The Press Box - Ep. 240: 'Achievement Oriented' on Dystopian Twitch and 'Hitman'

Episode Date: January 20, 2017

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh and Jason Concepcion bring on Ben 'Professor Broman' Bowman to talk about life as a full-time Twitch streamer and a forthcoming change to Twitch that threatens to erase the boundary between streaming and regular life (1:00). Then they talk to IO Interactive creative director Christian Elverdam about how the first season of 'Hitman' synthesized the best features of previous games in the series, used illusion to empower players, and benefited from being released episodically (26:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The people have spoken, and Jeff Ross has returned for Roast Battle 2. The four-night event features top comedians getting verbally violent until just one is left standing, featuring a star-studded lineup of judges, including Snoop Dog, Sarah Silverman, and Jason Sedakas. This is a battle you won't want to miss. The four-night event begins on January 26th, the 10-9-central time on Comedy Central, and don't miss the live finale on Sunday, January 29th at 10-9 Central to see who gets crowned the king or queen of cruelty. Hello and welcome to Achievement-oriented Channel 33's gaming podcast. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by my colleague for the Ringer,

the silent assassin Jason Concepcion. Hey, Jason. You like that. I do. That was a good one. We're going to be talking about Hitman pretty soon. I just read a piece on Kotaku by Patrick Redford, and it's about how he spent two weeks as a true Overwatch idiot, as he says. and he was playing as Lucio and he thought that to heal players on your team, you shoot people with your

soundgun. I got to read this for two whole weeks. Two whole weeks, which again, I have still not played Overwatch. I swear it's on the way, but I have not. So this doesn't really mean anything to me, but I understand that this is like to go two weeks thinking that is hard to understand. It's pretty amazing. I will say that because Lucio gives off an area heel, he was probably healed.

he was probably healing by accident also. Yes. So it wasn't like he was doing nothing, but still. Yeah, he was wondering why it wasn't working better, he says, but it took him some time to figure that out. And I know that you are a proficient Overwatch player. And you have no tolerance for nobs. Well, that's not true.

Well, noobs who do not play in the designated noob areas. I do get frustrated. I get frustrated. The thing about Overwatch is when it comes together, like one. comp match out of say 10 or 15 it's amazing it's a like just everything's working people in the right places everything's like well timed and when it doesn't work it's like just like the most vile bickering among strangers that you have ever heard in your life well that's what i want to know how do you convey your displeasure are you taking part in the vile bickering or are you above the fray how are you

i mean it depends like you know when it's comp and And people aren't doing their jobs. It just can get really, it can get really tough. And I think the most corrosive thing that can happen is when a character is just obviously not working and everyone agrees it's not working except for the person playing it who refuses to change. And then it just is just acrimonious. Like, with just a lot, like, blaming and it can get bad.

I'm kind of dreading when I actually get overwatch and play with you because I feel like it might end our relationship. No, no, no, we're going to be. We're going to be in that quick play a lot. Okay. All right. Otherwise, it might jeopardize this podcast. So later on in this episode, we are going to talk to IEO Interactive's creative director, Christian Alvardam, and he is working on Hitman.

So we're going to talk to him about season one, which concluded last year and is coming out on disc later this month and plans for season two and the episodic structure of the game and how you make a game where you can make the player. convincingly feel like a hitman. Very interesting guy. Yeah, very interesting. So he's keeping up our European guest streak, which is now at two weeks. It's all about sequencing, Ben. Sequencing. But first, we are going to talk to Ben Bowman.

You might know him better as the full-time Twitch streamer, Professor Broman. And we wanted to have him on today because he just wrote something earlier this week for Polygon about how a change to Twitch is turning his life and those like him into a potentially dystopian black mirror-esque existence. So we're going to get the lowdown on that. And you actually, you stopped streaming so that you could join us right now. Yeah, that's correct. So is there like an internal timer ticking away in your head that is telling you it's been

this long since I stopped streaming? I mean, no. Would there have been at an earlier point in your career? At an earlier point in my life, yeah, absolutely. You know, and like you mentioned the article, the point of the article was to raise a concern that Twitch makes changes kind of unilaterally. And they don't really consult with broadcasters when the changes are happening, especially big ones. They'll sort of, you know, they'll talk to us. They'll say, hey, here's a heads up, but, you know, this is happening.

And that's kind of the issue is that I feel like broadcasters have some input on changes, but they don't feel like they have a fundamental level of input where they can say like, hey, this might not be the best thing ever. Let's think about it. But yeah, that's that was that was kind of the point behind it. And I do see the potential issue. And that's why I wrote the article of being online as much as possible is kind of the lifeblood of streaming. And it's a commonly accepted practice to take a day off or whatever when you can't

do gaming anymore. Like everyone understands, oh, well, you just streamed 12 hours, maybe go have dinner. And my concern, yeah, my concern is that IRL and with the launch of the mobile app, unless it's properly managed by Twitch, I feel like it could really upset that sort of work-life, delicate work-life balance that already exists for a lot of broadcasters. And secondarily, I am concerned about what it could mean to, you know, new folks who are trying to start streaming. And I mentioned this in the article. I know that if I was back in the day trying to grow my channel, I would have taken the extra four hours I had a free time every day and broadcast my meal prep or if I went on a date, I would stick my phone on the wall. And I would

100% broadcast that because it would bring in viewers and it would help my channel grow. But yeah, that was sort of like my pointed concern about the entire situation. So for people who maybe aren't that familiar with the whole Twitch ecosystem. Can you describe how things work now before this change? Sure. Just your typical lifestyle. What are you streaming? How much, how often?

And why are people watching? Yeah. So if you don't know what Twitch is, which is like a live streaming website, where you can watch video games. It's sort of like the cooking channel for video games. That's one of the best ways I've heard it described. So I stream a lot of FPS games. I started streaming Borderlands 2 was what I first started broadcasting on Twitch.

I would do speed runs, which you may or may not be familiar with. I just had the awesome games done quick marathon that raised $2.2 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. And that was from the speed running community. So those are sort of my roots. But yeah, when I was broadcasting at first and I realized I had a shot to make it on Twitch, I sort of made this awful personal decision, right? I said, you know, screw everybody else in my life. I want to make this happen and I just shut myself off from everyone.

I ruin my relationships with my family and a lot of my close friends. And I'm still in the process of rebuilding that to sort of chase this dream. And while I'm sure there are some people who would respect that, ultimately it harms you in the long run. So when I'm when I'm broadcasting now, I try and do, you know, two streams a day, you know, three to four hours, like more manageable chunks of time. So my life right now is pretty, I guess, much more comfortable than it was. was when I was trying to grow my channel. But, and I mean, like, personally, the questions I raise in the article, I'm not, I might do the occasional life stream, you know, on IRL where I'm like, hey, I'm on vacation.

Let's say hello and what's up. But I think that the primary change of like what people expect to see on Twitch right now is a produced broadcast, right? Like people are expecting to see, you know, a video game and a nice quality camera, a nice microphone, and like, that's what they come to expect. It's a production. And so my other, the thing that's going to change once they launch the, the live broadcasting app on your phone is that suddenly Twitch is going to be inundated

with all these new streams that are cell phone quality, random things from all over the world. And while that might seem, and I've heard the, I've heard it mentioned many times that it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. The way Twitch works as an ecosystem is that the more viewers a particular directory has and a directory is just like a subsection on Twitch, like whether it's Halo or Destiny or Gears of War, like you click on a game directory and that's how you find something on Twitch.

The more people streaming that game, the more visibility that game has. My concern is that once everybody can broadcast from their pocket with the IRL app, that that directory is always going to be up at the top of Twitch. And that might not necessarily be the best content that Twitch wants to put out there. You know what I'm saying? They've been a video game oriented and focused company for a really long time, and it's done really well for them.

I guess I just don't want to see that the roots of Twitch sort of get obliterated, potentially by Twitch becoming the place where you go to watch somebody stream their life, which is interesting because that's where Twitch came from. It came from a website called Justin TV where people would just stream whenever they wanted all the time. When you first started out, how many hours a day were you doing it? And was that because you felt like, oh, man, this is, this is actually going to happen? And like when you first started streaming. When I first started, you know, I just kind of did it casually, like in my free time, like two or three hours a day.

I would just sort of have fun with it. But then kind of I realized that I felt like the time was right. And Twitch was still growing. I started broadcasting four years ago. And I felt like there was still some space for growth on Twitch. And I thought, okay, well, let me, let me take a shot at this. And so it was interesting because it sort of went from like two hours a day to eight hours a day like a full time job to as much as I possibly could handle, you know, physically every single day in the span of like a year. And how do you because, you know, this is like streaming is still, I think to a lot of people, even people that are video game players is still kind of like an alien concept.

Like how did you explain it to the people in your life? Like this is what I'm doing, you know. How do I explain to how do I explain to people that I'm? no idea what streaming is no I have to do it often usually what I do is I just pull out my cell phone and I bring up someone's broadcast and I say this is what it looks like but if you've never seen a Twitch stream before it's live gameplay so you're gonna you're gonna be greeted in one way or another on Twitch by a host who's gonna talk to you and interact with you in the chat room that is affixed to the video window and you're gonna be seeing them playing some video games

live for you. And I know that that kind of seems, okay, that's it. But I think the thing that really hooks people about Twitch is that at least, you know, I'm 30. So when I was growing up, video games could have, were very isolating, at least the kind of games that I like to play, that you played them by yourself or whatever. And everybody longs for social interaction. And Twitch has just done a fantastic job of saying, okay, well, here's this website. You can run your channel however you want. You can invite people. in and you can build a community around whatever you want. And so I think that what hooks people about Twitch is the community aspect of it. You can you can follow a specific game on Twitch and

learn about all the different people who are high skill or low skill or entertaining or whatever you want or you can follow a particular broadcaster and become really involved in, you know, their community in particular. And it really gives a sense, a stronger sense of connection to whatever game you might be enjoying at the time. It sort of allows you to be among, like-minded people. And one of the ways, like, how do you, how do you get paid off it? Obviously, people can subscribe and how everybody wants to know. Yeah. Like, well, I mean, that's like the thing. I'm sure like that's, you know, when you're when you're trying to explain to your family that you're going to be sitting in front of your, your console 12 hours a day, they're going to be

like, wait, what? Yeah, yeah. So the, there's a whole bunch of revenue streams on Twitch. It's a lot like running a small business. But the, the, the core revenue that comes directly from Twitch is advertising revenue, subscription revenue. And, bits, which is the new thing. And if you're not familiar with Twitch and you're like, what the hell are bits? Bits are basically Twitch's micro transaction currency that you can use to support streamers. So you can like cheer in chat. It gives you a little animated emote. And, you know, you'll cheer for X amount of bits and it'll drop some money in the coffer, you know, in the revenue side of things for the broadcaster. Subscribing is basically saying, oh, wow, I really like this

content and it's sort of like selecting which channels on television you want to watch more. So you can just say, oh, I really like this. I want to see more of it. I'll subscribe. Or you can build out all sorts of benefits to subscribing if you want to. I run a pretty open and free channel so anyone can come and talk. But you can restrict chatting to only subscribers or a whole host of other aspects. And then there's, you know, traditional advertising revenue where I say, okay, guys, I'll see you in

three seconds and I run some ads. or the pre-roll ads just like, you know, when you're tuning into a YouTube video. But those are the core revenue streams. And you can also do other stuff like, you know, selling merchandise or sponsorships, things like that. So that's how I explain how I make money. It's a little complex. So what sets a streamer apart? Like, is it video game skill?

Is video game skill even important? Do people care how good you are at the game? Or do they really just care about your personality and charisma or whatever? I'm garbage. at video games. I'm absolute trash. And I mean, I have my moments of doing well. I play Destiny a lot.

And me and our raid team, we had a, we're in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first people to clear one of the raids in Destiny. So, you know, I have my shining moments. Kingsfall. So that was, yeah, the Taken King, raid. So that was, you know, that was like my shining gaming achievement. Oh, that was my favorite raid in the game.

That's your favorite raid in the game. Yeah. And well, we were first to beat that. So, you know, occasionally I'm good. But most of the time, for me at least, I run a really entertainment-based channel. When I started broadcasting, I wanted to make it feel like everyone was just hanging out in my room with me. Like we were all chilling on a couch playing video games together. And so that's the sort of environment I fostered.

We're very, you know, it's very homie. We call each other assholes because we love each other, you know, like that. So I think community and entertainment can be a fantastic way to promote your channel or or things that can set you apart, along with being really fucking good at a video game. I think that one of the biggest disconnects that people have on Twitch is that they assume, oh, so-and-so has a lot of people watching them,

they must be good. And that's almost never accurate. Game skill doesn't necessarily translate into a fantastic channel, and a fantastic channel doesn't always translate into game skill. But sometimes they do overlap. You know, there are definitely channels on Twitch where people tune in specifically because this guy just kicks ass, but I'm not one of them.

And you described it as a dream. So is that basically because, you know, when you were starting out, you were thinking I can play video games all day and I don't have to leave the house and this can be a career. Because, you know, with some people that probably sounds like a dream. And for other people, it probably sounds like a nightmare to have people watching you and being in your house essentially all the time. Yeah, yeah. having to perform full time basically. Yeah, it's definitely for me when I was when I was growing up, me and my brother, we would, we would watch a lot of YouTube videos.

We'd watch the guys from rooster teeth and all of the content that they would make. We were like, wow, maybe one day I could do video game entertainment for a living. Like that's that was sort of a thought process. So it had always been a sort of back end, a dream of mine to maybe break into YouTube or something and make people like laugh and have a good time with video games. So it was very much a dream for me to get the opportunity to make a living playing video games. Yeah. And I think that for me, the part that was the dream was being able to make people laugh every day because I had also always wanted to be a comedian.

So the fact that I can do that from the comfort of my own home. And basically since streaming, there's no restrictions and it's free form, I can pick a day where I'm like, hey, guys, show up. Today it's like a comedy day. and we're going to do silly crap. Or I can pick a day and we can focus on, you know, helping people get through the raid or things like that. Like, there's always something to do. And it's, you can kind of be whatever you imagine it to be.

So it was definitely a dream. Back to the IRL directory. I would imagine that in addition to concerns that, that IRL would kind of like have these juiced stats, as it were. Yeah. That would push it to the top of the worst. That's very accurate. Yeah.

Juiced stats, I like it. I would imagine another concern would be that, well, if this kind of takes off and people like this, now it's like, I got to stream myself, like at Walmart doing. And it just like starts to eat into your personal time even more. Like is that is, is that a concern? I mean, it's certainly the unfortunate side of this is I really can't answer that question for you yet about me personally.

Like right. I would hope. But have you thought about like, oh man. Yeah. I know. I've certainly thought about it. No, yeah. I've certainly thought about it.

Like I would hope that it doesn't come to that. But I'm also, you know, adaptation is essential. and necessary in any industry where entertainment is involved. For me, I think that if it became a necessity that I do, you know, life stream a little bit every day because it's just sort of like the status quo or it becomes the new status quo, I would probably stream gaming less. Like I would just take the couple hours that I was going to spend helping people through the raid or or just shooting the shit and playing some Iron Banner.

I would instead just be like, all right, well, we're going to go. I'm going to work out. so come with me. But that's, you know, that's, that's how I would approach it. And I hope that it wouldn't like, you know, eat too much into all of my free time. But it's certainly a possibility that it could. So you mentioned in your piece that, you know, the relationship between the streamer and the audience is sort of a one way street. It's, you know, one person broadcasting to many.

And I mean, it's the same with podcasts, really. You kind of feel like you get to know the host or the hosts or maybe you feel like. You feel like you're listening to your friends or something. And if you ever meet them in real life, it's weird because you know a lot of things about them and their lives and they don't know anything about you. And so I've I've had that experience. But what is the kind of relationship like? Like, do you have people that you get to know in one way or another because they found you

through your channel? Yeah. I mean, I would definitely say that there are people from broadcasting from my channel where I've met them in real life and we've become friends. and I've seen people start, you know, significant relationships with each other in my channel. And a couple of my moderators are probably going to be getting married soon and they met on my channel. What a world. What a world.

Yeah. So like Match.com. Mm-hmm. For gamers. Yeah. But yeah, I definitely feel like I've been able to make some meaningful connections. And if someone's in my channel all the time, like I start to recognize their username and, you know, I try and keep up with significant life events of my viewers. like they're getting married if they're having a kid or things like that.

You know, it's, it's amazing how at first I really found all of that information incredibly overwhelming. But the more I do this, the easier it is for me to somehow remember, you know, 10,000 people's different things that are going on. And I think that that's, you know, that's the, that's the positive side of that one way relationship is I do really get to feel like I, in one way, you know, they know a lot about me. and that can make it uncomfortable in person occasionally. I haven't personally had that experience yet.

But it's nice to know that you've had an impact on so many people's lives that they would want to tell you, hey, I got engaged, hey, I'm getting married, hey, I'm having a kid. Yeah. You know, I think that that is the, that's definitely the upside of reaching so many for sure. The internet is a volatile place. Yes. Ben and I worked for a website that was beloved that suddenly died. We work for this website now.

Have you given any thought to, okay, streaming is growing still. There doesn't seem to be really a ceiling on it. How do I build just in case? How do I build my lifeboat to whatever the next platform is when that thing comes up? I mean, I'm a very business-minded individual. I constantly think about the business side of things. You know, that's why I wrote the article, obviously. Yeah.

Because as much as some people approached and they're like, look at this guy bitching and complaining. I'm like, it's not what the article's about. It's about bringing up a concern that's important to Twitch as a whole and how they manage their brand identity. For me, moving away from Twitch is something I'm actually sort of doing currently. I have, I mean, not that I'm planning on quitting broadcasting anytime soon, but there are a few business ventures that me and a couple of my friends are going to be engaging in over the next couple of years. We're going to try and open up a barcade here in Tampa where, you know, it's like it'll be a sports bar. obviously, but it'll also have like gaming cabinets and things like that. And along with the usual stuff that you'd see on TV, you know, if you come in on Super Bowl

Sunday, you're still going to see sports. But, you know, if the international tournament from Dota is, you know, in the finals, we're going to have that there as well. So it'll kind of create an external social space off of Twitch. So that's one of the things we're working on. We also have a convention that we run together called Guardian Khan. It's in its third year this year. Yeah, and that's here in Tampa.

It's a sort of gaming community-focused event around Twitch and charity and community. So that is June 30th and July 1st, if I may plug it. Absolutely plug it. Yeah. Last year we raised $544,000 for St. Jude with the event. This year, we're trying to raise a million dollars for them, as well as get a lot more different styles of communities and different games at the event. it's going to be a really, really good time. So if that sounds like something that might interest you guys or anyone who's listening,

you can go to guardiancon.co and you can pick up tickets and find hotels and all that good stuff. But yeah, like those are my current, I guess, business ventures outside of Twitch that would allow me to do the two things that I really care about most on Twitch. One is charity. And that's what got me started on Twitch and intrigued on Twitch the first side. And the second is community, which is creating a place for people to come and enjoy video games. games together in a social environment. And is there a pronounced male, female skew in Twitch streaming the way that there is

in a lot of areas of gaming and has harassment been an issue? I mean, yeah, I, that's a whole other can of worms that I would be happy to talk to you guys about. But I would certainly say like gaming culture in general skews male. And even though statistically it isn't, you know, almost as many women, depending on which survey you're looking at, just as many or more women play games every day as men. But most broadcasters are male. A large segment of the successful broadcasters are male. But there are a lot of very successful female broadcasters as well. Harassment is here's the, here's the interesting thing about

Twitch. Harassment seems to be blanket on Twitch. Everybody gets harassed constantly, which is a whole other thing. You know, I've had things said to me about my physical appearance that I didn't. I was like, Are you kidding? Like, I'm a bald guy. Like, what, like, what do you want from me? You know, do you want me to have rippling rock hard abs and all this other stuff? Why not, though? Why not?

I certainly do. I'm working out. I would love to have those things. But yeah, so harassment exists for all individuals on Twitch. And for me, it's actually a couple of times been very difficult to deal with. And it's caused me some, like, you know, obviously stress outside of streaming because nobody likes being told by, you know, 10,000 people that they look like a fat sack of shit. shit. But for the for the women on Twitch, it is definitely a very unique environment. And I am

impressed daily by how so many of them manage to just put up with it or deal with it in new and inventive ways. In a culture that skews male, they definitely are good representatives of their gender and they don't take any shit. And I think that's great. Yeah. All right. Well, we will let you get back to it before your audience gets too antsy. You are, you're findable in many places. So do you want to tell people where they should look for you? Yeah, certainly. If you want to see pictures of my delicious food and know when I'm streaming, you can

follow me on Twitter at Professor Broman. It's actually my wife makes all the delicious food. She's amazing. And so that's Twitter at Professor Broman. I am on Twitch at twitch.tv.tv slash Professor Broman. and I am on YouTube with my infinitely non-branded channel, YouTube.com slash Ben WCA because they wouldn't let me change my name after I started my YouTube channel. So that is where I am at on all those social platforms.

I had a great time hanging out and chatting with you guys. If you ever need another person to talk to about Twitch, I'd love to come back on. Yeah, appreciate it. Good tuck in you too. And I mean, I need some help getting through whatever happens in Destiny 2 when that drops. Oh, dude, yeah, for sure. Let's do it. All right. Thanks, Ben. All right, thank you.

And we'll be right back to talk Hitman after a brief message from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by the Ringer podcast network. With the NFL playoffs and full swing, make sure to check out the Ringer NFL show. Each week, The Ringer's Robert Mays, Kevin Clark, and Danny Kelly, break down everything you need to know about the NFL postseason. You can subscribe to the Ringer NFL show on iTunes by going to iTunes.com slash the Ringer or by finding it wherever you get podcasts. All right.

So we are joined now by IEO Interactive creative director Christian Elverdam. Hi, Christian. Hey, guys. Can you just to start off, I guess, tell us a little bit about your involvement with past Hitman games and what you wanted to bring from past Hitman games into the new one because it seems like sort of a hybrid of some of the best elements of previous games or at least maybe that was the intent? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So my story, my history with Hitman starts with Hitman Absolution, where I joined that team sort of midway through development as a gameplay director. And I would say the first mission statement of what we wanted to do with that game from my perspective was to create a highly playable Hitman game. So the games before Absolution, if you think about Hitman Blood Money and some of the previous titles were quite popular, but they were sometimes difficult to control and different. It was sometimes difficult to rely on the mechanics.

So when do I get spotted? If I do a stealth takedown, can I reliably do that or will it screw up sometimes? We had some of those problems coming into absolution. So I also think absolution actually achieved that quite nicely in the sense that the stealth sort of core stealth components of the game. how you navigate, how you traverse the levels, how you sort of shoot, and all these core gameplay mechanics saw a sort of a big improvement, a big jump in Absolution.

And I think in general terms, absolution's big mandate was try to make the hitman games a little bit more approachable for more people. And that actually also affected how we thought about the new hitman game, because I think we loved blood money, the sort of the game itself, is a very, very sort of well-rounded hitman game on so many levels. But one of its problems was that some people didn't find the complexity or the creativity

or the depth that was in each of the levels in Blood Money. So I think we had a, it's almost like there is a critical mass that if you play the game enough and it clicks, then you get this, wow, that's what a hitman game is about. It's me sort of tampering with these systems and I can manipulate the AI and be so creative in the things I do. And I can keep finding things in the game that I didn't think I could do. And, you know, it can really become an amazing journey. But if it doesn't click, then people are left with, okay, it's a good game, but it's definitely not a great game. So what is the fuss about.

And that's what Absolution tried to combat by making it more approachable. But I think it fell short because it eventually ended up simplifying the game at the little bit too much. And it is a game that is nested upon this foundation of complexity, that we actually go to length to create a very, very deep worlds with an AI that can respond to so many different things that you're doing. So if I then look at what we wanted to achieve with the new game was to say, okay, we know we want the complexity and the creativity and the depth and the sandbox nature from blood money and some of the previous games. But we don't want to let go of this idea that you can, if you can play a game on a console and you know how to use a controller,

then you pick up Hitman and you feel just at home that you can pick up and play the game. So let up to some discussions on the team and obviously here at Iowa about what can we do. And that eventually over a period, obviously, it was a process. It's sort of married with this idea of doing a live game that if we said, okay, so part of why you love Hitman is if you actually replay it and find all the depth. And one way of accomplishing that would be, okay, if we have an episodic game where episodes are coming out over time, what we speculated would happen is that obviously people were playing the same mission. And most critically, the community itself around the game would all be looking at the same level, discussing strategies, putting out gameplay clips so that, you know, the depth would reveal itself to everyone. And that turns out to really work nicely because in that way, people can engage with the depth of the game,

but they can do it in a way that doesn't really take away from where we don't have to oversimplify. So that was an immediate sort of strategy for the new game. Obviously, we built other systems around that. We have some very voluntary guiding systems like the opportunity system. And again, I stress voluntary because, again, we know our fan base, right? if it clicked for you already, if you already know that you want to hunt for these hidden nuggets, then you don't want help. But if you don't, if you're new to the game, then you definitely want a little bit of handholding in the beginning. So that also helped, obviously.

I really love the game. The episodic structure really fits the type of game. But first, let me just ask you just for people who may not be familiar with the game milieu that much. What does a creative director do? What is your job on a week-to-week, month-month basis? in the most general sense, my first and biggest role is to establish the vision for what this game wants to become. Obviously, we started out with this game, you know, some almost four years ago. So when you think about the game at that point in time, there is actually nothing there, right? So I think one of the most important things is try to establish that what is this game that is going to be materializing and is coming out in these years from now, what is that going to be like?

What is it going to feel like? What is the right way to do it? And then maintain that direction for the team throughout all these different learnings, setbacks, victories, all that stuff that follows from creating a game, basically. So that is the most important role. And in that sense, you know, this idea to embrace a live game structure and go for an episodic game or some of the stuff we established early. and that would affect how we thought about the game. So for programmers here at Iowa, obviously, that direction meant that we had to redefine how we built a level.

What is the level architecture in the game engine? If we want to do rapid updates that do not require tons of data to download, how do we actually do that? Because our game engine was not really set up for doing that. So the overall vision for what the game would feel like, obviously, and how it is published and all these things will affect how we do it. It's obviously also setting the tone. So who's Agent 47?

There's a big question you asked yourself in the beginning. What does he feel like? And early on, it became important for me and for the rest of us here at the studio, that we would go back to an Agent 47 that would feel at the peak of his power, basically, that we wanted this feeling that the world is in the way his oyster, if you can call it that. I don't know if that's completely correct, but you know that he can travel anywhere on the planet and he is taking out the most sort of exclusive

and hard to get targets that you can find and that we would up the stakes in each mission. That's some of the stuff you do as a creative director early, trying to set that tone for what the game should feel like. And I would also say we wanted to bring back globe trotting so that it became important that we actually travel the globe instead of trying to stay in one place, we would actually have that core promise of getting to see

different areas of the world. That was also some of the early direction we set up. And also some of these ideas that in a hitman game, a part of the promise, I think, is that we have such a fundamental game pillar is that we do social stealth, we call it. This idea that you're not hiding behind covers all the time or sneaking around, but that you're actually hiding in plain sight, but no one knows who you actually are. And for that to really click, we said, okay, so there is an element of obviously physical globe trotting, but we also started debating what events of what kind of voyeurism would we expose the player to. And that sort of got many different answers. One example of this would be to say, all right, so you're traveling to Marrakesh. That's already

exotic. And we're already playing with some contrast between a, you know, a consulate that you need to infiltrate, which is cool and air-conditioned versus the dusty and chaotic marketplace. But it's also set at just the hours before a military coup is about to happen in the city. So this feeling of tension, riots, military in the streets. And that's actually a sort of voyeurism or event fulfillment, if you will. I wouldn't want to go to that place as a tourist, but it might be really exciting to try to be a fly on the wall in these hours before the coup. Or if you take our Paris mission, you're infiltrating this spiring that is using a fashion show as a cover for meeting. sort of having this clandestine meeting.

So that also fulfills quite a few things like, what does a fashion show look like backstage? What does a clandestine inspiring look like? And how does it feel to infiltrate that? And I think we took it as far as you actually being able to go on the catwalk, disguised as a model. Yes. And just to explain how potent that is,

if you look at the screenshot from Paris and what people are talking about, that moment where you take the catwalk became the marquee moment of that level. It wasn't actually the assassinations, the fireworks that you can sort of tamper with, the light rig you can crash, all these other things that you can do. It became that moment where you become Helmut Kruger, the German fashion model, and you take the stage. And that's down to that direction again that we said out early, that this social stealth, the chameleon, this voyeurism, being a fly on the wall would be an important pillar. But obviously, we couldn't really foresee that Helmut Kruger would become such a phenomenon that he ended up being. And I think it's very important that if you're going to convincingly portray this, you know, elite level assassin that you have to make the player feel empowered and you can't have the player kind of running into the artificial constraints and the limits that you do in a lot of other games where there's just something that you can't jump over or climb over or there's a door that you can't open or there's an object you can't pick up. And if there were moments like that, it would take you out of it.

And what challenges does that impose on you to craft this level that is kind of rich and large enough to be interesting, but also, I guess, manageable enough that the player can go anywhere and do anything? What compromises do you have to make in that process? Well, there are tons. And I think it's at the heart of a lot of the discussions, and especially in the gameplay group, Because as you said, the illusion we want to create is that you can do anything you want. And that is an illusion, I have to say. Obviously, it's a game run by rules.

There are some limits to what you can do. But obviously, that is the quest for us, that we want to go a layer deeper than you expect, I would say. That's where the magic starts to happen. That we, some way, supersede or sort of go beyond what you expect as a player. And that is down to the density of how many objects are in the world that you can tamper with or pick up or use. It's also down to the sort of the complexity of the AI. How much stuff can it actually handle? How many different inputs situations can it handle meaningfully?

And I think some examples of where we wanted to push the envelope a little bit is in many traditional stealth games, if you get spotted or discovered, that's basically going into a combat state. and trying to kill you. And in our game, that's fine in some cases, but in a lot of cases, it doesn't really make sense. And there we actually need to be a little bit more detailed. So, for instance, imagine that you're coming as an, you're sort of an agent, you're invited into this fashion show, you're wearing your tucks,

and then you start trespassing in the, let's say, the backyard or in the parking area. Now, we cannot just shoot you for trespassing in the parking area. It doesn't really make any sense. So as an example, we had to invent this escort system that would actually try, where the air has to establish, first of all, okay, you're in this outfit, you're probably a guest. So what do I do? Okay, you're in this part of the palace. So where do I escort you?

Where is a good place to escort you? This can actually be quite complex because you don't want to escort the guest up into the secret auction, which might sound straightforward, but I'll get back to that in a second. Now, you want to escort him out in nearest route, out into the place where he's into the party or out into the main entrance. And you definitely don't want to kill him. Now, it's actually the case that if you infiltrate the spiring up on the fourth floor and you stealthy way all the way in, they expect that the security has been so high that even if you dress up a civilian and you come in, you're not a lot. You're actually not bothered because I think you're one of the VIPs. So there's such an inherent layer of complexity in who gets to go where that is, obviously. at the heart of our game.

But we still want to sort of how to create these gray scale moments that are not binary, where you're getting escorted because you're screwed up, you got busted. But instead of being killed, you're not being escorted by a guy. And sometimes it's all systemic. That guy will actually go, you know, through a stairwell that's secluded. And maybe you just take him out and grab his outfit. So it all becomes this very nice sort of unforeseeable, highly detailed systemic experience playing the game where you go like,

did that happen? And you have to think on your feet and improvise. And the game really wants to be playful and not too binary in its outcomes. And then on the other hand, obviously, we need sometimes to introduce some rules because otherwise it will be a little bit too easy. So there will obviously be consequences for carrying a weapon

or shooting a pistol and stuff like that. If you get frisked and you have a weapon and you're not allowed to have a weapon, obviously you will get arrested and so on and so forth. But there is such a nice melody or complexity, almost musicality, to how the game will evolve as you play it, which I think is at the heart of why people like to play our game,

that it can be so unforeseen what will be the consequences of your action because we actually go to lengths to create these deep simulations. But then, as I said, it is an illusion, right? Because we are not trying to go for realism for realism's sake. I think if you think about it, if you had any venue, any place in the world, and you find three people dead in the basement, that venue closes down. And there's going to be a forensics investigation, and it's not really going to be fun for anyone, right?

Imagine that we did that in our game. I mean, most of the levels were actually stopped playing. So we create this alternate reality, and we usually do this with dark humor, where, you know, okay, two bodies were found in the basement. And now the guards get the duty of bodybagging the guys and dragging them into some predefined zone for dead people as sort of a discrete place where we put unfortunate accidents. And we do all that to maintain the level and keeping it playful, but it's not really realistic, if you know what I mean. And I think there's also an element of that. If we add enough humor to the world, if our guards are not, you know, some of them are a little bit simpleton, you know, their responses to some stuff happening is a little bit, you know, stupid and also sometimes quite humorous.

That's also ammunition for creating a world that doesn't fall apart if we do crazy stuff in it because we want our players to experiment more than anything else. So it's a little bit of trying to walk that edge of trying to create realism enough for you to feel immersed and engaged with the world and then disarming some of that with humor, I would say. I like what you said about what happens when you kind of plot your hit and things fall apart. One of the most fun things about this game for me is like the emergent gameplay. I'm always going for that ultimate hit where no one saw me, no one knows anything happened, no one. the body is hid. You know, I wasn't captured on it. But that, you know, that's very hard to get to.

And, you know, there's one time in Sapienza where I got discovered and I just basically started knocking out everyone that I came across. What's it like creating this very intricate world where at the same time, you know that maybe 1% or 2% or 3% of the only the most elite players are going to see a certain piece of content? How do you keep yourself, you know, focus? for that? Can that get disheartening knowing, oh, man, we really created this great thing, and I don't know how many people are going to actually accomplish it?

I absolutely think that that's something you learn when you join IO Interactive is not to be too precious about your golden moment because you never know what's going to happen. Right. And I can also tell you that level designers start here. They have to be sort of re-acclimateized. Do you call it that? Where, you know, usually in games, you trigger box stuff. You say, if the play goes here, then this happens. And that works for more linear, more. cinematic games in a way. But in our game, if you set up a conversation between two people, you need to make sure that this scripting, this level scripting does not fall apart if one of them doesn't show up, or two of them doesn't show up, or someone else shows up. It's completely

unpredictable what's going to happen in our game. But if I go back to what you started off with your question, I think we tackled this. It's very much down to the roots of why we did the game like we did. So with the episodic format, when we look at how people play our game, we see way more people finding way more things in the level than we ever did before. And that's because they are spending more time in the game, digging into all these different elements. So I would say there's always this desire that more people get to see cool moments, but I don't think it's sort of a pain.

I think a lot of people are seeing them. And as we also talked about it a little bit in the beginning, we introduced this opportunity system that tries to show you some of the sort of major approaches to the game, like how do you become a fashion model? We don't tell you exactly the mechanical things you need to do, take out this guy, but we point out, you know, oh, that's funny. You know, there's a male model that sort of looks a little bit like 1847, and we indicate where you can find him in the level. So with this system on, I think a lot of, let's call us normal players, they find our content. We can definitely see that.

And this would be off-putting to our experts. They would really be up in arms if we didn't allow them to turn it off completely. So I think that's how we tackle it. I think we actually managed to find a way where we can understand that our audience is a vast sort of array of people. And most people are just normal players. And I think the answer is then guide them, we're guiding the sense. And then try to make a game that wants to be played even if you fail a little bit. Because it's actually, I think, to be honest, when I look at a perfect silent assassin playthrough,

if I look at it from the outside, it's not as engaging as looking at what you describe this. oops you know someone just died oh i'm juggling hot potatoes what am i going to do what happened it's actually any more fun like that but obviously on the interior of the player the guy who pulls off that perfect time assassin has his heart pumping you know and you know it's obviously super happy about that as well i think we found a really good balance this time around to be honest so i i don't think it's a lot of regret there again seeing him with kruge become a poster child of paris is sort of testament to the fact that many people got that experience right and how much debate and discussion was there internally in the early planning stages of the game about the episodic

structure because obviously there was some initial skepticism from outsiders who hadn't really seen the game and they wondered why are they doing this? You know, why change things up? This is not how Hitman has been before. This is not how most high-profile games are. And I think in the end it ended up serving the game well. And most people agreed that the trial and error nature of the game and the replayability ended up. having the focus of only one episode at a time to concentrate on, and then the challenges and the

targets that would come up from time to time ended up meshing really well with the way that Hitman works. But how difficult a decision was that or how much courage did that take for you to go that route? I would say, I mean, every time you do something new, there will be a portion of people who will be skeptical. I think that's only very natural. And I also think that goes for our studio. I mean, a lot of people embraced it early and some people, you know, sort of converted along the way, I would say, which I think is natural. But in a very general sense, I think we had a really strong sort of interior willingness to do this and to try this because we all saw that there was this need to find a formula where we don't sacrifice the nature of the hitman game

and still find ways to make it more, you know, appreciated by more people. So I I think that part of it clicked for a lot of people. And we had to sort of, as I mentioned, rebuild the game or the game engine early. And I felt that that happened in a very good way. We had tons of uncertainties about so many things doing it. There was a lot of firsts. But I think internally, we were all of us excited about this prospect of having a live game and watching our fans. And also this desire that, you know, when Paris comes out, the game that this then, let's say, the core game that is out when Paris is out is not the core game that is out when

Hokkaido ships that we actually knew we would learn and improve and tweak and all that stuff as we can do with the live game. I think we made sort of the early launch harder for ourselves. We were somewhat weak about what content would be available. And if you're already a little bit skeptical on the outside, you know, watching us, that didn't really help. I think people became even more skeptical about that. It was actually down to the fact that we were debating, you know, when we start this live game, how much content is enough, you know, is it enough to launch with Paris and the prologue only, or do we actually need a larger sort of starting pack? And what we announced earlier was a starting pack that comprised of Paris, Sapienza,

and Marrakesh together. And I mean, as I said to you, we really wanted to go away from content that you can binge into content that you share with the community and get into depth. So we changed our minds and we said it's going to be Paris only. And that obviously confused people. And we were, I have to say honestly, we were really nervous when we shipped Paris on whether it could sustain the full sort of attention of everyone for that first period, right? And fortunately, it could, which meant we were sort of, we banked on the right force, if you will. I don't know if you can say that, but that it's, that it panned out and it worked. But I think we made, we made the road more bumpy in the beginning that we needed to.

But then I think, obviously, by the time Sapienza came out and people saw just how really nice that level is and they saw sort of what pattern this meant, people saw. starting saying, you know what, this might actually work. And then I think we, we managed to put out the episodes sort of on time. Again, even if we had the right sort of episodic structure and the right levels for that, if we had been delayed, you know, a lot and we were super unreliable in what would be coming out when, I still think we would have a lot of people who would be sort of skeptical. But it actually turned out nice and it came out on time. And I think that's why I eventually clicked for so many people. I think that's the last two.

months or something like that, three months has been for us here at Iowa and the team, just reading all the comments from fans, from where journalists obviously has been, it's been really like a fairy tale ending, basically. So I don't know. Are you seen that as well? So many statements of, you know, yeah, I didn't think this would work, but I have to say it's, wow, it really fit this game nicely and you should go ahead and try it. And obviously for us, you know, that's like, it is like a fairy tale ending. How much iteration have you found yourselves doing in between episodes It's like you find something that works, maybe it doesn't work as well, little mechanical tweaks.

How much kind of tweaking between episodes do you find yourself? We did quite a bit. I would say on many different devils in many different ways. I mentioned the opportunity system. When we did the beta, we had an open beta, which is also at first, again, in terms of just thinking about a live game, but we did that. And in the open beta, we had this uproar. Why is the guidance always on?

People said, and the problem was it. You could actually already in the beta, you could go in and set it to the setting you wanted. You could have it off. You could have minimal guidance and you could full guidance. So by the time we ship Paris, so from the beta to Paris, we already added that tutorial step. In the tutorial where we make people aware that they should select sort of the guidance they want, which is a direct reflection of fan feedback, if you will. Then we've been tweaking tons of stuff in the game.

There's been an update to the vision system as one of the things. But also on a much higher level, I think when we set out to do season one, we knew, obviously, with the story being written and all that, we knew a lot of things that were going to happen. So we knew we would be going to a hospital in Hokkaido, for instance. And we knew we were going to Hokkaido after a while as well. And then we obviously start building that level. But what we didn't know is just how far we could take the disguise mechanics, for instance, that we could be playful with, you know, adding RFID chips into your outfits. adding an AI that governs the place and doing all these sort of surprising things to the game mechanics. And I think if you think about Paris coming out, Sabienta coming out, by the time Sabienza is out, we felt comfortable that our disguise system, for instance, was pretty robust this time around.

And that people understood it and they liked it, which meant that allowed us to be playful. When we actually starting, I mean, one thing is knowing that you're going to build a hospital, but how you actually build it, how that hospital actually turns out. And what are the rules that govern that hospital? We didn't know. And we were way more experimental that I think we would have been if we had maybe been fighting, you know, people don't understand disguises. What are we going to do? We need to fix the system.

If that had been the sort of the sentiment after the first few episodes, we wouldn't have done Hokkaido the way we did it. So I think there are on so many levels we were looking at what people were doing. And then I think we have to say we're still experimenting, the elusive targets that are coming out. And I have to say if people don't know them, it's basically. the polar opposite of replaying a level. It's a target that comes out for a short amount of time

and you only get one shot to take them out. And if you fail, that's it. Once you've completed it, that's it. So it's a really intense assassin fantasy. And since they are one-offs, we are still playing with the formula for what, how hard should they be? You know, we had so many different versions of it.

You know, sometimes it's one target. Sometimes it's two targets. We did twins where you have to identify one twin by, you know, the watch, the wrist, watch and create this super tense moment of, oh, God, I hope I'm hitting the right twin. We did missions where we added sub-objectives like stealing items or all these things. And we're still experimenting with that. And that feels great, I have to say, that we can still, we have these live elements in the game.

And they will continue for a while. Even when the disc is out, there will still be this live component to the game. And lastly, then does that mean that you don't really need to take things in a dramatically different direction in season two because you've been able to sort of adjust on the fly and figure out what works from episode to episode in season one? Or are there things that you want to do differently? Well, I think you can say from the very get-go when we announced a game, we announced a game that would span seasons, right? And we wanted to have this world that feel like it's ever expanding and new stuff is happening all the time. So that's absolutely still the thinking,

also thinking about season two. We are just wrapping up the time. We are just wrapping up the this here at I also. I think this sentiment, the feel we have right now is that we have a season one that on so many levels was a big success. And that's nice because now we're debating stuff that worked and how to improve it.

As I mentioned with the disguise system, we're not debating stuff that didn't work and how to fix it, if you know what I mean. So that's very much the case that we're looking at. We had so many firsts, I mean, so many firsts of anything. And obviously that means that I think internally we have tons of ideas of how to make stuff even better than

we did in season one. But specifically for season two, what that means. That's too early to to say, really. I think we're still analyzing and trying to find out what it's going to be. Well, we appreciate your time and people can go download all of season one right now if they'd like or if they want to wait for January 31st, they can get it in a hard copy too. And Christian, thanks for talking to us. Thanks so much. Thank you, guys. It was a pleasure. Okay, so that will do it for this week. And one thing that I meant to ask Ben at the beginning of the show and didn't. And I guess it's not a problem for him because he's married. But how do you, like, if you're on a first date and you're explaining to

your date what you do as a full-time Twitch streamer, what would your strategy be? How would you try to break this news that your job is playing video games on camera for most of your time? And if you have time to spend with your significant other, it might be like one day, one. week and he or she might have to like be on camera because you are streaming everything and maybe you're streaming the date right now as you are telling this person that also I feel like this would be a tough conversation to negotiate before you really know a person it's extremely dystopian like when you really think about it it's like my job is basically I'm a talk show host all the time yes it's like the the gargoyles from snow crash that Neil Stevenson

book that are just like filming things at all times and That was, what, 25 years ago? So it didn't take that long for that to come to pass. Yeah, I don't know how I would break that news to someone. I guess I would talk about my considerable online following and perhaps the revenue that I generate from this exercise and I'm gainfully employed and I do what I like to do and it's a passion. And then I would explain that also I have to play video games like all the time.

And you might also be on my screen. It would be tough. All right. We will be back next week. Same place, same day. Talk to you then. Bye.