The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast 269 KurtzPel Launches Beta! KOG Games V.P. Danny Noss Interview

Episode Date: February 21, 2019

KurtzPel Launches Beta! KOG Games V.P. Danny Noss Interview Kurtzpel.com

Hello, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com and chrisvossgaming.com. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for coming by. We've got some really exciting game development interview here on the show today with me, as always, on chrisvossgaming.com. So be sure to subscribe to all of our channels. You can go to chrisvosspodcastnetwork.com. You can subscribe to all the different podcasts

that we have and applicable ones. And of course, you can subscribe to ChrisVossGaming.com. And of course, the Chris Voss Show, you can go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss, hit that bell notification to subscribe to all the things. And you can also go to our Twitch channel at Twitch.tv forward slash Chris Voss. And guess what? We're going to be giving away some codes today and throughout the week on the twitch tv channel for chris voss gaming so be sure to go to the show sign up there and you'll also see our video also uploaded there so make some comments on that and we'll be picking some random winners to give those codes away i think we have three codes that we're

going to give away this week so it'll be pretty fun and cool that way. Now I am joined today by Danny Noss. He's the vice president of COG Games and these guys have been a developer for a long time. Welcome to the show, Danny. Hey Chris, thank you so much. I appreciate you having us. We appreciate you guys taking some time. You guys are launching this game. In fact, the beta is coming out, closed beta today. Am I correct? That is correct. It went live at 4 p.m. this afternoon, Pacific time. So we're half an hour into your live launch, and thank you for taking the time to see us, because I'm sure that

there's probably a bunch of programmers making sure everything's running smoothly there in the background. Sounds good. Now, you guys are launching this game today. We're going to be giving away some codes. And for those of you who really should listen to this whole thing, you're going to find out how you can get a chance to get into this beta for this game

and get a chance to download it maybe today, possibly, or sometime soon and be able to check it out and kind of get some of the early thing. So let's talk about your company first. Let's start off with it for people that aren't aware of your gaming company. How did you guys get started? How long have you been around? All that good stuff, Danny. Well, COG started off, it's a small company in a small town in a small country.

So our parent company is in Korea, but they're not in Seoul, so they're not with Nexon and all the, you know, NCSoft and all the big companies. They're in a little town called Daegu. And our owner, the gentleman by the name of Won Lee, he started off as a programmer. So this wasn't like a suit who decided to break into the game industry. So he was a gamer. He's a designer. And he had this big dream and ran with it. And he kind of hit the nail on the head

with some of the things that we started off with. So they started off as a developer. Then we started working with publishers around the world. And then one day they decided that the whole publisher-developer relationship wasn't what they had in mind. And they started to go into publishing themselves, enter COG Games. So, yeah. Awesome. they had in mind and they started to go into publishing themselves uh enter cog games so awesome we're kind of starting to see that in some of the world uh recently bungie separated from activision because uh and one of the statements they made was they feel that the

environments change where you can actually do your own distribution so uh pretty interesting what's going on in the gaming world absolutely i agree so uh you guys have had was was else that was elseward your first uh game launch that you guys did um as a publisher and developer that was the transition game so that was the magic game uh we started off with a game called grand chase which was a two dimension or a 2D side-scrolling brawler. And then Elsword ended up being the spiritual successor to Grand Chase.

So it was kind of like a Street Fighter sort of thing? Yeah, it kind of flipped. Grand Chase started off with a PvP centric mindset. So you got players versus players, upwards to three players on each side of the map they brawl in like a almost like basically it was what smash brothers would

have been if it were an mmo back uh we're talking north american launch 2006 2007 and then um that had a pvp backbone and then they blew up into this pve element to where uh instead of just having a flat 2d surface lsword started to get into the 2.5d started to get into the more epic storyline started to get into more some of the the jrpg elements that uh became this hybrid that then became a known around the world yeah and you guys have got some really interesting stuff you've done with it. You've got PvP, PvE, new player events, mentor pupil systems. It looks like some features in some anime, some really interesting cartoon or anime sort of style design,

really beautifully done. I imagine this game is really huge around the world when it comes down to it. Absolutely. Steam, believe it or not, we're a Steam top 100 game 15 times in the last two and a half years. That's great. One of our media partners succinctly put it up and tap danced all over my last nerve. He said, Elsword, it's the game everybody plays and nobody's heard about. And I was like, get out of here. So he said, we do, we have that presence. But the best thing he could have said, the best compliment he gave me was, this game is easy to get into and a beast to master. So you have that barrier to entry or jumping in, it's fun, vibrant, bright, beat them up, kind of side-scrolling, rolling with it. And then when you see the depth of the game, it was just like it sucks you in,

and you've got now four or five characters, level 99, and you've been playing the game for three years. So it hit the nail on the head, and I loved it. And it's a cute, fun little game. What's your demographic on this game? What do you find most people playing it, men, women, boys, girls? Is there a demographic i guess you know um we we targeted on paper so you know how it works on paper right statistics probability and it hits nowhere near where you need it it's like playing lawn darts

um so you know it looks like it's targeted for a younger audience. And so we're talking, you know, mid to late teens, possibly early 20s. But when we look at our PVP tiers, when we look at those who are actually just putting time in, one of our player moderators and live streamers is somebody that I've been playing with now with the COG world for nine years. And so we've got our designated people. We've got girls that are in our top tier PVP brackets. It's all over the board.

So when we had our offline event and I got to see our players face to face, I was looking at college kids. So I was looking at these are adults who made this game their world. And that threw me over the edge. I loved it. It was a reality that i needed you know gaming is just so amazing what it's really grown into and the world has grown into and every time i think it blows my mind it just goes to the next level and people love consuming so many different games they love they love trying different mastering different things i think that's

one of the things people love about doing so you've got how many characters are they here there's 10 13 different characters you can have in the game I guess absolutely 13 playable characters and you can customize them build them go through leveling all that sort of stuff you've got a story mode you've got the PV the PvP and it looks like a giant beautiful sort of anime comic book book-style sort of game when it comes down to it. Really cool that way. And this is how many years old?

Have you been into this? Yeah, we're in our seventh year. Seventh year, wow. And so some of you must love it. You're right. You guys are in the top 100 of Steam. So some really cool stuff here. You can find this if you go to lsward.koggames,

codgames.com, you can check out the Lsward. And we might be playing some of this a little bit later today or tomorrow on Twitch. So be sure to watch the stream for that. We'll be testing out the game and everything else. Anything more you want to cover on this before we move to the game you guys are launching today? One of the things that I agreed with what you said earlier,

you said it had this very anime feel. It kind of plays into the tagline that we had with the game, and that was play your manga. Having that many different characters, having that kind of ability to jump in on that depth, it really sucks you in. So if people like that, the storyline elements,

our VO, some of the VOs that we have that are playing out the characters, I mean, just really jumped into some big names that we had across the board. And for anybody who has, they like that casual play, jump in. For people that like that hardcore play, jump in. So the game caters to everybody

and I really think they should give it a shot. I was playing it today, and it was really easy to pick up. It's very intuitive. I also like the way it's suggested, you know, different keys I need to use. Okay, here's how you fight. You know, it went through the gamification of teaching me how to play the game, and it was very simple

and easy to get into, kind of very cute and fun. I can see definitely young people would really love this thing. But it looked great, and the actions seemed pretty cool. I didn't, of course, get too deep into it today, but I like it. I mean, I liked, you know, I tested the game the other day, and I got to go get the manual because I can't figure it out. So it was nice to play the game today and be like, oh, okay, this is really cool. And I got to see the animation story that was starting on your newest game that's coming out.

That was really cool. So, yeah, everyone check out Elsword on Steam. You can, of course, download it. I believe it's free to play right now. There's a DLC that you can upgrade to if you want to throw some change in it, right? But they can play Elsword for free right now. Absolutely. There's no pay gateways.

You can literally play from level 0 to level 99 and be competitive with the free content available. That's awesome. That's awesome because people, you know, some people, you know, they like to play. They like to test out a game. They're not sure if they want to plunk the money down, their cash, especially some of these younger people that are pretty tight on funds. I know we have some giant clans and our giant

Discord that we have for the Christmas gaming, and I know how hard these young people are when they're like, I have $30, and I don't... That's all I have to spend in the whole world. It's got to go to a good game and

so I feel their pain and hear it off and you know the new DLCs if something comes out they're like I can't buy it and of course me being the old guy that I am I just go why don't you just go mow some lawns that's what I did when I was a kid the world clearly has changed I don't know that used to

be my go fund me was mowing lawns. I still do that now. Like, I need an extra five bucks. I go mow lawns. And five bucks was a lot back then. But anyway, I digress. So, really cool looking game. Beautiful game.

Do you want to tell us how many players you guys maybe have worldwide that are on this? Worldwide? Oh, man. Can I read? Millions? I couldn't necessarily say active. So we've got Korea, we've got Japan.

We service currently North America, South America, including Brazil. Europe has its own designated group, but China, which is, so quite literally we are around the world with Elsor. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. It's so great too that, you know, smaller game developers don't have to, don't have to be, you know, they sell their soul to, I guess, Activision or something. All right. So that they can So they can build beautiful games. And I think it makes it probably easier to be more of an indie developer

because you can kind of do things the way you want. You don't have, like, some of the situations where you have a giant, you know, conglomerate distribution conglomerate over you going, no, you must add loot to things and charge people, you know, play the, you know, pay to play sort of activities and things like that. You can decide what you want to do and control your own destiny. I know that with, like I said, the, the recent split with Activision and Bungie you know,

Activision said in their stock release, they said, we didn't have control over the IP. Otherwise things would have been different and it probably would have been a very bloody outcome. And, and I. Otherwise, things would have been different, and it probably would have been a very bloody outcome. And I'm sure the community would have been hurt. But, yeah, it's really cool. So let's move to the game you guys are launching today that's coming out. Absolutely.

And that game is going to be called Kurtzpel? Kurtzpel, the bringer of chaos. Okay. KurtzPel? KurtzPel, the bringer of chaos. Okay, and those of you listening on audio, that's K-U-R-T-Z-P-E-L. And I'm sure you can search for the gaming company on Steam. Of course, we'll put a link to it on the Chris Voss show on the YouTube channel so you can take and check it out. But you can also, of course, do that.

And I think you guys have some stuff going on where people can get access to the open beta on this, right? Absolutely. If they go to KurtzPell.com or they go to our Steam page, but KurtzPell.com is going to be the best way to do it. If you go to KurtzPell.com, check out all the amazing, I mean, it hits you right in the face with all the anime and the action. Sign up for the CBT. And we are currently rolling out emails with those CBTs every half hour. So if you sign up and you don't get an email immediately, within 30 minutes, you are going to get an email with your CBT code. And that is going to roll out all the way through the end of the CBT,

which ends on Sunday, 4 p.m. Pacific. Nice. Nice. So. Nice, nice. So people can get a chance to check it out. Like I say, I watched the first part of it, and it is a beautiful story. Just sucked me right in. I was like, oh, no, what's going on? Beautifully animated, incredible design.

Yeah, I was just, I was like really excited. I had to cut it short because we were going to go live here. But yeah, so you can register now for the KurtzPel I was really excited. I had to cut it short because we were going to go live here. You can register now for the KurtzPel closed beta test nonstop dual assault against other chasers of Altheca. Did I pronounce that right? Altheca? Altheca, yeah. All right.

You've been around the game a bit, huh? I'm getting there. I might be a master. No? I'm getting there. I'm going to be a master. No, I'm just kidding. Kurtzell is a two versus two co-op PvP action game. This is something I can bring my friends in and we can go against

random other people or can we also go against other two friends of ours or is it just matchmaking randomly? Right now we have a very I want to say smart and it's learning. It's a just matchmaking randomly? Right now we have a very, I want to say smart, and it's learning. It's a smart matchmaking system. And the reason that's a big deal is because that's some of the feedback

that we took from our alpha. Our players are saying not only do we want win-to-loss ratios to take into the random K value that goes into like an ELO setup. We want proficiency. So if we have a guy who's all over his keyboard and it's just racking up massive points of damage, dropping him against a noob in round one is just going to be a bloodbath. So obviously everybody starts at zero. And then as people start to progress, they start to get those win ratios up and stuff like that it starts to accommodate based on a number of different figures for that smart matchup and in the future we're going to have

guilds in the future we're going to have bigger matchups but it's always still going to be that 2v2 basically you get the pilot and the wingman however they want to fly that against the environment so it's either PvP or that same 2v2 platform, PvE. So you can play against epic boss monsters to practice your skill. The players can obtain and enhance their karma, which is their weapon, and they can choose up to two karma weapons to take on missions. Okay, so that goes into the dual action thing. Okay, so you got this semi-twitch base, so it's not mob lock.

So it's going to be more free-flowing than even like, not to throw some of my favorite games under the bus, but games like Blade and Soul, where they do have that kind of feel like as if it's not mob locked, but it is kind of. This is completely un-mob locked. So if you have an archer, you're not gonna have guided arrows unless you're casting. So there is gonna be some almost semi FPS elements if you're gonna try to play range.

So, but the fun thing is that the dual action thing, a karma is your weapon in game. So let's say you've got a giant sword or you've got melee gauntlets or you've got a long bow or you've got a staff for mage uh you get two so you want to engage the enemy big sword big sword big sword knock them up in the air switch out to the bow and arrow catch them in the in the air boom boom boom boom boom kick them out wait for the cool down to go back up on the switch and as soon as they get back to eye level boom hit him with the big sword again and so that's the dual

action is you get to see this really capture that epic anime feel to a live action a live fire environment nice and so you play in like little arenas little match areas i guess capture the flag death match um the king of the death match, king of the hill. The king of the hill is one of my favorite formats because you're in this big bubble in the center of the match and you've got to make sure they stay out of it. If you don't set up your karma and your team dynamic just right, where you're using a lot

of push and trap, it's just going to be a bloodbath in the middle of that bubble and who dies first. There is going to be a lot of strat. Sounds like my first marriage. So you've got the Breaker, the Slayers. I'm just kidding. And that was my second marriage.

The Breakers focus on interrupting the enemy's attack through their attacks. They're not as powerful as Slayers, but can endure more attacks. And then you've got Slayers who can focus on dealing damage. They're not as powerful slayers, but can endure more attacks and even slayers who can focus on dealing damage They're more vulnerable So is the way that you're set up on this team of two people? One person is kind of more of the aggressor more and then more on offense

The other ones more on defense then is that the setup of the nature of the teams? You know on paper again, we're gonna talk about paper and probability. On paper, that's what would make sense. But if you want to have somebody who uses a greatsword and a staff to kind of keep it on the fence, they're going to have their intercept abilities, but then they're going to spend numbers on DPS. It's on them. And we thought we were going to see more glass cannons and more tanks. Hell no. We saw people pulling combos and stuff that we didn't even

think were imaginable, and that's the fun part of being in game development, is you think you got this figured out, and you got these people that are just thinking outside the box and just checking every aspect of what you thought was reality, and we were dying. I mean, howling at these crazy combos

and stuff that our players pulled off in the alpha. That is awesome. That is awesome. And you guys also have your own Discord and Twitch channels, so people can go on there, check them out, and of course YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, so if you want to see some other aspects of the game. But I definitely recommend it.

The beauty of the story, it was almost like a movie. I was sitting there watching it going, is there going to be a game here? But this is pretty cool. And you can skip over the story, of course, if you want. But it definitely sucks you in, gives you that whole good versus evil, sets up the narrative for the story and everything

else. And so this is going to be a standalone separate from the other game that you guys have developed for the past seven years, correct? Absolutely. So this game is actually going to be so PVP centric. It's ridiculous.

It's also going to be the competitive integrity was something that went into one of our core balance. So this game is the first time we've actually utilized server-side trust. So this is even, even if this ends up being a free to play style environment, it's still going to be server-side trust. So even if this ends up being a free-to-play style environment, it's still going to be server-side trust. And so we believe that the competitive integrity needs to be maintained at the server and obviously not peer-to-peer. That wouldn't make any sense.

And so the reason we were doing so many different alpha tests and stuff like that was to basically put our money where our mouth is and try to see if we could pull this off. And so are European servers based in Munich, Germany. Our North American server is based in LA. So we're going to be expanding. And so far, from what we've seen in the first two alpha rounds, the players loved it.

But yeah, that's what this beta test is going to change things up a bit. This should be pretty cool. Kurt's Spell is an anime-styled action battle game from a third-person perspective. You can battle it out in PvP and PvE mission battle modes. You can see this if you go to KurtSpell.com. Once again, just to reiterate, we're going to be also giving away three codes

that they've given us on our Twitch stream. So we'll probably be publishing those the next day or two once we're live playing with the game and kicking the tires and all that good stuff. So we'll broadcast that. And, of course, you can also go to Kurtzville.com and sign up for the beta, the closed beta, and get the open part of it, I guess. You can also go to their Discord, their Twitch, their Twitter, their Facebook and everything else and learn more about the game,

get involved in the game, the community. Community is, of course, a big thing when it comes down to these games. Having somebody, having something more than just a game, but having a community there is a big part of building successful games, I think, nowadays. Wouldn't you say? I could not stress that enough. I mean, even going back into the golden years of MMORPGs,

not to show my age at all, but when we saw the first iteration, first-gen, obviously, Ultima Online, second-gen, Asheron's Call, they focused so much more on community. It was like gangland mentality. The developers were hands off at that point. They took a step back and said, you guys run this dumpster fire. And then the concept of the more bloodthirsty guilds that were just so tight knit, they were almost unbreakable. To see that outfit and how it worked back then was magical and so one of the things that we started to focus with you know we got away from that a little bit with lsword

but in getting into that with kurt spell one of the best things that you can rely on nowadays as far as what we've seen the industry do is smaller groups so the big the days of the big 40 man raids and stuff like that are very specific to very specific games. But if we focused, especially in an environment where the attention span is what it used to be. They don't have an hour and a half

to set aside for one raid. They want to jump in, knock something out for five to 10 minutes, beat the holy hell out of somebody, walk away with a trophy and be like, yeah, I'm going to come back

and do that again in half an hour or after I'm done with dinner. And I dig that. I mean, I still dig that, you know, immediate, instant gratification. And to have a game that caters to that environment where you still get the depth, the RPG, and the PvP simultaneously, to me that's kind of the direction we went with it and uh fun it's all about fun playing those games getting that stuff getting those rewards getting that loot all that sort of stuff so uh pretty awesome anything more we need to know about

curseville um do you know honestly tell your friends it's always like what you were talking about get your buddies in there you know when you come tell your friends, it's always like what you were talking about. Get your buddies in there. You know, when you come in with your buddy. Get them playing. You know, I, I, I mean, there's, there's a game recently launched this week, a major game that I really wish would be multiplayer or you can at least play with your friends. I really like playing with your friends. That's why we have a giant discord.

Uh, you know, we have a big clans with theans with with our with our gaming and and and to me gaming just more fun because, you know, I think more and more in a world where we're kind world when we can play online, interact, and you can meet cool people and you can, you know, you meet players that are really good at a game and mastering. They teach you to be a better player in the game and everything else. So it's really cool that way. So this is going to be fun to see you guys launch this and everything. And it looks, it was really stable on my computer when I was playing around with it when I started up today.

So it sounds like you guys got probably hopefully a lot of the bugs worked out of it and should just run nicely. Yeah, optimization plays a big part in that. The only thing, honestly, what I would love to ask people, so let's say they want to give KurtzPel a shot. You know, they want to get into that EVP environment with that. For whatever reason, you know, if you jump into the game, whatever the reason is, take the time to let us know what you did. How if you jump into the game whatever the reason is take the time to let us know what you did how do you feel about the game what sucked what was rad what was like that we could improve upon because the feedback that we got from alpha immediately impacted everything from character balance to weapon balance to uh longevity in regards to how long somebody needs to be playing matches.

I ran out of content in 15 minutes. All right, we needed to add more content. Kind of slow it down a little bit about the progression. And to be in an environment where I can say that I'm proud to work for a company that's literally going to take that feedback and have it make an immediate impact for the next phase. Where's the best place to get for people to give you guys feedback on your Discord or your Facebook fan page, just anywhere on your different things?

As soon as they sign up, they give us their email. Make sure they stay tuned to the email because as soon as the beta is done, the closed beta is over with, they're going to get another email saying, hey, what'd you think? And then obviously we have our Facebook. We have all of our social media networks, even Discord. We have hands on every aspect of it. It'll get back to us. This is the beauty of working with indie developers

because you actually have ears that listen. I've yelled at bigger game developers and it doesn't seem like they care. It seems like they watch certain Reddit streams, and if enough of the Reddit community complains, then they go, oh, maybe we'll do something.

But working with indie producers, you guys care. You guys have real hands-on with the product, and the distance from player to developer is a lot shorter and smaller and and uh feedback is key too for you guys because you guys you know uh i i know there's some big games that they seem to have the attitude that once they get my money they just don't care oh right you're just like this this part sucks of the game. And Bungie's like, we don't care. We got your money. No, I'm just kidding.

I'm a big fan of Bungie and also a big critic. So there's that. But they have a game that I love. And the fact that you can have a base that's passionate about a particular game and loves it, and they get angry about it, and they get angry about it and they get emotional about it uh and they're committed in that way hey beats it beats somebody who's not committed right all right but you know it's a double-edged sword too because we do get that immediate return on investment when we make them happy man we we hear the the the hoots and hollers you know that very same day

but man when they're pissed the pitchforks and torches are in your face. You're down at your office going, yeah. Oh, right, man. But one of the things that we've done and, you know, I mean, some of the, some of our players may want to be able to call me out on this and I'm okay with that. But I'll be the first one to tell you we screwed up. Like if we were like, we had, this was our idea. It didn't pan out. This is this.

And this is what we're going to do to fix it. But they're going to be like, Hey, Mosh or Danny, you know, day late and a dollar short. And I'd be like, well,

it is, it is now. And you're still talking to me. So are you going to go check it out? Yeah, we'll go check it out. Okay. Okay.

You guys are listening. Well, you know, it's a little late, but I'll go ahead and jump back into game. It can be brutal. Right. It can be brutal. Right? It can be brutal.

I would not want to be a game developer in today's world because they, I mean, I've definitely threw my anger around. But, you know, I love a game so much that, you know, if it gets tweaked, I know I've seen some releases where they come out with a new version of the game and they just turn did you just turn all the chairs upside down just so you could sell us a new game because we like the old game we just wanted like a new design colors and maps we don't want you just screwing with the core of the old game

so one of the challenges of being a game developer in today's world but it's so great that you can see so many people that are so open to playing different games, trying different stuff. And Steam, of course, is just a great resource for all this sort of stuff. It's just amazing, all the stuff that's on Steam as a powerhouse. I agree. I agree. Yeah.

All right. Well, unless there's anything else we need to know, we want to go play the game. So go to KurtSpell.com, check it out. And if you sign up in the next – how many days can they still sign up for the closed beta? Down to the last day. So literally down to Sunday. We're still going to be rolling out those codes every 30 minutes.

Okay. And so sign up on their website and all that good stuff. We'll give away three codes here on the Twitch stream. Go to ChrisVossGaming.com and go ahead and follow the channel there. You can also go to ChrisVossShow.com for the podcast there. We're going to have, of course, a lot more gaming

developers on sharing with us their cool launches and everything else. And of course, reviews and all sorts of gaming products as well. You can see there that we're taking and doing. So thanks to Danny for coming by the show. We certainly appreciate you guys. Be sure to check out COG Games and their other flagship that they have on Steam as well, Elseworld.

That sounds like a good deal, huh? I appreciate it, Chris. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, Monies, for tuning in. We'll see you guys next time.