The Blindboy Podcast - Brenda and John Romero

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

The inventor of Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein. I chat with two legends of video games history. John and Brenda are founders of Romero games. They have been working in the video games industry since the early 80's. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, we are going to start off this week's Blind Boy podcast on a very cheerful note because I'm going to read you out a piece of poetry that I was sent in by the actor Henry Cavill and it's a really, it's quite a good piece of poetry. This is called Daffodil. Spend ten pence on the bedridden Jesuit's chest. His breasts are a register. Thrust cash in his money lungs. Float his throat on the stock market. Suck tuppence off his collarbone. Swipe your debit card through his tortured mind. Stick your debt up his hole. It's what he wants. your debt up his hole it's what he wants his eyeballs are your creditor let him pay your mortgage stick his debt up your hole his hole is greedy for your debt excellent stuff there by

Henry Cavill who he's quarantining Henry Cavill is quarantining in Monaco and if you liked that poem you're in for a treat because henry cavill has given up acting and while he's quarantining in monica he's writing an entire book of poetry which is only about jesuits carmelites benedictines franciscans cistercians Trappists and Finance so there you go maybe a lucky a lucky patron on the Patreon this month might receive in the post

Henry Cavill's handwritten poem Daffodil as a one off as a one off piece I'm sure Henry wouldn't mind em do you know what men

I've stopped I've stopped referring to it as coronavirus I know I just I just I've stopped because

I'm getting sick of hearing it. And I don't want this podcast to date when someone's listening to it in the future. So instead, I'm going to refer to it as the Goblin of Strange and Uncertain Times. Why are you not leaving your house? Because the Goblin of strange and uncertain times is standing at the end of the road why are you wearing a mask on your face because the goblin of strange and uncertain times wants to stick his fingers in my mouth why are you not going to Aldi and instead you're ordering all of your food online

because the goblin of strange and uncertain times will steal my food why are you not visiting your elderly mother and hugging her because the goblin of strange and uncertain times will threaten her life I'm coming to terms with the goblin of strange and uncertain times will threaten her life I'm coming to terms with the goblin of strange and uncertain times um I miss certain things in particular I really miss going to the gym because it gave narrative to my day like I'm someone I'm kind of lucky enough with the goblin of strange and uncertain times because I work from home anyway aside from gigs which I'd be doing maximum one a week six days of the week I'm kind of at home anyway working from home so for me it's not a huge impact and I'm a bit of a shut-in.

But I miss going to the fucking gym. I, because, I tell you what I miss. I miss the narrative that it added to my day. My day doesn't have narrative anymore. My day has getting up and going to bed. And not getting much outdoors. I do my run, but it's not the same, you see,

because my run, my runs aren't enjoyable. My runs are stressful, because when I go to run, a lot of people just aren't social distancing, and people are walking three abreast, footpaths and that then is stressful instead of me getting on with my day and going I'm running I'm listening to a podcast I'm listening to music I'm now internally policing the behavior of strangers in my head which is stressful so it's

just look at them running past look at them breaking the rules. Who do they think they are? And that's my little pocket of stress. As I run. Because of the Goblin of Strange and Uncertain Times. So I can't wait for that. I can't wait to not give a roaring fuck. How far people are standing apart. I hate that.

When I'm running. And I see two people stopped. Speaking to each other on the street, having fun, that I'm analysing the distance between where they're standing or whether or not they're conscious of my space because that's another thing that the Goblin of Strange and Uncertain Times does. It has changed how i view my environment

and world and it's changed how i view the world into quite an incredibly neurotic way i'm someone who struggled with mental health issues anxiety there's a lot of co-dependencies that go with that when my anxiety would get bad i'd also veer a little bit into hypochondria i'd be very conscious of germs and bacteria or conscious of of people so the fucking goblin of strange and uncertain times causes me to behave in ways that are neurotic whereby if the goblin of strange and uncertain times. Causes me. To behave in ways. That are neurotic. Whereby. If the goblin of strange and uncertain times. Wasn't present.

I'd be going. Fuck man. I shouldn't be thinking like this. I should not be. Looking at door handles. And being worried about touching them. I shouldn't be concerned about. A person's.

Breath. This would be deeply distressing for me and I'd be saying to myself, I need to now examine my mental health because I'm slipping back into anxiety. So I don't like that. But I'm a positive person. As you know from listening to this podcast,

I accept the inevitable suffering of being alive. I embrace it. I embrace what I can't change and when I'm faced with something I can't change I don't react to it I proact that's not a word but I don't get reactive to things to be reactive means to resist to allow anger to allow anxiety to attach myself to the desire for that thing to not exist I can't attach myself to the to the desire that the goblin of strange and uncertain times doesn't exist instead I just notice that they're there and they're not going away for a while and they want to chill out and that's their business so and i'm i'm i'm cherishing the small things i'm cherishing all the things i used to enjoy but took for granted which is that's a nice one i can't fucking wait for my first proper pint I can't wait to be in a pub with friends I can't wait to get out of the fucking country

and go on holidays when those things happen I can't wait to go to a fucking restaurant when these things happen which they will it's gonna feel so mindful and beautiful to do something which was taken away and there's a great opportunity in that there's a great opportunity to not take

for granted the trappings of freedom basically the trappings of freedom and living in a kind of okay society if you have a degree of privilege can't wait to support my favorite pub in Limerick Pharmacia when it reopens and have an old cocktail have a vegan sour and a zombie um which hopefully will be by the end of the summer hopefully so the other thing that the strange and uncertain times goblin is doing is it's giving me a nice kick up the arse into getting my streaming setup sorted every week i'm getting closer and closer to my goal if you were on on Twitch. This week at all. You might have caught me doing. Some live audio streaming.

I had a lovely fucking evening. It was just. I streamed. A lovely video of a fish tank. And I just spoke over it. To whoever was online. And they asked questions. And we had a conversation and it was

like a live podcast and i played the piano music of rioichi sakamoto over the background and i was just chatting to people online trying to get the audio on my stream as good as the audio sound of my microphone here. And I fucking did it. So. Twitch.tv forward slash. The blind boy podcast. I don't have a regular schedule yet. That will be happening. When I know that my. Everything is shit hot and perfect. Very soon.

But you'll catch me on it. Sporadically. Twitch.tv forward slash. The blind boy podcast have you seen actually this week which is thoroughly enjoyable twitter have finally started putting like notifications on donald trump's tweets if he says something that's untrue so if if he spreads a conspiracy theory or just says a fucking lie they will put like a sticker on it that points you towards the correct information so they're essentially flagging the president of america's words by saying this isn't

true click this here's the actual facts and trump has gone apeshit right he was tweeting about he was accusing california of some type of electoral fraud saying that california that there's fraud in their elections he's what he's doing is i think he's scared that he's gonna lose in october and won't get a second presidency so he's sowing the seeds early so that he can say that it's rigged and if there's fraud so that he doesn't actually have to lose if he does that's what he's doing but he's saying things about how their mail order voting system works in california that's just lies straight up lies and now twitter put a tag under his tweet that just says yeah this is lies click on this for the actual facts and donnie's not happy donnie's not happy at all so i'm gonna read out donnie's angry tweets at

twitter as your drunk limerick aunt because I think tonight she needs to get aired out tonight so I'll set the scene again it's the evening she likes the evening it's a lovely May evening with that slanty peach sun coming in the window she's wearing

a satin nightgown that she got in pennies and she hasn't been outside the gaff in a while. Because of the Goblin of Uncertain Times. So the liquor cabinet is bare. She doesn't have her bottle of Merlot. And she doesn't have her gin and tonic. Instead all she has left is a half-open bottle of perno from 2014

and a can of lilt that she found at the back of the press and she's drinking warm lilt and old perno in a coffee mug as the peach sun glistens in the window and reflects off her satin dressing gown and she says twitter is now interfering in the 2020 presidential election they're saying that my statement in may on mail-in ballots which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect. Based on fact-checking by fake news, CNN and the Amazon Washington Post, Twitter is completely stifling free speech, and I, as president, will not allow it to happen. So there was Donald Trump's most recent tweets.

As your drunk limerick aunt. So this week. What I have is. A particularly. Enjoyable live podcast. That I recorded. A good few months back. In Galway. And.

I like putting out live podcasts. During the strange and uncertain. Times of the goblin. Because. We miss the fucking live feeling. I miss doing live gigs so much. I miss. Being in a room full of people.

I miss the sense of community. I miss. The lovely people that come to my live podcasts. I miss the laughter in the room. This is the first time in over 10 years that I've gone this long without being in front of a live audience, which is really odd for me. I haven't seen a live audience in four months. So I have a live podcast here that I recorded with

John Romero and Brenda Romero. This is like, they're video games developers based in Galway, right? But this is the video game equivalent of interviewing Bob Dylan and Kate Bush. This is the video game equivalent of interviewing Bob Dylan and Kate Bush. John Romero is responsible for such video games as Quake and Doom. Just unspeakable levels of legendariness in video games. Brenda has been in video games since 1981. These are pioneers and experts in their field. In a field which, I mean, video games in the early 80s were pretty niche.

Even up until the 90s, no one was taking them seriously. Now video games are the most important industry in the world. I mean, just to put it into context like i'm i'm now trying to become a streamer on twitch part of that is playing video games there's more opportunity for me to earn a living and to have opportunity for me to earn a living and to have cultural relevance playing video games and commenting on them than there is if I try and release music which is just pointless music you release music if you love it and you want to put it out but if you want to earn a living making music unless you're huge forget about it so it's always a pleasure talking to experts and pioneers and it was a fascinating fucking conversation so that's what i'm going to play for you before i get into it of course it is time for

the ocarina pause i'm going to play for you this week uh but lightly not the ocarina the aztec death whistle which is an ancient aztec instrument which is supposed to sound like a person screaming for their life so here is the aztec death whistle pause and you'll probably hear an advert for something. Or me begrudgingly reading out an advert. If you play it lightly actually it doesn't sound like someone screaming for their life at all. It just seems like a wheezy ocean. it's competing with the chair actually let's see if we can get the squeaky chair and the aztec death whistle going together as

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that was the Aztec death whistle pause for some advertising you know what a crack look I'm not going to have gigs for a long time because of the goblin of uncertain times. I will tell you that right now

I am planning a brand new Australia and New Zealand tour for when that is allowed. I can't give you any dates. I have a Vicar Street gig in August. Most of you still have your tickets for that according to the roadmap of ireland that gig is probably going to go ahead by august they said the theaters can open and my show is technically a theater show so i reckon maybe by aug I might be back gigging I don't know um but look I don't have gigs all that income

is gone uh I incurred a lot of debt you know the crack bad time for performers so my sole source of income is the Patreon page that's the only way I can earn money right now. You've been absolutely sound as fuck. You're keeping me going. Alright. My bills are getting paid. Thank you so much to every single person. Who's becoming a patron. People who are listening to this podcast.

Honest the fuck lads. Alright. If I didn't have this. I don't know what the fuck I'd be doing. I'd be very very worried. I'd be very very worried I'd be very very worried because I've got bills and on top of bills I've got debt for cancelling a gig in London so just thank you so much all right um and what I've what I've started to do with the Patreon each month I'm going to announce the first person next week I'm going to announce the first person next week, I'm going to announce it, each month I'm picking one patron, and this one patron, I am going to send you a one-of-a-kind hand-drawn image by me, I'm going to pick you out on Patreon at random,

and I'm going to send you a drawing in the post, Alright. That's signed. And it's by my hand. And it's fucking one of a kind. And there'll be no other one like it. So. That's just a thank you. It's a thank you to all the people who've been really sound. The ones who have stuck. Being patrons.

And the new patrons that I have. Mainly people who are still able to work from home. And just thank you so much. Thank you so much. So if you want to become a patron of the podcast once a month if you're listening to the podcast every week look you know it's a fair bit of labor for me to be doing it it's my job it's my job so if you're listening to the podcast every week there's the option of paying me for the listening that you do for the four hours of podcast i make a month pay me once a month price of a pint price of a cup of coffee all right if you can't afford that you don't have to all right the people who can't afford it please consider paying for the

podcast and you're also paying for the people who can't afford it it's a model based on kindness and soundness pays my fucking bills i'm happy you all get a podcast and now one lucky person a month is going to get a hand drawing in the post a great arrangement a great arrangement i have to say follow me on twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast to see me live streaming which is something that's going to be happening several times a week i'm going to be doing video games just chatting with you like a live podcast i'm going to be doing music doing live fucking music making songs in the moment based on your suggestions i've got a loop pedal in the post that'll be arriving next week um what else oh instagram i finally managed to get my name changed on fucking instagram the name that i had on instagram was rubber bandits official

i got it changed to blind by boat club finally after a long time trying to get it done someone had opened a blind by boat club instagram account with three followers that they didn't use and it took a long time for me to get that name because I don't know look as you know look I started off my career me and Mr. Chrome, as the Rubber Bandits. But we've only re-released three songs since 2013. And in that time, as me, blind boy, I've had a lot of TV series and fucking two books and 150 podcasts. So the Rubber Bandits is just a hobby. And my actual job is blind boy buy so my social media should reflect

that really do you know what i mean so i finally got the name changed on instagram blind buy book club give it a follow nice and easy and simple if you're looking for me so here we go look an in-depth history and context of video games if you don't give a fuck about video games and this isn't something that you're interested in trust me the way that we spoke about it you don't have to know about video games you don't have to care about them brenda in particular frames video games as art and they're both really interesting people and they're pioneers experts and it was a privilege to be able to record this conversation basically so here we go john and brenda romero and just for my american listeners who are going to be shouting

at the podcast at one point at the start i insist to john that he is from arizona when he is in fact from new mexico god bless him he didn't correct me but i really got mixed up between the state of arizona and the state of new mexico i apologize what's the crack? Oh, Jesus. I don't know. Every day there's crack. Yeah, every day. I didn't get you fucking water. Now, I don't know what's going on.

Cian, who's backstage, can you bring two small glasses of water out, if you wouldn't mind? I think he can hear me. How about... Sorry about that. I just brought out one single piece of water for myself. Not even enough for me. Just a piece.

One piece. One small piece of water for myself not even enough for me just a piece one piece one small piece of water and the first obvious question before we get into video games is what the fuck are you doing in Galway it's it is it's like it's most obvious question we get all the time we're making video games yeah but like like there's loads of places to make video games. Why Galway? Galway is where you play bongos. Yeah. Which is far removed from video games.

So the short version of the story, I guess, is I was a Fulbright scholar to Ireland, which makes me sound way smarter than I actually am. What is a Fulbright scholar? That's one of those things I just hear on television. Well, so it means that means that basically means that the two governments get together and they say we want somebody to study this and to give us suggestions and so Ireland wanted suggestions in several universities wanted suggestions about what they could do with their video game programs to

improve the industry here so so I was picked for that so we came over and we drove all around. I mean, we were everywhere. We had sideways rain in Donegal, down to Cork, everywhere. And then we were here for two and a half months and then like, we were in Galway for less than 24 hours, right? We were in Galway for less than 24 hours and then we, when we left we were going back across the uh on the ferry over to over to

um Wales and then down to London and so on but we knew like I was just like we're gonna we got to come back here like it was there was um I mean I think everybody says it but it's there's no place I'd rather be and we can be anywhere in the world we want to be thank you Kate we have enough water for all of our and did you feel like because you're Irish American yeah did you feel like a deep genetic call or was it just this place is nice both I well I don't know like I mean what? Both. Well, I don't know. What does a deep genetic call feel like? I don't know, because I'm from Ireland, but I do. But I just came back from Australia,

and I was talking to a dude in Australia, and he was Indigenous Australian, but also Irish. And he came back to Wexford, and he just said he felt something different. It's just, he's like, something about here reminds me of home. Kurt Cobain had it as well. Kurt Cobain is from Cork, I believe. And he came to Cork and Kurt Cobain said, something about this place just talks to me.

Well, my family would have been from Skibbereen originally. Go away, really? Yeah, the Donovans. So I felt, I mean, we were there as well, but it's, you know, you don't get that far from it. It was just a generation or two, and so my great-grandfather left Cobb from Skibbereen when he was 12. He was a stowaway on a boat into New York, which is ridiculous to think, like the odds of me even being here. So then, you don't get very far from that.

I mean, I had to go to mass on Sunday and I had all the appropriate guilt that I needed to have growing up. We had roasts on Sunday, so there was loads of it. I mean, I even was, I had to memorize, like who's the high king of Ireland? Brian Brewer. What was I like? When's the war of independence? You know, like I was, you know, I was, you couldn't get very far. So when I came back here,

it felt, I felt, oh my goodness, like if there was a scale of how comfortable that I feel in Silicon Valley versus how comfortable that I feel in Galway, it's not even close, you know, I'm like like we're, my only regret about coming here is that we didn't come 10 years sooner. Wow. Yeah, easily. And John, you're from the place that Albuquerque is in. I forgot the name of the state.

You mean Arizona? Arizona, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know. Yeah, John, it wasn't one of those. Yeah, Arizona, next question. It's a pretty big place. You have the opposite of grass in Arizona.

The opposite of Ireland, for sure. And I think Irish and Mexicans have a lot in common. And I'm Native American as well well so there was a lot of similarity and I just I love grass especially if it's mowed can I tell you do you want to hear an interesting Irish Mexican fact so there was there was a group called the trees to San Patricius but do you know the origin of the term gringo I do that how green the grass grows, yeah. There's my fact out the window because they knew what it was. I was going...

How green grows the grass, yeah. So the term gringo comes from the San Patricio Brigade, who were Irish lads who used to sing with the green, green grass at home. And the Mexicans were like, I don't know what they're singing, but it sounds like gringos. Yep. And that's where the word comes from. There you go.

What the fuck was it like making video games in the early 80s? It was fun. Yeah. I programmed games all through the entire 80s. It was really great. But, like, how do you even, like, okay, now if someone wants to get into video games, like, video games like video games are such a huge part of culture but like back then what the fuck like

how do you even decide this is something you want to do or have the confidence to know that this could be a career I you know I got it's I my brother was a musician before me and he wanted to grow up and be a rock star, so he sort of primed my parents for how ridiculous somebody could be. But it was in the early 80s, there was no industry, right? People were still, even when I graduated college in the late 80s, it was, well, okay, now what are you going to do for a real job? And I just kept making games, and it's been 38 years now. But it was, I don't know, like, it was great.

It was like any new industry, you know? You didn't know where it was going, and you felt, you knew you were on the verge of something. And I'm going to steal something I know you always say, and I don't know if you're going to say it, so I'll just steal it. He stole your Gringos thing. But he didn't steal it, he just knew it beforehand. So I know it beforehand so I know beforehand so he um he said you know if I can just grow up and do nothing but make video games my whole life like if I can do this like it's all I want to do and like he's done it like unless he somehow goes into insurance in the next 10 years but is it true that you are the longest running woman in the video games industry? Yeah.

Holy fuck. Since 81. When she was 15, her first full-time job was in the game industry. Unbelievable. How the fuck do you get a job in video games at 50? Did you even know what it was? This is a good story if you want to hear it. Literally, first day of work.

What happens? It's the most ridiculous job anybody could ever have. Here's how I even got the job. I grew up in northern New York, which is covered in snow most of the time. I was in the bathroom smoking because you want to go outside. Not that you should smoke.

You're not going to get a job in the game industry smoking or anything. Rule number one, smoke in the toilet. Go on, Brenda. So then this woman came in. Actually, she was 15, and she was looking for a cigarette. So to be polite, she strikes up a conversation with me because I gave her one, and she said, Do you happen to have a job? No.

And had I ever heard of wizardry which I hadn't had I ever heard of Sir tech also hadn't and she said have you ever heard of D&D and I did because my mother that's don't in the dragon yeah my mother my Irish Catholic mother bought me Dungeons and Dragons when I was 11 I she couldn't have known what it was right but so I knew what D&D was. And so my first day of work was, this is an Apple II, and I saw color on the screen for the first time. Like if anybody's ever put on VR for the first time and they go, oh my God. Like for me, seeing color on a computer was the same type of magic.

And so my first day on the job was playing a game. And I was a and I was kid who was 15 who was paid to memorize games so that if you would call and say I would say wizardry hotline and then somebody would say how do you kill the wizard on the 10th level and I would say well you have to go down to the fourth level on the fourth level you get the blue ribbon the blue ribbon will take you through the private elevator door you take the private elevator to the ninth level you go out there's a door on your immediate left, you go

into the corner, there's a teleporter that goes down to the tenth level, there's a series of seven hallways and at the end of the seventh hallway there's a word in it and if you kill him you win the game. My brain is full of this garbage right now still. Full of it. It's a mad thing there. So when I was a kid and I used

to get Nintendo games, I'd see there was an American number and I just thought it was,, I'd see there was an American number. Yeah. And I just thought it was, I didn't think it was real. I didn't think. Well, I was in for all the games. How many people would ring a day? Oh, it was constant.

There was three lines. And hello, Wizardry Hotline, please hold. Wizardry Hotline, please hold. And they'd fill up. Yeah. But what's the purpose? Like, you're literally trying to help people to win a game. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, this was was I was a human FAQ I was the internet. I was the answer You would call me Because there wasn't an internet to look on at the time like but what's the incentive for the games company to have that? Well, some companies charged money for it. Ah, okay. They didn't. They didn't. But the incentive is, it's like if you're playing a game and you really liked it.

You know what? I don't think it was that altruistic. I think it was because they were getting calls at home. I do. And so I think they set this up so people would stop calling them at home. Because their name is Cirotech.

Yeah. Cirotech Software. So they would just look in the phone book and call them. Okay. I think that's probably why it happened. And John, you... So John has developed...

Have you ever heard of Doom? And Quake? Wolfenstein. And Wolfenstein. Yeah. Like, is it fair to say that... Like, the games that you've made, they're like the Sgt. Pepper's of games.

They literally changed what games were. Is Doom the first 3D shooter, or was there ones before it? Well, yeah. Shooters kind of started in 1974, and they were very slow and only turned 90 degrees and moved very slowly. And ours were like the first real fast shooters. And getting it that fast allowed us to start developing the language of what that kind of design was going to be.

And Wolfenstein was the first really good one that we made. It was our fourth shooter. What year was Wolfenstein? 1992 on May 5th. And so that was the beginning of the fast, like the actually well-done fast shooter. But Doom is where we kind of got it to a point where there was enough design in it and enough of a really cool environment

that it was something that everyone could see as the future of this kind of game. And then we did Quake, which is the first fully 3D shooter, and it played over the internet, and it was the first game to allow you to look around with a mouse. And it is also the blueprint for a lot of the stuff that you see today. Call of Duty still has some code in it from Quake because it used the Quake engine.

Half-Life, you name it, these games were all kind of influenced by that. Yeah. Just a quick question there, just so I don't know the answer. If like Call of Duty is still using part of an engine that you designed, does that mean you get a small bit of money? No, it might. I left id Software in 1996 and that was it.

You're sometimes credited as the person who introduced extreme violence to video games. Would you disagree or agree with that? There was violence in games before that. Have you ever played any arcade games in the 80s? Yeah but was that not just shooting spaceships though? You're not shooting a Nazi into the face with a gun. Mortal Kombat? Mortal Kombat was before Doom. It came out before Doom yeah.

I think it was probably the same year 1993 earlier. On December 9th, so Doom is released on December 10th. I'm kind of arguing against you, I guess. Doom is released on December 10th, and on December 9th, 1993, on the U.S. Congress, on the floor of the U.S. Congress, they were debating violence in video games, talking about Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, which then were considered to be the absolute pinnacle of horror in games. And unbeknownst to them, in Dallas, Texas, they're about to release Doom the next day.

The next day. So it was quite possibly the worst slash best time release ever. So when I think of the culture of late 80s, early 90s, especially America, I think of, we said the Reagan era, I think of moral panic with protecting children from ideas of sex and violence. What was that environment like? And do you think it'd be different to today? I think for us I mean for us

we're like in high school in the 80s and it was mostly about like avoiding nuclear war. Everybody was really afraid of a nuclear war happening and other than that everyone was playing games in the arcade. Was that was that so that was like a thing that you'd think about every day? Oh yeah. Oh sure. I mean I grew up because it was in northern New York there were the Messina Locks. So Messina is a city about 30 miles from where I grew up and the Messina Locks controls access to all the Great Lakes. So they thought for sure that that was going to be one of the places. Gosh it's funny to think about that. Like I remember... Was that like your climate anxiety? Because you know the way like kids today are genuinely getting anxiety over

what's going to happen with the climate. Was that equivalent yeah yeah yeah I didn't worry about it as much as I didn't worry about it as much as you did I mean you lived on a military base yeah I was actually in England for uh most of my high school which was yeah coming from California we moved to England to be closer to Russia because my father was in the spy program doing reconnaissance. I have to ask you about that. Your fucking dad was a spy. His stepdad.

Yeah, my stepdad. He used to have stuff, mail coming to the house with someone else's name on it. I was like, why do they keep on delivering the wrong mail? Did you know your stepfather was a spy? No, not until way later after that. What did you think he was? I just thought he worked at the Air Force base.

He didn't tell me what he did, but he was always off in countries where if something happened, the government would never say that he actually was there. So he was like a deep spy. He was, well, he had top-secret clearance, and he was the one who basically had to get the recorded, all the recorded videos and photographs off of the black boxes on the planes

and get them off those black boxes onto tape so they could analyze them. I had such a boring life. And he had to do it immediately when the plane landed. So wherever the spy plane was downed or wherever it was forced to land or something ran out of gas, depending on what was going on, he had to go there to actually get the stuff off

before it was bombed or they were taken hostage or whatever. Have you ever asked him about UFOs? No, I didn't. Why not? That'd be the first thing I'd be asking. It's like if he worked with spy planes... Didn't believe in UFOs, so I guess I did ask him about it. You don't believe in UFOs?

No. Did you not see any around... Because there aren't most UFOs around where you're from? Yeah Haven't haven't been out to area 51. I'll ask him I heard a real story an amazing theory recently about I heard the most plausible explanation for Roswell Which they claimed right that?

Yes, there was a crash in Roswell yes bodies were recovered but apparently the Russians had basically gotten like kids and grown them in in a contorted way and like kids that were like abandoned and had had made their heads larger, seriously, and put them into this craft and crashed it in America as a way to freak out America. So America are just dealing with this crash. It's like, what the fuck are these things? That's a pretty cool conspiracy theory. But it's plausible.

It's a good video game. And then they're going, I don't know what the fuck a Russia are doing, but I'm not fucking with them because I don't know what that is. It's the most plausible thing I've ever heard. Regarding that theory. You've never seen a UFO in Arizona? No.

No? Did you see any UFOs? Anywhere. Just any time I get Americans on, I ask them about UFOs. No, I did in 1979, I did. It was Close Encounters, this movie that came out. Do you think your childhood with a stepfather who was a spy, did that influence you in any way in the games you make?

No, not at all. No, i was just but you made a game about a guy who kills nazis and stuff like that was a long time after that was like 13 years after i started programming games uh so i started programming i started programming games in 1979 and uh it was because i loved arcade games. And I found out that the local college, I could play games at the local college. So I went up to the local college in the summertime of 79 and I started playing the games there

that were not like arcade games because they were on a mainframe, which is a giant computer that fills a room. And I found out that I could actually program that computer. So I started asking the college students what they were typing in and was writing it down, and then I got on a terminal and started to experiment with the basic programming language, and then when I couldn't be at the college,

I would go to all the local stores because they had computers, Radio Shack and stuff like that, and I just started learning how to program. For probably about three years, I was programming anywhere I could, the college and stores, until we finally got a computer at the house and then I could just not go outside anymore. Did you find that like when you were going to the college, were the students helpful? Like what did you just think? Yeah, they were totally helpful.

I couldn't believe that I even kicked out of there there because I was 11 I wasn't actually going to college yeah they were really helpful and someone I think someone got tired of me asking questions and then gave me a book an HP basic book here read this so then that was great I love the book

one thing I want to know about and I asked you backstage so both of you come from quite poor backgrounds. You didn't grow up with a lot of money. And when I think of America, I think of access to third-level education is very difficult if you don't have money. So how did you both access third-level education, or did you? I didn't go to college.

Yeah, he went and then felt he was wasting his time and left. But how did you even... I already learned how to program on my own, so I didn't really need to... But was it community college or was it... Community college, yeah. I was already published in making games by that time. I went to...

I wanted to go... I wanted to be an accountant, because mind you, I'd been in the game industry now for three years at this point, but it wasn't like, nobody says I want to grow up and be a game designer. What kind of crazy thing is that to say? I didn't even know the term game designer, and we would have called them programmers then anyway.

But I wanted to become an accountant, and so I went to Clarkson University. And it was, I think, $24,000 a year. And this is in 1984 dollars. And we had no money. I mean, I remember when I was in college, I played poker to get extra money to pay my rent and stuff like that. And it's not that I'm good at poker. It's that I'm sober and they were drunk.

So I didn't cheat, but I was just, you know, it didn't take much, right? But, but yeah, so I, I mean, I, if you don't have money, the thing about it is, is if you don't have money, at least when I was there, you can get loans. And if you're smart, you get some, you get grants, and you get this and that. But the problem is, is that I graduated school in 89, and I paid off my student loans in 2003. That's a long time. 14 years. Yeah, so basically kids graduate with a huge amount of debt.

And nowadays, you know, they can graduate with $100,000, more than that, $200,000 worth of debt. And that's just completely unacceptable and untenable. You know, it just means that the people who start behind or you know get out of college and then they're even further behind that's just it's just wrong I just I think it's completely ridiculous like I've I saw today that USC University of Southern California is doing and I've just saw it like literally somebody posted this on Facebook and I saw it tonight that they're offering free

education to people who earn less than 80,000, which in California is like earning, I don't know, it's like minimum wage there. But that's like a step in the right direction. I think for me, for us, code was a way out. Making games allowed us to put food on the table, to be able to not have the lights go off, to always have a roof over our head, to not worry about being homeless, to have a car to drive, or gas in the car, or access to the basics of life. And everybody should have that.

Everybody should be able to come from wherever they are and get education and go further. Everybody. You shouldn't be hampered because you didn't have enough money, that's so wrong. So even though here I know there's fees and they're going up, you know, education is a right, people should be able to access that. I just feel very strongly about it.

Would you get a rapturous round of applause in America if you expressed that opinion? If I were speaking to students strapped with debt, yeah. They would love that. But, you know, like, I was teaching at a university, I won't say which one, but they had a professional master's program and it was $65,000 a year. Like, what? Can I swear?

Fuck yeah. Okay, Jesus Christ. Whatever whatever you want what in the fuck you know like that was just it was such a it's like the the problem is is then you just end up with a school full of privilege yeah right and and and I have remember this other incident and this was also at a college where um where I taught where they wanted to consistently know how this one student was doing and I thought why do you keep calling me about this? Is there something I should be worried about? And it turned out that that student, no, there was nothing to be worried about.

That student came from an underprivileged family. Or sorry, no, he didn't. That student came from an incredibly wealthy family. And they wanted to make sure that that student was always happy and doing well, because the parents might donate. Meanwhile, I have a student in the same class who is a single mother. Like, why aren't people calling to find out how she's doing? Because she's the one who needs the phone calls.

She's the one who needs the support. And that really colored the way I see private education in the U.S. Like, colored it, it's just painted it black. It's just wrong. And one of the things I noticed too because I'd be quite supportive of like I get frightened whenever I see student fees go up because with any industry that's creative you have to not even creative anything that's even entrepreneurial you need to allow people to have space to

fail how the fuck do you get out of college and fail when the first thing you have to worry about is a 30 grand debt? It's impossible. You can't fuck up, and you have to be able to fuck up if you want to success. Basically. Yeah. Yeah.

Even today, right, video games is seen as a male-dominated industry. Like, what was it like in 1981? Like were you literally the only woman around? Funny enough, no. The company that I started, where I started at Certec, I was the fifth woman. And there were five guys, five women.

And that was not, well, it would have been more normal. Yeah, totally normal. Yeah, it would have been more normal. There were more women in programming than there were men in the early days. Yeah, in the early days. What cultural thing happens that changes? She'll tell you. Well, I think, so like super high speed version,

it's a women invented programming, Ada Lovelace. The most hardcore programming language was invented by Kathleen Booth. It's assembly language. Grace Hopper invents the compiler, COBOL, and names bugs even, like a bug in a computer language. The ENIAC, which was the first mainframe, programmed by an all-female coding team, including Kay McNulty, Irish-speaking from Donegal. She created the basic language. Yeah.

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller. Kenneth Keller, that's it. Yeah, made basic. Anyway, so there was loads. What? Yeah. Sister Mary Kenneth Keller. Kenneth Keller, that's it. Yeah, made basic. Anyway, so there was a lot. What? Sister Mary what? Kenneth Keller. Made basic programming language.

The programming language, yeah. Yeah, so this is, my head is full of this stuff. Was she a nun? Yeah. Hold on a second. Was this a job on the side? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. site? I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Actually, I don't know. But yeah, I guess so. She was involved in the creation of Basic. And was this computer or was it like... No, this is, there's a picture of... What the...

There's a picture of her even standing by a computer, like all smiling in her full nun's habit. There really is. you can look it up can you is there any kind of socio-cultural exploration explanation as to why it appears that computers were so open not that the environment was open to women then and then something changed yes so this is so here's what, at around, so 60s coming into the 70s, still lots of women, IBM is calling measuring coding and girl hours. And then they realized that this computer stuff that seems like faddish and is going

to actually be way more important than they thought. They need to train lots of people. And in the 70s, it was, you know, it was a very misogynistic culture. I mean, we had ads. If you look at some of the ads at the time, there's like a woman across somebody's guy's lap, and he's going to spank her because she didn't make dinner right or something. And I'm describing a real ad. I wasn't making that one up.

So when they said, okay, we need you to be trained, and we're going to bring in this woman to train you, it was like, hell no. So there's lots of instances of people replacing women as managers and then because they need more coders the value of coding starts to go up and as that money becomes, because as these jobs become more valuable and aren't thought of as menial labor, which they were at the time, we see a lot more men come in and as more men come in and the value goes up, women are sort of pushed out. And that's what happened. And do you feel as well there might have been an element of...

Do you know the way secretarial work or the idea of working with a typewriter would have been seen as quite feminine? Well, that's what it was. Women were called computers. They were computing on those machines. That's where the term computer comes from. And it was secretarial work, so they just called it

menial detail-oriented tasks. And would it have been seen as something that for a man to be involved in it would have demasculated him? Well, you would, men at the time, hardware engineers were glorified.

They made the computers. Yeah. So they fixed the hardware and then the woman was the computer. Yeah, and so when did you start to see the more recent shift where Like video game game culture can be seen as kind of a toxic bro culture where women are very much shouted out and excluded Do you feel a responsibility that you might have contributed to toxic video game bra culture? I

Basically started it Unfortunately, I used to squeeze to scream at each other playing deathmatch. I mean it was really fun Used to I still do Every yeah every Thursday night. We have a Quake tournament in the office. I mean, I just scream my head off. But it's fun. It's not like we mean it when we're yelling at each other. Afterward, it's like, man, that was a great game.

That was so awesome. And that culture does not exist in Candy Crush. Yeah. But at the same time, I don't know that there's like, I could also play death match and i have death match to him and i've said all kinds of to him right and i don't necessarily think like we don't necessarily look at hockey where people punch each other out and go oh that's a misogynistic bro culture because i could go into a rink and punch somebody out too

yeah right so but i think where where the problem comes from is when, is twofold. One, when we start to see this weird division, like nobody called me a female game designer until somewhere in the mid-90s. Wow. And I never got those questions like, what's it like to be a female programmer? What's it like to be a female game designer? I'm like, oh, no, I haven't been a panda game designer. I'm not really, I don't know.

It's, I am what I am. been a panda game designer. I'm not really, I don't know. It's, I am what I am. So, and then, like, just sort of the anonymous internet hurling, you know, when you start getting microphones, and it's like, what can I say to you? What is this thing I can find about you to pick on? Oh, you're, you're, you're saying things about people's gender or that sort of stuff. And that's where, like, I don't feel, I don't feel toxicity is by any sense limited to just bro versus not bro. There's, like, toxicity is like a black soup, right? I mean, there's so much stuff people can be toxic about. So, you know, I don't necessarily know that it's just that.

I mean, you know, I've heard all kinds of garbage, you know, just walking around in World of Warcraft. You know, so... you know just walking around in World of Warcraft you know so one of the things I wanted to do tonight was like I love video games I love playing video games but I wouldn't be like real obsessive into how video games are made and things that I'm quite happy to just consume them as an art form and I wanted to try and keep tonight tonight to for it to not be nerdy because I was afraid that with people like ye you just get asked nerdy questions all the time yeah but I wanted to keep it more about the

philosophy and the underpinnings of video games but there's a few questions from Twitter that people really wanted to know specifically about, and a recurring question was, you had a video game, John, called Daikatana, which is considered, is it considered a flop? Is it considered a fabulous flop? What would you call it? Yeah, the press was really, really bad with Daikatana when it came out, because I think it's a game that came out after Quake, so everybody's expecting the best game on the

planet. And there was just a lot of mistakes made during the making of Daikatana, so it didn't turn out as well as I was hoping, but it actually made money. The game actually made the money to pay for itself

Where Deus Ex was really the game that took off and did really really well and was a game of the year At least I katana didn't pull the whole place down, but it wasn't a success It wasn't a better than quake type game when I saw if I was to if I was to talk about what I believe the diatana story to be based purely on what I've read online, I get this vision of Quake was huge and Doom was huge. where there's just like gold carpets and mountains of cocaine and everything going absolutely insane and money being funneled in and then you come out with this game how accurate is that it's pretty close it was a really cool space yeah was that element of it true where it's like you just went drunk on success oh no and had this crazy opulent life. No, I was trying to give a lot of people, I brought a lot of people in on the team that

were super passionate about what they did. And I needed people that were really passionate about making levels and programming and all that. But I didn't have industry veterans on the team, which is what you really do need to mentor other people and to know processes of development and how to get things done. So it was like the first job for almost everyone on the team

and I was the only person who had ever made a game before. So it was like, oh, it's a school. So it was like three years teaching this team of passionate people how to get a game made and get it out which means that um it's almost like you're starting over you're starting to make a game from nothing versus a team who's been together for years and has 10 years of experience behind them it's like hey everyone we're gonna make a game and you've never done before and here's we're're going to try and do it. So it was a totally different situation. But those people are in the industry.

They've been in the industry for a long time, 20 years now, since Daikatana came out. And on my team there was at least 40 people and 120 in the entire company and they're all still in the industry so at least we got to you know bring a bunch of people into into the game industry so that's an important thing so I spoke earlier but I think failure is essential for art to have a good attitude to I know I don't believe failure exists in art because if I look at anything in my career like my

thing would have been writing for television so I'd have had a bunch of projects that I put a lot of work into and then they don't get picked up but then what happens is that something which would have been considered or that didn't work or that didn't get picked up those ideas or the things that I learned from them then turn into successes. Is video games like that? Sure. Yeah. I mean, like... It's mostly like that. Yeah. That's probably true. Like, it's... Like, there was a game, a role-playing game that I

pitched on Kickstarter, which is sort of a very public way to succeed or fail. Like, video games die all the time. Like, for every one that you might hear of, 100 didn't make it. So we pitched this Kickstarter and it failed. It failed spectacularly. And I remember barely sleeping. I've been in the industry at that point probably 30 years. Nobody was saying anything to me,

but the silence was humiliating. Because you know you know everybody knows that you're tanking it right and and i don't know what i thought like people are going to come from my video game developer card not that we have one but pretend that we did um but i really felt like i don't know what i thought and then it failed and it failed publicly and spectacularly and it was so liberating. Like, I'd fucked up, and I still kept going, right? And then it makes failure not scary. It was freeing.

It was freeing. It's like, I make, you know, I make mistakes every day, every day. I ask my kids probably many multiple times a day. And it's like, it's okay, because sometimes, you know, so we were talking backstage about Black Sabbath, you know, it was a mistake that led to the sound that is heavy metal. Yeah. Like a series of like, oh, that's bad. Oh, that's a failure. That's a failure. Oh, that's Black Sabbath. So it's, so no, I don't have a fear of failure. I mean, I think if you do fear it, if you don't like, you, you're,

if you're caught in success, you're caught in failure. Absolutely. You have to have those two because you're going to get one or the other. But it's like the people who, if you're afraid of that, that automatically gets rid of a whole bunch of people. But if you are willing to hold both of those in your hand, there's a chance you might succeed. And it's scary. Which one are you going to get? But you just have to keep trying to polish that court as much as you can. Sometimes I actively search for failure as part of my creative process to completely liberate myself so if i'm writing a

short story like i've got a short story in my last book uh where the actor gabriel bern on the set of the usual suspects figures out a way that he can create his own system restore points by snorting his own skin. That he saves up like bags of his skin from when he was like six and when he was ten and then he snorts the skin and he can revisit himself internally when he was six years of age. And that started

off as an idea that came into my head going, that's so fucking stupid and ridiculous that I have to turn this into 10,000 words. And it ended up being like a story that I'm really, really happy with. But that for me is, if the anxiety is this has to be good,

why not go think of something fucking stupid and go, no, I'm going to run with this and I'm going gonna see where this takes me and i've immediately at that it's a bit like it reminds me of the buddhist principle of accepting and confronting death if you start a project with an idea that you consider to be bad and investigate it with all your creativity that for me will most likely end up in a success rather than if I go at it in a very a cognitive fashion where I you know research my favorite writers and I decide what do I consider to be a good story and it's very methodical and if I do that then I'm not getting to my soul I'm not getting to the heart of

me where creativity comes from because at the end of the day it it's fun and play. Creativity is always, it's that moment when you're a child and you're playing with something and you don't care what the Lego is going to be because you're simply doing and acting. It's not about, I'm going to make something good that my parents will like. It's I'm doing because doing is fun. You know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like the coolest moments uh the coolest moments in video games like if you're a video game player and you've said like oh my god like those there's two moments in the game i'm currently working on where they're bugs wasn't intentional it was a mistake something was overpowered and didn't work the way it was supposed to and that's failure and

but somebody saw it and was like that is so cool and on the one hand it's like no that's actually broken that's way too powerful but for me it's like when i hear people say that sort of stuff i'll take that failure and turn that into something people love can you talk about romero games which is the company that you have now in galway and talk about we'll say something you're working on right, but I understand it's it's weird to talk about shit That's isn't out. Yes. Oh sure. Yeah, I can talk about so it's working on a game called Empire of sin, which is It's gonna be one person

A little sharp that sounded like a sentient rain Well, I can talk about so in Empire in Empire of Sin, it is, I'll get more of that. Well, let's see. Empire of Sin, you play one of 14 mob bosses in Chicago during Prohibition, including Al Capone. And we have, to my knowledge, this is the first game that will feature a Hurley as a weapon. Yes. Frankie Donovan. Frankie Donovan. He has a Hurley.

And this is the bug. This is the bug. The thing I was talking about. So Frankie, he's got his Hurley, and he's supposed to just, he gets more, he gets excited when he hits somebody with it, right? So it's supposed to just be like he hits one guy, and this charges him up, and he hits another. But the bug was that it didn't stop charging him up. Right? So Frankie is in this place with like 15 guys and he's just getting, killing that guy and then that guy and then that guy. And like basically when it's done, like he's just waiting for somebody. And so when they tested it, they were like, this is the greatest fucking weapon ever in a game.

So people loved it. So funny enough, we're trying to keep that, right? And it means that I have to figure out, this thing that actually is a failure, what do I do for Frankie that is his downside of this superpower and super Hurley he has? But yeah, so anyway, so Frankie's in the game.

And like, Brenda, you were telling me like you're obsessed with prohibition. Yeah, well, criminal. But the Hurley, was the Hurley, is that a deliberate thing based on anything historical or did you just decide to put a Hurley in a video game? Well, so it is. So my family, so it is. So my

family, so my great-grandfather Paddy Donovan during that time, he would have brought over, he would have also been running alcohol and I didn't want to put him in the game as Paddy Donovan because I thought nobody's gonna believe that. It's a very Irish name. It's too Irish. It sounds like an American making up an Irish name. No, exactly. I know. Exactly. I know. He was born on St. Paddy's Day. Oh, for fuck's sake. I know. I know. Like, I can show, I can prove it with a birth certificate even. Now I feel like I need to put that online to prove it. But, so, so he changed his name to Frankie. Okay. And so, so yeah, so there's a historical basis for that. And even during like Prohibition times, there was this, there was a lot of tension between the Irish and Italian in Chicago and the Irish-Americans and the Italian-Americans.

But yeah, I've had a long fascination. My mom wouldn't explain to me why this one bar in the town where I grew up never closed. And I would try to say, well, why didn't the cops just shut it down? And she didn't want to say, well, because they were looking the other way. They wanted to drink too. She didn't try to say well why didn't the cops just shut it down and she didn't want to say well because they were looking the other way they wanted to drink too she didn't want to she didn't want to say that so she just kept evading the questions and inadvertently spawned a lifelong fascination with criminal empires um can you tell us a bit, you designed a game, I can't think of what it was called, Schnacht or something?

Sheikhan Lot? Yes, what is that? I should know now because I'm supposed to be able to speak fucking Irish, but I can't. You designed, it wasn't a video game, was it? It was a game about, so I was trying, I just wanted to make, so this is more on the non-video game, like games as, I guess games as art. That's the bit I'm trying to get my head around. So I wanted to make a game just with my own hands,

without code, and I think somebody, like let's just imagine that you wanted to write something about particularly moving experience. You might do something like this. You might have a podcast about it. If there's a writer in the audience, you might write a book, you might write a song. there's all kinds of stuff. But I'm a game designer. So I wanted to see if I could express a difficult emotion or a difficult situation in a

game. So I decided to think about like, why did my family go to the States? And it primarily comes from the Cromwellian invasion, losing of the land. So if you have any system that traumatically affects people, if there's a system involved, which obviously there is, then I can make a game about it, because that's all games are. So I made a game in which you are trying to, basically you can't win the game.

So the English have already won the game. And so the goal is... You just summed up Irishness. So the goal of the game is to lose the least. Wow. And so it's basically Irish people during that time, especially trying to either to Heller, to Connaughton, trying to figure out who, trying to make sure that you have a place for your family and food for your family, and if not, then you end up going to, at that point in time, it was either to the States or to Barbados, where many Irish were sent. And so that's what the game's about.

And so your goal is to lose the least. Would you have any interest in turning that into a video game? Because I think people would love it. Like, I want to fucking play against Cramwell! Well, I I mean I could make a video game about that like this game like this game what I did because I really wanted to put everything into it so like my mom's rosaries are inside the game like I actually sewed the whole thing by hand and it's got two big panes of glass so it's it's like if you see if you see a picture of it online, I mean it's, you know, it's a big game.

How would you, because that sounds like, are you familiar with an artistic movement called the Situationists? No. So they were a movement in the 60s, the 50s and 60s. I think Yoko Ono was involved in them, but they used to make these things called Situationist boxes, which was a piece of interactive art that you'd put in a gallery and it might it could be like a medicine cabinet and you open it up and there's several different objects that you interact with and when i was

looking at those games that you were making that are like existing also as pieces of art i was going wow this is like a situation yeah it is i hadn't heard of that but you're right yeah that's very similar. So, I mean, they are. They're painted or in some cases built. Like I have one that I'm doing about the Trail of Tears, which is the... What's the Trail of Tears? The Trail of Tears is when basically the U.S. people, the settlers in the U.S. needed more land,

so they decided we'll take it from the Native American tribes. So it was the displacement of five tribes in the Southeastern US. So depending on which history you read, some history says 17,000 people died on the Trail of Tears or were forcibly displaced from their land. But obviously the victors write the history, right? So I guessed it was probably closer to 50,000 people. And so I decided to make, this is nuts, don't ever do this, but I decided to make a game with 50,000 hand-painted pieces.

And so in my reasoning being that I want you to look, like in the game it's called One Falls for Each of Us, and I want people, you know, we think about what happens to these big groups of people. I want somebody to actually see what 50,000 looks like. Like, what does 50,000 pieces look like? And I had somebody suggest to me, like, oh, you should put them at least, like, put them on mats so there's, like, 1,000 taped to a mat or something like that. And I thought, no, fuck you.

You're going to move 50,000 pieces if you want to play my game. So I'm now at 35,000 pieces if you want to play my game so so I'm now at I'm not 35,000 painted pieces and I'll get there I mean I'll get there before I die I hope and if not I'll will them to my kids and then they'll finish the game but it's like I love that idea and then in just showing how these tragic situations, like it gives people a chance to experience them and to sort of, it's sort of like you're slightly removed from it, but yet you can see it and it's really impactful

because you can't, a movie, a book, all these things aren't interactive you can't feel your agency on those things but you can see your agency and you can see the systems moving you can see fundamentally how these things were wrong and maybe how these things also have have had not maybe they were wrong but you can see how um you can see how these patterns tend to repeat themselves through time what i find really interesting about your idea and how it as well how it patterns tend to repeat themselves through time. What I find really interesting about your idea and how it's similar to art is we think of games as being fun. And when you introduce 50,000 pieces, I'm not having fun.

It's laborious and true. I'd imagine through the sheer pain and effort of dealing with 50,000 pieces, I now have to reflect on what we're dealing with, what the subject matter is. Could you speak about, cause it's one thing you do talk about, we were all speaking about it backstage, viewing video or viewing games as art.

And you were talking about, you know, a book is allowed to do this, a film is allowed to explore this theme and this pain, but all of a sudden you start fucking bringing games into it and people are like, whoa, you can't have a game about that. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting thing, too, because, you know, people tend to think of games as sort of kids play, even though culturally they weren't. You know, the first board games that we see showing up are actually for adults, they're parlor games, and then we have electromechanical games which are also for adults. So by the time video games are all around, at some point in time we start thinking of them as video game must be fun and it must be for kids. And if it doesn't fit both of those things

then it's a problem. And we wouldn't, we would say, for instance, like Grand Theft Auto is completely wrong, and obviously we can't have that, but we can have Reservoir Dogs, and let's talk about maybe giving that an Oscar, right? Yeah. And so, you know, I think games, like any medium, should have the right to that full range of the human experience.

One of the games that I think is breathtaking, I've talked about this before, to me I don't know that another game will top it, it's called That Dragon Cancer. And it is a devastating game. It is a game, it's made by the Green family, it was about their young son's battle with cancer. He dies and then the game is about their struggle with their faith. And it is breathtaking, breathtaking, incredibly generous of this family to do this. And I've had people say, like, how could they possibly do this?

But yet at the same time, Eric Clapton makes a song about his son's death. And that's incredible. And so, you know, I feel like we're just, it's just where we are in history, right? That right now this is how we view games, is these fun diversions instead of this art form that is interactive, that has the potential to do anything. And I would expect that my kids, you know,

they have availed of all kinds of technology and that if they want to express themselves and there's something that they want to say, games are just going to be one of the ways they can express it or music or books or whatever. One thing I find strange, though, is why do you think violence was the one thing whereby if society views games as this is fun and it's very much kids but here's a game where you're shooting people in the face but that's fine because you did it out as well with that you're like an authority on sex within games what why

is violence okay in games but the the idea of... Like the only sex that I only remember in games was, it was very much objectification. Like Duke Nukem, that was the first time I saw a pair of tits in a game. But then my second experience was when Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, the hot coffee mod, where there was a leaked mod in this game. It never got released, but where your central character could physically have sex. You're literally making them have sex, and this was seen as utterly unacceptable.

You could drive up a character that could have sex done to them. That was okay. But as soon as you're putting the control and the agency to go do the most natural thing in the world, and the thing is, it wasn't problematic. You're going on a date with someone in the game and having consensual sex. It was after the fifth date as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It was. That's the thing. That's the thing. But in the same game, it was perfectly acceptable. You'd, you know, roll up, get a sex worker, and most people would shoot the sex worker afterwards

to get the money back. That's what most people did in the game. It's like, you just gave her the money, you could just shoot her and take it back. That was fine. But then you have consensual sex where you're engaging with it and you're controlling like what the fuck is that about? You know this is

probably not an expected answer but I my answer is that's American culture. Gun culture So like if you look at other cultures other ratings bodies say in the US

the ratings body you can get much more violence than you can have sex for an M rating if you go to say Germany it's the other way around right like you can't have a ton of violence in the game in fact until very recently you couldn't show blood in a game in Germany I can understand why the Germans are a bit like that considering what... So, I mean, I think the US is one of the primary makers of games, right? And so I think what you are seeing is a reflection of societal acceptance. And now I think it's... Here's just to interrupt, because it just came into my head.

Is it possible that the acceptance of violence within U.S. games is a symptom of American violent colonialism, of a culture of pushing kids towards the military and expanding? Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, the U.S. military do use games now to train kids, don't they? Yeah. America's Army, yeah. The very first first-person shooter

was called Mazor, developed by the US government. To train? I don't know if it was used to train. I mean, why else would they build it? But I think if you look at responses like, you did this, we're going to, that's it,

we're going to beat you up, we're going, you know, that's it, we're gonna beat you up, we're gonna bomb you, that sort of stuff, that sort of, that gets into the general, just the general culture. So, you know, I don't know, I know a lot of, I know I have a head full of wizardry trivia, a head full of sex and games trivia, a fascination with criminal empires, but I think you're right, but I don't know enough to say yeah. Tell us, you said Japan's pretty good for sex games. Yeah, they are. What's that about um like is it a shameful thing is this like if here's the thing if my mother walked in on me

looking at porn I'd be embarrassed but I just say to her ma I'm an adult it's porn okay if she walked in on me playing a porn game I would have to leave the country you know what I mean it's there would be a definite sense of shame around I think what the shit the shame with playing a sex game is you're supposed to be doing it in real life and there's a sense it but like what why in japan it's perfectly normal in japan there's a bunch of sex games well there's yeah a bunch of hentai fucking women like that the only reason that i'm laughing is because the game that i don't even

know if you were there but the game we're talking about backstage it's called this is terrible there's a game called bungaa, which is a fisting game And it's an arcade game like with like for your it's a real game How do you win Well it involves to your fist for starters, but it's your's it's a stand up i'll go with that um but yeah japan has there's so many games wait is it literally in an arcade and you wow there's and it's not the only one actually it's not the only one there is another game called oh what was that game called? Were the boob controllers? It started with the letter C. It was made by Atari.

Nolan Bushnell, remember? Anyway, there's a game with boob controllers. That doesn't sound to me like a game whereby it's about sexual pleasure. To me, it seems more like a funny humor and a healthy humor around sex. Yes, and I don't even think that

they the boob controllers they just decided I think it started out as just a joke like joysticks look right so and so let's make a controller that looks like a boob but no a lot of Japan stories a lot of hentai stories they're dating sims or they're like pornographic stories that have choices and stuff like that so that's it for the most part the real like the real sort of ed more edgier sex games um were on the zx spectrum and that was a huge market for sex games as well you worked on a game a play boy game i did yeah what's the crack with that what the fuck how do you win a Playboy game? So you know what? This is such a funny... I accidentally made...

The end line is I accidentally made a Playboy game that women liked. Which is not your goal when you're trying to make it. So I came onto the project actually when it was already in the works. And because games were... First of all, kids can't have them, so it couldn't be too racy or it couldn't be sold in stores yeah so the game instead of being this fantasy like here you are with all these beautiful women and you get to do what everybody at the time thought Hugh Hefner did the game was about being a magazine publishing magnet right and like nobody says like I want to be Hugh Hefner why because I

want to publish magazines and so the game like you you did you did photo shoots and you published the magazine you had all these beautiful women walking around and there were missions in quest but it you know it ended up being not what I know people thought it was in their head like a good if it had been if if it had been what it could have been, it would have been... People would have gone to GameSpot or whatever, not GameSpot, whatever, why can't I think of the name of it? Well, anyway, somewhere... I don't think people buy games in shops anymore.

Yeah, anyway, they would have gone to Steam or whatever, but they would have put the game in a little brown bag and put it under their arm and been embarrassed to walk out. That would have been a success. But instead, I think there was obviously a disconnect. But it was still fascinating getting to meet Playboy Bunnies and learning about, because I just become obsessed with any topic I'm making a game about, I learned so much stuff about Hugh Hefner and the things that he did that people don't know.

Come on, tell us some of them. Sure, well, all right. So Hugh Hefner was instrumental in getting, you didn't, at the time, you could not transport birth control across state lines, which was obviously ridiculous. And so he was instrumental in getting that across um you people wouldn't allow if they thought it was just on you couldn't obviously have a black person on TV and he thought that was bullshit and so he made sure he did that a whole lot he was he started the Playboy Jazz Festival which which gave rise it you know gave rise to just, well, I mean, everybody knows the Playboy Jazz Festival had a huge impact. He published stories that people were not going to even come close to considering,

like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was first premiered in Playboy magazine. And the first, do you know who the first centerfold of Playboy was? Do you? No. Marilyn Monroe. Wow. Yeah, beautiful. Playboy magazine and the first do you know the first centerfold the Playboy was do you know Marilyn Monroe wow yeah beautiful genuinely beautiful photographs so I at one point in time had the largest Playboy collection of anybody I knew and how do you think virtual reality is going to change games? Is it one of these things where it could be a gimmick, or is it genuinely the future? It's going to be the future for, I guess, a lot of different areas,

like medicine, doing remote operations for learning, like being able to teach people in VR. You can feel like you can actually touch something or feel like you're doing real interaction. And games are going to have to be developed for VR kind of differently than they are for consoles and PCs and mobile devices. So the industry hasn't gotten to that point yet where they've figured out the right way to design games that are, I guess, that make sense for that kind of interface.

They keep on trying, you know, and there have been billions of dollars dumped into VR. But nothing has come out, other than really great hardware, nothing has come out game-wise that is like the killer app. There's not a game of VR yet. But when somebody makes it, then everybody's going to know that this is the way forward. But there's really, there's cool stuff happening.

In medicine, there's incredibly cool stuff happening. I've seen that, but I have a dystopian, a terrifying dystopian fear about, so I was looking at virtual reality surgery which is the thing they're developing at the moment and so it's also that so they have this keyhole robot that's far more dexterous than human hands so the surgeon is wearing this VR thing and they're controlling this robot to be able to make incisions that are so clean right but I have this fear that in 50 years time what will happen is that someone in like the developing world right is going to be able to train perfectly as a surgeon, right? And they'll learn how to operate using the VR things.

And then what'll happen is they'll develop this app in, like, Europe and America, where if you want surgery now, it's like you go to this clean surgery and there's no doctor, there's just this robot operating you, and then they're paying

these people in the developing world fucking nothing to virtual reality operate on you you and it's like Airbnb for surgery that's what happened you know like it was going through that I was thinking like no this is never like holy shit that could happen of course it could yeah but they're gonna think how can if you look at everything what's wrong with apps it's like how can we make the least amount of money and fuck over the poorest people possible so you'll have these highly trained people earning absolutely nothing in a different part of the world and our surgery is now way way cheaper

which works in terms of if you consider in a private public health insurance funding no longer going into it and it's like this is how we get our appendix taken out. Someone does it halfway across the world but that person's not being paid and it's just robots and drones. It's possible. It is. 100% and I'm just the reason I'm predicting is I'm going

capitalism is really really bad and it usually prevails. I'll be thinking about that for a while. Yeah. It's totally possible. But do you know what you need to start doing? Taxing the fucking robots,

because here's the thing. No, but there's a... Do you know Camille, that Thai restaurant in Ireland? Camille, do you have them in Galway? Well, there's one in Limerick, so fuck ye. But there's Camille, they have them in Limerick so fuck ye but there's Camille

they have them in Limerick and they have them in Cork and they have them in Dublin don't know if they're coming to Galway yet but it's just a Thai restaurant but thereafter announcing thereafter tying up with an Irish drone company and Camille within the next year are going to start delivering Thai food with drones

which is brilliant because you get your fucking, you know, your Thai food out the back garden. But it's like they're obviously now replacing workers with robots. You need to tax the robot as if it's a person. The employer still has the incentive of it being cheaper, but tax the fucking robot, tax its labor, and then give us all universal basic income.

Yeah, I'd go for that. But it makes sense, because we all grew up with this idea of, like the Jetsons, the robots are going to do everything, and we'll all get to relax. It's not like the robots take everyone's fucking job, and we just eat peanuts off trees.

Peanuts don't grow on trees. They're actually botanically classed as a legume and they're not even a nut, they're related to the potato. Is there any RPG game that either of you really wished that you created or worked on? RPG game? Or any fucking game. I wish I'd made Minecraft. Minecraft, yeah? Do you play it?

Why is Minecraft so popular with children? Well, it's like digital Legos. You know, it's... But it's in a world that's already formed and you can change it. And there's adventure, you know, going down into the dark caverns and attacking skeletons and zombies and, you know, going into the nether

and trying to get to the ender dragon. Yeah, it's a really cool game. It's amazing. Who plays Minecraft? I haven't gotten around to it. Do you ever look at... Who plays Minecraft? I haven't gotten around to it. Do you ever look at... Like I have a theory that Twitter is the world's biggest massive multiplayer online role-playing game. You're not far from it.

Where, because if you think of it... People get really... like if... If someone was to ask someone in real life about their Twitter account it creates a very awkward moment where people feel ashamed because on Twitter people create a hyper real exaggerated version of themselves of their most extreme political opinions of their most extreme this and I think it's actually just like fucking World of Warcraft for politics. Kind of, yeah. You know, Twitter, there was a time when you signed up for an account that you would be recommended, like, do you like games?

Yes, follow these people, and you'd select them. And I was one of those people that they recommended. So I got a ridiculous amount of followers. Yeah, loads of followers, yeah. And so that had a totally opposite effect on me. It means any time, like, I, if I tweet something, it's just like, I need to think about, like, what are the 75 ways this can go terribly wrong? Yeah. And come back on me. So it does feel like, who is, what is my role on Twitter? Are you making game choices? Yeah. Yeah. And so I, you know, I have to think about that. And it's also, there's another game developer, Cliff Blazinski, and I'm paraphrasing him here. He made Gears of War. And he said, reading comments or reading Twitter or comments directed at you on Twitter is

like taking a garbage can lid off and breathing deep. Sometimes that's really true. I mean, I love that I'm one tweet away from finding out the most weird fact in the world that somebody's going to know just because I asked about it. But then on the other hand, it's really like a digital front door that anybody can say anything that they want. Are you lads concerned at all about... What's the name of it? Someone fucking asked me.

Do you know when you have an app and there's a never-ending amount of things you can buy? Microtransactions. How do you feel about microtransactions and gaming? It's really fucking shit as well with some games. Like, I got the new Tom Clancy game. What is it? Wildlands or Borderlands?

Breakpoint. Breakpoint. Breakpoint. And it's like, I'm not spending 30 quid on a gun that doesn't exist in real life. I don't spend anything in that game. Neither do I, but the temptation, and same with Grand Theft Auto Online, like, using real money to advance yourself in a game, and I have to be so careful that I don't crash the threshold because there's so much cool shit that I want.

A plane or a fucking flying bike and I don't want to do... If I want a flying bike in Grand Theft Auto, I'm talking six months of in-game work or I could spend 50 quid. Do you know what I mean? Is that troubling? It troubles me. You know what I mean? Like, is that troubling? It troubles me.

To me, I guess there's, I see it from multiple sides. I see it from, I see it as a parent, right? Like, you know, can I have 10 bucks for whatever? So, you know, we get constantly pinged

for that sort of stuff. And then I see it as a game developer and this is the longer tail and that people are interested in season two of something and there's new content. And then there's the other game development stuff that, so this isn't stuff that we do, but stuff that I'm not a fan of where you,

especially like if loot boxes, like I give you this thing, you've got it and you just have to pay for the key to open it. That's like, that is, I mean, you're really dealing with like genuine psychological, like a compulsion, like I've got this thing, I just need to get this key. And you believe that there's something in there

and what's in there is them wanting your money. Right? And so that sort of stuff I don't like. And then there's also this weird situation that we've got ourselves into as game developers, which is here have the game for free But it's well, but game development believe me isn't for free it costs money So how do we so it's sort of like if a restaurant said come on in and eat for free Oh, did you want a table? Did you want a plate?

that's you mean like a Player unknown battlegrounds or what's that huge one that's fortnight like fortnight's a free game isn't it yeah like is is there elements of that that's troubling like it's a game you just pay you pay for clothes and stuff that's it i mean it's cosmetics because nobody can actually get mad that you paid to win that game you can't pay to win you can pay to look cool yeah but can't pay to win. You can pay to look cool. But you can pay to win on Grand Theft Auto Online. Yeah, so can you pay to win on that one?

I can buy a jet and be a prick to a bunch of people if I have 100 quid. I can. But there's no winning, right? You can't really win. You can bully better if you have real-life money. Another thing as well, and it's something so I I'm I don't play that much online games because I don't like eight-year-olds calling me a prick but but mainly it's it's mainly just because I come from a tradition of I just love single-player

and I love immersing myself in a world and I love treating it like it's a novel or something and just it's a private space well it changes like what how I find is it it fundamentally changes how I think about creating that game as a designer so if I want to make we'll just say I want to make this game and I want you to enjoy this game and your entire experience is contained in that that's really controlled yeah and I that I feel I can do well but when I have to leave all these doors open or I'm going to give you this for free but I need to somehow get 50 bucks out of you then it creates all kinds of weird design choices that that are not so much about you enjoying the game but me trying to make you

spend money by putting weird pressure on you so that that type of game design isn't like we've worked in the we worked we worked on facebook games before um which was a fascinating time like it was the only time in my history in the game industry where i was actually the main demographic right so 43 year old women was actually the main demographic right so 43 year old women were the the core demographic is that like Farmville and stuff like that yeah yeah yeah and in fact it was a great thing like it was a great time because 500 wait but is that not what caused you to be elected? Yeah, I heard that... No, I'm serious, lads. OK, so Facebook wanted these games

so that they had better access to people's data, and apparently games like Farmville, there was a gangster video game, they allowed a lot of access to people's profiles, and it was this data that Cambridge Analytica purchased in order to Influence people in the election. So it was actually guilty But what one thing just to go back to because it just popped into my head Online versus single-player and it I I have to ask myself all the time

Why don't I like online games and what I found is that online games bring to me on hell toxic emotions that I'm trying to fucking escape when I go to a game I want to feel freedom I want to feel power and I want to feel escape but when I'm playing against other human beings, now I'm envious. Now I'm angry. Like, I'm never getting angry with... What do you call them, NPCs? I'm not getting angry with a non-playable character. But if it's some fucking prick from Cork,

and he's after shooting up my car, I'm now all of a sudden road-raged, driving down the road wanting to shoot this man from Cork and I have toxic emotions that I'm trying to escape in real life or I might see someone from from Leitrim in a jet and I feel jealous that this person has got this jet and I can't afford it yet And now this is the shit that I'm trying to deal with in my real life, and I'm feeling it hyper Online and it's like that's not what I'm playing video games for I'm trying to deal with in my real life. And I'm feeding it hyper online. And it's like,

that's not what I'm playing video games for. I'm trying to get away from this shit. I'm trying to not think about my neighbor's Mercedes. Play Candy Crush. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on Saturday,

April 13th, when the Torontoonto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com Candy Crush. But do you play against people in Candy Crush? You're just trying

to level up. You're just trying to get to the next level. That's just fucking Tetris on a boner though, isn't it? But you're not killing anyone. There's lots of people who like to play games for exactly that reason. Really? Oh yeah, they only want to destroy other people exactly that reason you know they really oh yeah they only want to destroy other people i mean like i don't know if that's good playing well i mean the ga is

fundamentally one team playing against another just because there's electricity in a video game doesn't mean it's not actually that's true i yeah but the thing is though if to be a good sports person a good sports person overcomes the toxicity and is able to do a professional. I just, I don't know, maybe it's just me. I want to escape. When I play a single player game, I want to escape. And what breaks my heart about online stuff too is, in particular, what it did to Rockstar Games. Like I fucking love Grand Theft Auto. I loved Grand Theft Auto 4, and I specifically loved the expansion packs they made. They had Battle of the Gay Tony and The Lost and the Damned, which is like, with Grand Theft Auto, they create this huge city, and then it's like, here's an opportunity to put other stories there.

But then as soon as fucking Grand Theft Auto 5 happened, it's like, here's a perfect representation of California. It's massive. The main story only explored this part of the map and now it's just online and they've made this really shit online game

with flying motorbikes. Like, the same with Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the closest I've ever come to a novel

as a video game and when I'm going around that countryside, I'm seeing all the potential stories. And when I'm going around that countryside, I'm seeing all the potential stories. Like I see a little shack on a hill and there's a dude living in there. And I'm like, I wanna fucking know about him.

And I wanna play his struggle and I wanna learn what their struggle is. And we were talking about, there's a Native American presence in the game. Like where's my huge expansion pack where I get to play as native americans and learn about the culture and what was taken away instead of just red dead online which is a fucking joke they didn't turn it into an educational game but they could they could they really could have that

expansion i mean like i there is there's an actual but there's no i'm guessing there's just no money and that's why they're not doing it so So it goes back to capitalism. And fundamentally, like if you, let's just say that every one of those stories that you want to be told, like once you're told the story, the story's done. Yeah. Right? And so game developers or game publishers will say that's a treadmill. So you've got to play around the treadmill and you always have to,

there's always new content that has to be developed for that treadmill. Which is expensive. Which is expensive, right? And it's one and done versus creating an online experience. Creating a world in which a bunch of different players can come in, and those players are always getting better. It's always a different experience. You've always got new players coming in and going out.

I'm not justifying this, by the way, because I also like to play solo single-player games. Even when I go like to play solo, single player games. That's my part. Even when I go into massively multiplayer worlds, I remember going into World of Warcraft the first time and I'm like, what are you people doing in my world? I want to explore this place and can the rest of you leave? Which is obviously not going to happen.

The problem with story based games is people can make let's play videos and you don't need to buy it anymore. You just watch it on YouTube. That's a huge challenge right now. So no one wants to fund that kind of game yeah um yeah how do you feel about so so much of my interaction with games is watching people playing them on youtube and this i decide whether i want to buy a game based on this like is it is it helpful to games or is it unhelpful like why if i i don't know if lady gaga released a new album and i decided to upload onto youtube here's me listening to lady gaga's new album they're going to take it

down pretty quickly yeah why with games is just like totally allowed and encouraged and is it good or bad and how do you feel about it if there's a big let's play of your next release well as long as the the game is not linear and you're giving the whole thing away, then that's fine. And we tend to make games that are not linear like that. So somebody's experience... Yeah, publishers want games that are different every time somebody runs them.

So you watch somebody playing the game, but that's that guy's play, but no one else's. Because if you get it and you play it, your experience will be totally different than theirs. So it's valid to see a preview of what you could experience if you bought it, knowing that it's different. Sorry. I mean, it's also super valuable on the one side.

It's super valuable if, like, how the hell do you play this game? And then you go, why? Especially for, like, some complex strategy games. I go and watch that and go, oh, that's how you do it. That's interesting. But then, on the flip side, there are these narrative games like that Dragon Cancer, for instance, or Life is Strange, or any game that's story-based.

What Remains of Edith Finch. What Remains of Edith Finch. And you give away the entire thing. Yeah. And that is crippling to developers it is you know it is exactly uploading Lady Gaga's album in in its and I don't know like I don't know I don't know why people can do that but it is huge money to be made there's huge losses huge oh there's huge money to be

made from the people playing video games are making the most money of anyone online right now. And I think that's great. I'm all for people doing that. It's when they basically sit there and are doing the equivalent of reading a book. Yeah. And the argument that I often hear about that is that people will say, yeah, but they weren't going to buy the game anyway. Well, I've seen some major YouTubers who will have 21,000, sorry, 21 million views of a Let's Play of a narrative game.

Well, what if, like, if 1% of those people bought the game, that's enough to make another prototype to make the next game. Yeah. You know, so it's, so I don't think it's right, and I don't know why it's allowed. I'm sure there's some, I'm sure there's, I don't know why it's allowed. I'm sure there's some... I don't know why. It doesn't make any sense to me, actually. I mean, I should probably

look further into that. Do you want to be the Metallica of games who gets this shit shut down? Napster. Oh, God. My immediate reaction to that, which just makes no sense, is, no, I want to be the Black Sabbath. I don't even know what that means. Invented.

Yeah I can't imagine either Tony Iommi or fucking Ozzy caring about Napster. It was one of those things that made Metallica seem really uncool. It was like don't let us know you're that capitalist. It's Lars. Yeah it is. Yeah Lars and his art that he doesn't appreciate. Sorry, that's a very specific reference to a documentary about Metallica. One thing that I'm starting to notice recently

within larger video game culture, right, is, and especially, again, I'm drawn back to Rockstar with this. So as games get larger and like, the last Red Dead Redemption, the last Grand Theft Auto were fucking huge. Like, one of the biggest things that people spoke about with Red Dead Redemption 2 is that your horse's testicles shrink depending on the temperature.

And it was an amazing level of detail. But what I found is, when I first found that out I was like, holy fuck your horses balls shrink peak when it gets cold I shared it online and a lot of other people were sharing it too But what happened then is you you found yourself getting shamed? because That level of detail was being equated with workers being exploited. And there was a lot of people working for Red Dead Redemption 2 who were saying we're being overworked.

Crunching. Yeah. Crunching in the hours and all of a sudden now to celebrate detail is something you have to be cautious about because you wonder does this detail mean exploitation? What does the games industry need to do to stop this going on especially with the larger the big larger franchises? Where developers are just going this isn't fucking fun, and I don't feel valued and I feel overworked Yeah, it's a huge issue in the game industry in part because we're we're trying to create something That's not been made before yeah, so Like if I if I show show you, here's the game they originally pitched, and here's what's going

to be released. Those things are decently far apart from one another. But yet at this point in time, that's when I have to say how many people, how much time, here's what we're going to do, every single milestone. And you can, there's, you know, in some cases you're with a publisher, I would say we work with Paradox, they've been great. So as we've talked about, you know, this would really you're with a publisher. I would say we work with Paradox. They've been great. You know, so as we've talked about, you know, this would really make the game better. And what if we change this to this?

And as you're trying to, you're exploring a space you've never explored before. And you're trying to make something as good as you can. Then there's other sides to that where it's, you'll see like, well, that's tough. This is the amount of time we have. And so people, nobody goes into games because they, this is going to sound ridiculous, but nobody goes into games because they want to make money. It's, it is absolutely a calling. Can people hit it really big in games? Absolutely. But if you're a programmer and you want, and if you work for a bank, you're going

to make more money than you make in games because Because games is what people just really wanna do. And nobody wants to program bank software, I guess. And so they pay higher to draw people there. So people are incredibly passionate about it. And so it's like, Jesus, if I just stay here a couple hours longer, I can get this to work. And that's sort of, and then this built into this culture of like, yeah, I worked 18 18 hours how much did you work you know and and i can i can tell you now

man i'm 53 and 18 hour days don't cut it with me um and it's not something like i want to see my kids grow up and so you know i want to i want to be there with them i want to read books i want to go on vacations and so it's something that we work really hard at not to do. And I, it is, there was a time in the industry, I would say probably around mid nineties when it was sort of at its peak. But now when people are interviewing, they're often asking you, tell me about the quality of your life. Can you tell me about crunch? You know, can I talk to your employees about this? And so there are some times when it's, you're on a deadline and there's something goes wrong because life happens.

So you find yourself working longer hours than you would like to. But these sustained what we would call crunch periods where it is months on end of everyday work, you know, that's not tenable. It ruins people's brains. You know, it's not tenable. It ruins people's brains. It's not good. And especially for really big budget games, it's a complicated problem, right? Because it's a lot of money that goes into that, and every month there's probably hundreds of thousands in burn rate,

the amount you're paying for people. And it's a pure capitalistic problem. But sometimes people push the schedules to give people more time to do it. You can also... Games don't have to be... They don't have to be that big. You don't have to have all of this stuff in it. There's something that can be cut off and left till later.

The movie doesn't have to be eight hours long. It could be two hours long and then release another one. What industries do you think gaming can learn from to try and stop this? I guess TV. Make something into episodes. Yeah, yeah. We're doing that already. We've been doing it for a really long time.

It's just that when they make gigantic games like Red Dead Redemption or GTA or stuff like that that's just really massive if it's going to have a an impact on the workforce that's negative they need to make a call to cut you know you basically have to uh you have to say the time that is spent on the game that's finite that's not going to get more? So what actually can get done within that amount of time by a certain date is what's going to ship. So you have to predict the future. Things are going to go wrong.

And just assume that things are going to go wrong by 20%. And that's where your game is going to end. And if people put in more time, then maybe they can add a few things to the game. But you have to basically just be realistic about this is what we can expect from everybody and nothing more. And they'll do a better job because they get sleep. Sleep does wonders. I'm going to open up questions now to the audience.

Can we have the house lights up slightly? No, says one man over there. Slightly. No, says one man over there. Slightly more. Have we got a microphone somewhere actually before? Yonder. Anyone have a question down here? I don't think there's a mic upstairs, so you'll have to roar the question and I'll repeat it.

There is one upstairs. Oh, there is one. Oh, fucking class. Look at this. Galway. Who's got a question? It can be about games, it can be about anything, it can be about otters. At the very very back there.

The otters of Galway. Hold on, we got a microphone for you. Usher has got the microphone and we've got Ja Rule up there. Thanks Will. How are you? I wanted to ask a bit more about your crunch periods because i'm an architect student myself so i know about the whole 6 a.m in the morning trying to get yourself done for the next morning like how do you find catching in with your sleep and getting to the next period and getting to your

targeted points? And how do you kind of balance your working life and your social life and your mental health with that and your sleep and kind of fitting everything in together? Well, we try to go home at six, something like that. And basically we have a producer who handles the schedule. And when people are going to, they will never be on time. Her job is to deal with that time flux. And people have issues.

They might get sick. They might have someone in their family get sick. Something might happen to them. That's going to happen. You have to just know that that will happen. And the goal is to not overwork people just because now there's less work getting done. You just figure out what can we change in the game or cut in the game or delay releasing until after a ship. Or maybe somebody is going to get done earlier and you can shift some of the work over that person that can get it done.

So it's a whole lot of schedule juggling with these tasks and who can do them. Just because you have 20 programmers doesn't mean any of those programmers can do a certain task. It's usually extremely specialized. Any task on the game, only a couple people can do that task, even if you have 20 people in that discipline. But basically, it just comes down to knowing that quality of life is more important than trying to ship a game that has all of these features.

Let's change the features until we have to cut a feature or make it half of what it was or whatever can get done. Those decisions are always made with the publisher who's paying for the game to get built. So you have to have a lot of meetings with the publisher and say, we have less time because these issues happen so we have to change this to this or we have to cut this. What do you guys think? They might have some ideas. They might say, that's cool. But we haven't had our publisher ever tell us that we must

get this thing done or else. I think the... It's interesting because I had a totally different... A totally different ant... Whatever you said made me truly think about something that happened just... It was either yesterday or the day before. So I don't know where in my head there's like a person who lives in my head, I swear, who says like, your time actually doesn't matter. It's how much, you have 24 hours, how much shit can you pack in there? And I think it has to do with growing up poor. Oh, there's an opportunity of my money, I better go get it, because what if I don't

do that? And so I'm always constantly thinking of what I can do. And I was asked the other day if I would speak to this group of young coders, young female coders, and it was just sort of my soft spot, and it was on a weekend, and I said no. And man, I still feel guilty about it. But I have two young female coders at home and I have four kids at home I work a lot you know we're at home and so sometimes a work conversation

will break out I play a lot of games for research I really do it really is research and we end up traveling a fair bit. We try to take our kids with us. But I just thought like, here's this beautiful Saturday when I can get up and make pancakes with my kids. And so I've started to reprioritize my life. Like, no, this, there's a wall around this and nothing gets into this. That's it. If I'm not at a conference on the weekend,

I'm at home with my kids full stop do you ever stop conversations at the dinner table if something comes up from work do you ever have to park it even if it's something really fucking interesting you have to go no this is actually do yeah we actually so okay we're not gonna talk about work it's too easy for work to to see then because we don't like we mostly have not had a separation because we are a game. So it always happens. So we just basically had to just go, this is like when we get home, we don't need to talk about work stuff unless there's a reason. Like there's a plan having to do a video conference at home

or having to actually work on something. But most of the time we try and not do that. Yeah. thing, you know, but most of the time we try and not do that. Yeah, we so I try I'm, I'm, you know, I'm constantly trying to get better at it. But really making sure like, if I don't, just like if you if you don't eat enough or eat right, you will suffer for that, you know, likewise, if, if the boundaries in your own life aren't solid, like I need this much sleep, I

need to do these things. And I have a long history of not protecting my own boundaries in those regards. And so that's something I'm, you know, this year, in fact, sort of starting at the end of last year, I've just been, no, this is just no, I'm sorry. And like, it's okay that I want to spend that Saturday with my kids, you know? I, what I started doing, because obviously I deal with a similar thing because I'm a writer so if I'm not careful I could write 19 hours a day 20 hours a day yeah and what I've found is that sometimes if if I decide like for me time off is playing a video game right or it's watching a box

set that's not work for me but when i was not working i would self-flagellate and say to myself you should be working but what i started to do was i started to understand that for me to be creative i have to feed my unconscious mind yeah so i have to do that thing where i'm releasing and that could mean watching fucking saved by the Bell on YouTube. But if I'm watching something that's unrelated to my work, the state of relaxation and enjoyment I get into when I'm doing it,

that's where little ideas come from when I am working. So I've started to value it. I don't view it as skiving off. Yeah, funny enough, I write to relax. So you play video games to work and write to relax. Yeah. Any other questions?

Do you know where my voice has gone? There was a lot of pocket lint in my vape. And I'm after inhaling a lot of pocket lint. Oh, yeah. Oh, brilliant. I love the way that Ja Rule is working ahead of the questions and just having it lined up. Go on.

I just wanted to ask, with your own kids, do you encourage or do you limit their exposure, basically, or playtime on games and that kind of stuff? With our kids? Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's not a nice place to live. I mean, our kids, Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's not a nice place to live. I mean, our kids, their computers, in fact,

two of our kids, they're in their junior cert cycle, and their computers live locked up. They're not allowed to access them unless I trade them. They do two hours of study time. They get two hours of game time. And is it games or social media that they're more interested in? Both. So it kind of depends on the kid. So we, yeah, we sometimes if they get bad grades, we've taken their phones away and we've made them earn them back.

Pretty good. So you've gamified it. We actually did. We created... Yeah, we did. Yeah, they had to earn respect dollars. You fucking literally did. Yeah. Respect dollars. Yeah, we printed out all these dollars.

So this is when you have fucking game developer parents. Yeah. Fucking hell. So they had to ask... Why not just use euros? Well, because it was in the States when this happened. Okay, okay. They had to ask... Why not just use euros? Well, because it was in the States when this happened. Okay, okay. They had to...

At the end of the day, they had to ask all the other family members, like, was I respectful to you today? And if they were, they would get a dollar. And then they could buy their stuff back with it. It was... Yeah, it was bad. So in, like, we don't believe... We don't... You know, the stuff like, oh, I can't stop playing now.

Like, we know the answers to all of that stuff. So in general, we try to play games with them. Like, we're going to be doing some game marathon this weekend. But we try to get them interested in game development and the creation of games and playing board games. We do, we limit their time absolutely one question right how do you feel about games like world of warcraft where if you're not playing that happens offline like you could be someone could rob your house in the game and you're

on the couch that can't happen in world warcraft can it not okay because some i never played it and someone told me it could yeah you can't so do games exist like that where if you're not playing bad things happen people would leave in Minecraft you can go and blow up somebody's place while they're not there well if we're like in this let's just say that all three of us

we were in a shared realm and you're here on stage somebody could be looting the hell out of your stuff right now that's not good. Because I was playing Grand Theft Auto Online, and my nightclub became less popular because I went to Australia. So what we do is when we play with our kids, we have all of our stuff buried somewhere. You have to bury your stuff in the ground.

Yeah, so our kids are Minecraft thieves. I don't like that idea of video games. I think once you're playing, you should be playing, but if you're not playing it and bad things happen, that's dangerous, isn't it? That's the design of the developer, and if you don't like it, don't play the game. Good answer.

That's a good answer. It's half ten now, lads, and it's a Thursday, so I just want to say to Brenda and John thank you so much that was fucking Incredibly insightful and I just want to say to like I'm sure you get a lot of fucking interview requests So just thank you so much for coming here and chatting with me and and sharing this with the audience it's a real privilege so thank you so much and thank you to all of you it was just it was a lovely room you were all listening

god bless it was just it was very intimate it was nice have a good night lads