gaming and interest in gaming and i'm sure that's all let's look at very different sort of audience you have there because you get a lot of the people who just have like a passing interest in games coming through avcon but everybody there at sage cares

about video games yes absolutely brody and it's it's fantastic because um i think when i want to show off my more technical side of games and not my more casual things that leans more towards sage and those types of expos because when you're at something like avcon when people are coming through or even at Sage actually. Casual does work really well for Sage too. I think any exhibition where individuals can't take the time to actually experience your game, I think that having a fast, rapid demo is very important because you're only going to have five minutes per person,

10 minutes per person. We were lucky to have probably 20 to 30 minutes of a chat you know um on the day but um uh more often than not especially during the peak hours it can be even less so um what i've tried to do is make uh have more casual experiences at um the uh the expos but then what some of the expos with more of the um uh technical side of things and more of the you know the game developers the journalists they can come in and see the more technical projects because it's not that i think it's just sort of more of a target audience thing really is what what i'm thinking and um yeah it's but sage is a fantastic opportunity to network it is such a great event that as you said they've only been doing it for a couple of years i attended my

first one the year before last as an attendee and then the last year i went as an exhibitor so i decided like that's it i saw what everybody else was doing. They had this cool booth. They were given these awesome opportunities. They got to meet lots of friends. I'm going to do it next year. And I did. I did do it. And I had an absolute blast. I

kind of feel bad for the people who are showing off like visual novels and other like slow-paced games at a convention because it's like they're making a really cool game but it's hard to really demonstrate like why the game is cool in that sort of framework yeah absolutely um yeah you yeah you succinctly said that way better than i did um uh this is why you you are the podcaster and i'm the i am the random guy jumping i am just the guy who rambles in my bedroom oh well that's you know i'm just a guy who programs in my bedroom

so you know but um uh yeah no i i do think that that's the case. Like, casual works so well for that, right? Like, yeah, like narrative-driven things. Yeah, yeah. Even, like, any sort of storyline-driven thing or any mechanic that's focused on grinding, even, doesn't work the best, right? You can't really have a grindy game in one of these expos because no one has the time to grind

while they're at an expo. The only way a grindy game works is if you do some sort of vertical slice and it's like, hey, here is a cool boss mechanic. We're going to focus on going into the boss fight or we have a streamlined section, like End of Ember, for example, where it builds up as you go through

the zones so instead of doing that they have like a small section of it like okay you get from the start to the first boss and it's like this contained experience where you get a idea of the game but absolutely i think that developers like I myself have been leaning more towards the casual, the quick. I have other games that are more narrative focused, a bit more like Don't Let Him In that are like, one of them is called In A Moment. That's a working title. I'm not too sure if it has enough impact yet.

That is, you play as a maintenance man who um uh basically is stuck in purgatory that's as much as i really want to reveal just now but you you're a maintenance man in purgatory it's a first person shooter horror game narrative driven i was gonna say that sounds like a horror game yeah it's really it's quite cool um i'm. I think I'm really excited for that project because I have been making casual stuff for a little while now. Happy to start to put my teeth back, right back into the Apple

and do some more touch scene and like just get right, get deeper into the narrative stuff again because I was moving away from that doing casual arcade-y type experiences. So the plan is to get Uncle Unkoe out there get Plumbo out there and then focus back on again with a narrative experience but for example when I go to show off that I'm going to have to figure out how I do that appropriately because it will be an hour- long experience that I will probably have to just take a specific sequence

that goes for like two or three minutes of, you know, a down section, a climax and like a jump scare. And then it goes like, you know, if you want more sort of, and you know what's really cool about this conversation? It's going back to the early ps2 demo discs right right right and like making those right for your experience at those events when you hand someone that's what they're playing they're playing a demo disc my friend had the most brilliant idea for me for avcon and i still i love to say this um which is he said to me he goes dude why don't

you do what we did when we when we what we had when we were kids where if nobody touches the controller no one touches any input or anything after like 30 seconds a video starts to play of the game loop so like tekken or something like that like when you don't interact with the game and it was funny someone's like mortal kombat still does that to this day and it's such a i think underutilized thing especially at expos because i saw so many individuals having like a video on loop like that they were either like swapping back and forth from yeah yeah you know and all that sort of stuff and you can see their their um their windows machine desktop and of course i had the two machines and i really wasn't planning on demonstrating plumbo but it just had such a fun like people were really enjoying it so i figured

i might as well show this off at the same time and it's really good to do that because for myself because it does give me that extra bit of encouragement just to finish it off in that sense like and so that's what i'm getting into now because getting people to see it it's like this is great keep going you know hearing that is it, it's like, this is great. Keep going. You know, hearing that is really good. It's hard to get, I mean, there's lots of artists listening. You know, don't be dissuaded.

Just keep working hard at your craft. People will recognize you eventually. And it's when you least think they will. So you'll be like, oh, all the chips are down. No one's going to, you know, no one's going to watch my podcast. No one's going to play my game. No one's going to listen to my music that I'm writing. Before you know it, it does actually change. And you go, wow, people are here. And they're on board with what I'm doing. And that is so encouraging, you know, because, and it does happen when all the chips are down. So hypothetically, if that's you right now and all the chips are down

and you're an artist or you're a creator, you know, just realize there is light at the end of the tunnel. I'm still constantly reminding myself that every day because I do have lots of projects and lots of responsibilities responsibilities on and now i'm working with other game companies and everything but you know just uh my friend the other day he's like just remember to meditate to breathe deeply and to you know to get through it and to to not forget to be creative and it's the most important thing is the art at the end of the day it's not really about you know what i'm talking about now this has been fantastic and i love to express myself but it's

really at the end of the day it's about the art it's about the games that's the that's the way that i um am expressing myself directly to my audience like you probably are expressing yourself to your audience in a different way and And we as creators have to discover that. And like, sometimes it's simple as I painted this thing, I put it on a wall and then people go, oh, like, and that's all that that is, you know, and that's all you need, you know, as a creator. But obviously different creative, different disciplines,

we all look for that little relief moment or that little satisfaction moment um within what we do uh within our careers and um and and creative work but uh yeah back to the point if you if you're chipsing down and you and you're going really hard in the paint on whatever that is just remember that there is uh people do care and people like art you know there's so many critics out there too this is a good lieutenant so many critics uh you know uh try not to be your harshest critic but also be your harshest critic it's just that's always that's such a weird one right like you have to be your own harshest critic but you know you have to know when to let up um and i i wish that real critics knew how to do that right like especially within like steam comments and stuff like that i am quite lucky to have

received quite a good response from what i've created i'm'm very lucky. And I've been working a very, very long time to try to get my games to a position where people don't hate them. That's always good. Yep. Because believe you me, Brody, the first 10 games I ever made, people hated them. The first 50 games I made,

people hated them. Could you even call them games? I don't know, right? Like, you know, but, you know, after a while, you do get a rhythm of it and you're like, you know what, maybe I am like getting better at this. So hopefully I continue to grow and hopefully all the other artists out there,

you continue to make strides in whatever you're doing i think the important thing no matter what field you're in is actually release something because you'll have people say oh i want to make a game i want to write a book i want to start streaming or make youtube videos do it stop saying you want to do it do it like if you just sit there saying that you're gonna do it at some point oh if i get this ready if i do that or like you'll start doing something and then i was like oh is it ready yet oh is it is it gonna have a good response just just release it just oh yeah so i was apprehensive about coming because i'm'm not, I'm not, I haven't done this very before.

I am not the most confident speaker. I, I try my best. That's all I can do is try my best. And that's what I hope from everybody else is that that's just that they're trying their best. But yeah, I was very apprehensive about coming on here today. Am I going to do a good job? You know, how, you know, also because i've never done this kind of thing and i'm warming up to it um but yeah i i definitely hear what you're saying brody it's uh it could be a

challenge yeah yeah yeah and there's a lot of like um perfectionism especially where you want it to be like you know that you could make this change you'll make this change and you could probably keep making changes to anything you want to do but at some point you have to say i've done enough this is ready and it's time for people to see this and finding that point no matter what you're doing whether again whether it's a book whether it's a video or game like it's finding that point is difficult but you have to accept that at some point you have to just be done with it. That is where we're having this conversation in the kitchen of the office yesterday. And it was,

uh, uh, Chad, who, uh, Chad, who's been interviewed by Brody. He's,

uh, part of Bear Plant Studios on end of November. Um, he's also, He's also a business guru, games business guru. And he is a lecturer at AIE and he does the GDML program there. So he's like really qualified and he knows what he's talking about.

And me and him were talking in the kitchen and same conversation we're having right now. It the shia labeouf like just do it right like and um there's so many ways we can get caught up in in our own thoughts and our own thought processes like am i going to be am i going to be good on this podcast is my game going to be good enough for steam um you know but at the end of the day, if we just try to hold a little bit of self-confidence in ourselves and knowing that like, whatever happens, it's going to be fine. And if people don't like the game, make another game.

Dude, that is exactly, exactly. I would actually argue that if people don't like the game, like this is actually speaking to the devs, start something new rather than constantly trying to bash a dead horse, quite literally. And like, you're better off making, talking to early game devs right now, like I said before, my first 10 games were terrible.

My first 50 games were terrible. You know, God god how many games have i made i've only got one proper one release but it's it's proper like it's a proper game right whereas everything else before that could you really call it an actual game or was it more just like me experimenting with programming and learning the art form as a as a as the start of it. So yeah, definitely don't be dissuaded if it does take you 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 failed projects until you get your first project. Quite literally,

you can't become a music composer overnight. It does take you over 100 songs easily. People say it takes you 10,000 hours to master something. Way more than that. I don't know who said take you over 100 songs easily. People say it takes you 10,000 hours to master something. Way more than that. I don't know who said that it takes 10,000 hours. It takes 10,000 hours to get the thing up and running.

You know, it takes 50,000 to 100,000 hours of, you know, of living your life, doing something, living, breathing, you know, it living your life, doing something, living, breathing, you know, it to do it. And, you know, being a solo dev, I do kind of take on a lot, I sometimes take on too much. And like going on the discussion of like burnout territory,

I can reach that point being a solo dev, but I now know that I need to figure out my capacity and diversify my time around the place, scheduling, working with people. That is going to help me immensely going forward, I think, with my particular projects, with where I'm at in my career. Anyone who's just getting into game development, my suggestion would be just to keep grinding

on whatever engine you're using, whether it's Unity, Godot, Unreal, just keep making projects. Do what Brody said, release them, get some negative feedback. Negative feedback is critical for improving. Like, you know, the amount of times i've been told my games are dreadful uh i should stop doing this for a living you name it you know i've heard it all i literally have heard it all so you know and and you know what also what comes with that is really

thick skin um so when someone says to you this mechanic is jank you don't go oh you go actually yeah it is you know and like that comes only with time and experience and not being so sensitive about what you've built yeah like i gather people are attached to a project they've built you know it's you spent like you know six months a year maybe multiple years on a project, you know, six months, a year, maybe multiple years on a project. And, you know, you didn't make it to be bad. So when someone's like, here is a problem with it, like that can feel like a personal attack. And I get that, but like- When it's really hard hitting stuff like that,

it really does hurt. And I don't want, like, I have known people just to outright quit. I've known people to quit for years. I have known, and come back quit i've known people to quit for years i have known and come back to it which is great i you know if people need to take a hiatus that's always fine just be aware that there are problems that come with that and brody's as a content creator i'm sure you're very aware that hiatus is not a good thing, right? For analytics, statistics, like for all that sort of stuff.

But yeah, so just knowing, I think being able to identify where you are in your career is a really difficult thing within game development. game development because um uh and also to try to find the things that you don't know and to find the people who know the things you don't know those are all really difficult within the game space within adelaide it is a tight-knit circle but at the same time it's growing there are more and more people getting into it and there are more and more people just finding it out. So, I mean, if there are any listeners in Adelaide, you know, get a hold of Games Plus. Like reach out to the Games Plus people. Reach out to me, you know, send me an email. You know, quite literally.

You made a mistake there. You know, literally, you know, because there's there's support and there's people out here who want to help young uh budding game developers i'm very much about um helping um uh you know early career game developers right um at any at any stage in their life where if they want to start picking up games i appreciate the endeavor of doing it because I do do it every day. And so I know the challenges that come with it. But yeah, I do encourage it. I do encourage game development as a medium for creators.

And you don't have to do solo devving or anything along those lines. You can do art, like 3D, 2D. There's so many streams and avenues within this. You can do like icons for like UI interface, like mobile icons and those kinds of things. There's so many, and I'm only starting to learn it now that I'm in a space. I've often done a lot of these things in my personal time and then i've made some guy in the office and it's like he does this he's like the mobile icon guy and i see his icons and i'm like wow like you mean like there's one thing with like doing animations for example this is

something i brought with the blood river guys like they have artists and the art looks great they have programmers the program is great the animation like they don't have animation guys yeah they don't oh is that right oh yeah so yeah that's funny that you um you you vocalized that yeah that was something that i couldn't help but notice and oh they they're well aware. They're redoing all of the animations. They're like, we don't have animation people on our team. They do the job, but they're not where they want them to be. There is a fantastic animator. I always recommend to people looking for human animations.

His name's Ramsters. I don't know his real name. He's online. His animations are fantastic. They work every time. They work first time every time 100 it works 100 of the time every time uh oh yeah here we go i found it uh it's spelt with a z yeah ramsters yes yeah yeah so like i think he does amazing animations for,

specifically for Unity. I think it's Unreal as well. Yeah, so, Ewan, if you're watching this, I'll send you an email later today. But yeah, in particular, I've used this guy's animations a lot, in particular for horror. So, yeah, I'd love to reach out to them actually about that and see how they're going in terms of that.

But I think it's a really strong project. Speaking particularly on you and moving over to there for two seconds, I love demons. I love horror. I love shooting crossbows and all that sort of stuff and i think his his blood mechanic system is really cool um and unique it's giving me sort of like little bit of bioshock vibes in terms of the player controller and like with the with the hand and the weapon but at the

same time it's got this awesome gothic feel with, like, you know, demons. So what's not to love there, really? And if I can get a chance as well, I'd love to just talk for a second about my boss's game. My boss's name is Aiden. And he is the director and the main man of Catalyst Games. They are an independent game studio here in Adelaide run by Aiden. He has brought me on a programming capacity and you can wishlist his game now.

So if you guys like Diablo, if you like Animal Crossing mixed with Diablo, like cute things, but also combat things, and you love that sort of Zelda sort of style, but also love cool combat and great mechanics, you can get your own house and put your furniture in it and your furnitures give you little buffs to make your player better so it's a fantastic little project so um uh

everyone should go ahead and wishlist that now if that's their kind of thing um it's going to be a fantastic production i'm looking and i'm being i'm so happy that he's for one given me a job he's very generous but two um also um brought me on board with that whole process and um i'm able to help with that uh me and him are attending packs uh which is coming up uh in in melbourne and we're most likely going to be attending south by southwest sydney together so we're going to be going uh uh interstate and doing some we're going around australia and doing that doing a bit of a tour um and showing off our work which is just brody if you would have said that this was going to be happening to me at this point in time i would tell you like last year when i attended sage last year fe February, the year before, and I was just like an attendee walking through,

I would have said, you know, shut the front door, you know, quite literally like no way would I be like doing this, but I actually am, you know, and just to, it is possible. It's totally possible to make your own games, to make games for other people to to be to be paid doing it but also to enjoy it and to be to be seen and um you know uh it's it content creation is is a hard gig it's not it's not for the faint of heart um but it's very rewarding in the end i sadly i don't know why i think there's just people

always at the table i didn't get a chance to actually play that at avcon i did see it there the entire time um but i don't know maybe i'll reach out to i'll reach out to them as well see if they want to come talk i would well i would yeah i'd love to uh send an email on behalf if that's okay if I could send one off to Aiden and say I'll just let him know about the interview we had today and say that he's looking for other

Adelaide based game developer teams to discuss with so if you yeah if you're happy to do that yeah that's cool yeah you have I emailed you yes Yes, yes. Yeah, and I've got you on social. I couldn't remember who I'd emailed

and who I'd done on Twitter. I think we might have done Twitter. Did we email? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think we're LinkedIn as well, which is good. I will give you his information and vice versa.

So yeah, he'll absolutely love the opportunity to talk about what he's been doing. Um, he's, he's fantastic. He's, he's probably going to be a far better interviewer than I, um,

because he can articulate himself without going here, there, and everywhere. But, um, you have a lot of energy and I, I appreciate that. Like when I have people who I can't bounce off of like and i have

to push the conversation forward like that that's a problem for me but when you have the ability to just just riff off of whatever random topic i bring up like it works just fine for me oh well thank you i felt really comfortable actually as well because like as i said before i didn't know what it was going to be like coming into it, but it's just been so chilled. Like it's literally just been a chat about dry magic, moose sand and like, you know, meat sack. And so like,

you know, you've been able to let me express myself, which I really, really appreciate. Um, that's, uh, it's,

it's really hard as an artist, especially when you're trapped inside all day, writing like abstract code. And then you go, now I need to talk about the thing you know and it's fun when you're on a bit of a roll and you've been talking about the thing for a little while um so for example when you saw me on day three of abcon i'd kind of gotten into a i'd lost my voice i've totally lost my voice but i've gotten into a little bit of a role about talking about the

projects but like when you go away from doing that for a little while and you come back to it you go oh wait a second what was I doing again oh yeah uh this so I have to apologize for any listeners if there's a little bit of incoherence I apologize it comes from the nature of my work, writing gibberish all day, and then having to swap from written to oral, and just having to flip a switch. And so I apologize in advance for that. I do. That's good. One thing I want to bring up before we end it off

about the meat sack thing. I do think you could make that work have you ever played Super Meat Boy? yes I've seen the game play, I'm aware of the developers I think something

in like a, because that was like a cutesy art style as well, but it was like cutesy and then you get ground up in a meat grinder right I think you could do something with that meat sack idea and like take that like mix of cutesy and like really gory

and I think there could be something fun there you're spot on I wanted to we thought it'd be funny to do like cutesy and you're spot on and I thought for some reason we wanted him to be super cute and like saucy and like he's like a meat he's like a meatball it's like really juicy and kind of gross like maybe he picks up hairs along the way or something like rolling or something um but i

wanted the environment to be like abe's odyssey so like he's like stuck in a rusty meat grinder like it's totally industrial but then he's cute and he's like full-on like a fish out of water you know like in this like in this sort of hellhole-ish environment that is like um an oven yeah he moves through he moves through the inner workings of like an industrial oven like um chicken run yeah yeah I do think there's definitely something cool you can do with that I'm gonna run that past my mate if he comes over tonight I'll say I had a podcast and I ran bought meat sack.

What are you talking about? I hope he doesn't remember at all about it. No, he does, actually. I think we talked about it just a few weeks ago. It came up in conversation. And that's the only reason why I remembered the name. Because it hit. It hit really hard.

Because it was like Meatball Man, right? And then we're like, that was the pitch? it was like meatball man right and then we're like that was the pitch it was like his meatball man and he's like yeah his name is just meat sack and i was like oh god like it's good it's a good it's a solid idea right like you know it's especially for it being a dreadful idea but a good idea at the same time it's like one of those ones like you know it's not um you know not recreating the wheel here you know just like really like a basic sort of uh concepts but no i do appreciate that that gives me a lot of um confidence um there's one other concept actually that i could share with your viewers and maybe they'll find this funny, I was pitching this to some people the other day. I was talking to Fringe Realities.

Did you experience the VR experience at Avcon? No, I didn't. They are a team here in Adelaide called Fringe Realities. I might put you in touch together as well if there might be someone that you'd want to interview down the line. They specialize in VR, which is really fascinating, being able to put the headset on and get into the game like quite literally um but um i was speaking to them recently about a concept because i made a vr product me my friend made a vr prototype a long time ago that we thought was a we thought was a really strong idea but in execution

it was dreadful right like the way we had done it in vr and stuff and like if we would do it now we would take we've learned a lot so we actually would know how to do it quote unquote properly now versus like how we used to develop back then but um so basically the game is a VR game and it's called Making Toast. Okay. Okay. And this is the pitch. And so it's super silly, but you start in a room, four brick walls. That's all it is.

And you're like, oh, okay, this is odd. And you have this kind of humming room ambience. And then you turn around and then I don't know where it's like there's a fridge okay jump scares you like uh classic um spongebob and ren and stimpy close-ups so like whenever you see something it's always like super grotesque and stuff so the first thing you do your empty room you first like what am i doing here but as soon as you like look away and turn around a fridge appears and it's like jump scare and then you go okay that's weird and then you go all right i'm gonna go up to the fridge you open the fridge door

and it's it's it's really sad man there's only two pieces of bread sitting on the fridge grate and it's once again it's another jump scare so as soon as you open the fridge and see these two pieces of toast it goes right and you go oh no like what do i do and then so from there you you can take the two pieces of bread out of the fridge you know it's i i don't like refrigerated bread and for people that know some people do this refrigerate bread and i get sometimes you've got to do it right sometimes but like the whole gag of it was like you know there's nothing worse than like two like you look in the fridge at home and then there's like two pieces like there's like one jar of mayonnaise

in the fridge and you're like what the hell am i gonna do with this right so like that was the initial idea of the game but but where we were you open the door you see the two pieces of bread on the grates super depressing and like every time it's it's like a Ren and Stimpy close-up. So it's like, oh, like, it's not, it's never appealing. I can't stress the fact of how unappealing everything is in this game. So you pick up these two pieces of bread from the fridge and you turn around again. And then, of course, what appears out of nowhere is a table with a toaster on it. Okay, so you go, oh, okay, i now have to make toast right so you kind of things start to like click together and it's very like much like uh step by step uh-huh

strange thing is you go over to the toaster you put the toast in the toaster and um there's also a framed picture of ray romano on the table when you pick it up it does canned laughter and when you drop it the canned laughter stops like every time you pick it up it just does that and so it's it's all very confusing and very abstract but like the idea is you know it's it's very much like the stanley parable if you've ever i love that yeah yeah yeah um so you know you you're in a thing and then you turn around and then another thing appears and you have to do said thing with the thing. And so we've got a toaster. We've got Ray Romano.

We've got two pieces of bread. We've got to put the bread in the toaster and turn the toaster on. You have to toast the bread to a correct crispy level. You can't burn the toast. If you burn the toast, the entire room catches on fire. And, right? So you have to burn the toast perfectly and take the toast out.

So you literally have to manually, you know how sometimes you leave your toaster on and it burns the toast, right? Because you didn't get to it early in time. So that's a mechanic, right? In the game. Like you actually need to like hatch the toaster at the perfect spot.

Otherwise, it will burn your toast every time. So you pull the toast out. And then as soon as you pull this toast out, and it has to be perfectly cooked, like within a range. And then when you do that, you turn around, there's a cupboard. And you go, all right, this is kooky. You look in the cupboard and there's peanut butter and jelly, right? And butter. And a butter knife, right?

So from there, you have to butter your toast and then put peanut butter, one with peanut butter and one with jelly on the other and make a sandwich. And we thought, and then in amongst that, you also have to create other dishes. There is a gnome who appears, okay? He appears, it's a garden gnome, because obviously everything's appearing and it's very Stanley Parable. So it's all very random and like, it's very trippy. And then out of nowhere, you hear like a,

and he's this little gnome and he appears. And then what happens is if you don't put the gnome in the freezer he starts to light fires like he starts teleporting around the place lighting fires and so you're trying to cook toast while not burning your toast while this little gnome is going around lighting fires and you have a fire extinguisher and you have to put out all these fires while making toast and there's um so the funniest thing about this is it's the worst it's like the worst pitch ever but there's so there's so many funny little things within it that make me think that it's worth exploring

because like whenever i explain it to people it's like when i come up to the bit where they're like oh it's you know you open it up and there's two pieces of bread on the grates it's like when I come up to the bit where they're like, oh, it's, you know, you open it up and there's two pieces of bread on the grates. It's like, that's funny. Right. Like it's, it's, it's very kind of relatable and dumb.

And then like from there you get a frame picture of Ray Romano and you get a table and you get a toaster and you're like, okay, like the frame does clearly does nothing. Right. Like, you know, and you find that out pretty quickly that it does nothing but laugh.

Like every time you pick it up, that's all it does. But the toast, you actually have to make the toast and you have to actually make a sandwich. And we figured like, quickly that it does nothing but laugh like every time you pick it up that's all it does but the toast you actually have to make the toast and you have to actually make a sandwich and we figured like um how do you win the game and we're like oh out of nowhere like you turn around and there's like a hole in the wall and out of the bricks and it's just two eyes and a massive tongue and he goes like and you have to feed him the sandwiches that you make. Like, he rolls his tongue out of the wall.

Right. And he's like, and you basically have to, like, put the sandwich on his tongue, and he's like, and then he's like, yeah, you did a good job. Like,

for anyone who's unsure why I brought him on the podcast, this energy is what he had at avcon he couldn't talk but this was the energy he had so yeah it's a strange pitch but i did want to share it to your audience as a funny idea right like um if you could follow along with my crazy nonsense right like that is this pitch i promise i will work on an elevator pitch for in future like one thing that i can say like it'd be like it's a vr game about making toast with wild and wacky consequences that like happen along the way so like the stanley parable it's kind of like you know the more you do the more weird and wacky it comes along the way and the more sort of choice that you have within it but um yeah it's uh as the concept's really silly so yeah no thanks for letting me thanks for letting

me share that with your audience because i i shared that one the other day i hadn't spoken about that project in so long and i was seeing these guys from fringe reality these vr guys and they're like and i thought oh it's perfect time just to relay this really old game like we have a whole prototype built but it's just not to a standard that we're comfortable with so um but just being able to explain the idea i thought a bit like meat sack i thought there's actually something there behind this game like this it, it's very much like the Stanley Parable meets Overcooked, meets like Zumbinis or something, you know?

Like you have to like make a thing, deliver a thing and get rewarded on the the points but it's all in vr and it's all really jank like and they would lean into like uh sort of it'd be very goat simulator-y like where like maybe the bread's super slippery if you butter the bread the bread becomes so slippery you can barely handle it so like, like, you've got to, like, you know, like, lob it up onto a table. Like, if it's buttered, you have to lob the bread up onto a table and then put peanut butter on it, like, while it's sitting flat on a table. Otherwise, you just can't handle a buttery piece of bread. Just, like, leaning into those kinds of silly things

that make absolutely no sense at all. those kinds of silly things that make absolutely no sense at all all right yeah the ray romano uh photo um in a sense is like the ethos of that game okay okay sure you turn around yeah you turn around right and then like there's a frame by the way this is funny too the photo i got of ray romano i like got it the most high fidelity one i could from the 90s and then i like upscaled it and upscaled it again and so like basically in the game files half of the texture files is just a photo of ray romano in high def so that you can hold it up to your face in vr and it's like the crispiest photo of ray romano you've ever seen so when he's laughing it's like he's looking into your soul because he's like

he's like upscaled a hundred times taking up half the game's data just ray romano j.jpeg games data, just Ray Romano, J dot JPEG. Yeah. Anyway, like ridiculous, right?

Well, on that note, we should probably be ending off the episode. Cause we've passed the two hour mark now. Yes. Oh, thank you for having me Brody. Pleasure. Um,

thank you for dealing with the madness that is. No, no, it's fun. I enjoyed that. Um, let people know where they can find your games, where they can find you and anything else you want to direct people to. Made It. No, it was fun. I enjoyed that. Let people know where they can find your games, where they can find you, and anything else you want to direct

people to. Thank you. I would direct everybody to johnnymadeit.com as Brody has said. As I've related to Brody, I'm working on it, and as he said, there's some broken links, so please be

patient there because I am trying to do game development stuff on the side. Web development is kind of a secondary thing for me. So I'm trying as hard as I can to get that out. But it is harder for me to do that than games. So everybody's patience there is very well received. So thank you. But I would direct people to Steam.

Don't let him in. And if you would pick up a copy of that and play it and leave me a review, leave me a comment, send me an email, get in touch, like I said before. It really means a lot. It actually keeps me going and doing what I'm doing,

getting player feedback and feedback from the people. So please don't be a lot. It actually keeps me going and doing what I'm doing. Getting player feedback and feedback from the people. Please, don't be a stranger. And also there is the game that you're employed to work on. Yes, of course. Dungeons and Dining Tables and I'm currently also doing

client works for Catalyst Games. Check out Catalyst Games online. Check out my boss aiden um he is he's he's a man with he's a man with the plan he's helping me with my plans um and yeah he's he's uh set for a massive trajectory of success with his game and also i am uh very much in love with his game so check him, see what he's all about. Check me out online. And thanks for stopping by.

And thank you again, Brody, for your time, for your audience's time. Yeah, thank you. No, it was an absolute pleasure. I had a lot of fun with this. Yeah, if you ever want to do this again in the future with some other random game project you have going on then, I would love to do that. Oh, I would love to keep you updated with my I would love to keep you updated with my work. Do you know what? I will keep you updated with my work every step along the way.

Thanks for being in touch. And I'd love to get this information to you to hopefully get you a few more people to interview before the end of this sort of series, before you start up your next your next indie like the next game series uh the post avcon one um but um yeah i know that my boss would love to speak to you so i will i'm gonna get him involved and thank you again yeah um before we end i'll do my outro so if you want to check out my main channel that is brody robertson i do linux

videos there six-ish days a week the gaming channel is brody on games right now i'm playing through devil may cry 4 very fun game highly recommend it and metal wolf chaos xd where you play as the u.s president who uh his vice president decided to overthrow the government so you fight him in a mech um it's made by from software what platform is that on uh it's on pc it's on everything um it's by from software the when before they made like armored core 6 they released this like years and years ago and if you're listening to the audio version this you can find the video version on youtube at tech over t and the audio version is on any podcast platform there is an rss feed it's on apple podcast put in your favorite app and you'll be good to go give me your final word how do you want to end us off

thank you bro absolute pleasure same to you see you later see ya