Think Like A Game Designer - Mark Otero — The Artistry of Game Development, Navigating the Crossroads of Engagement and Economics, Reimagining In-Game Asset Strategies, and Cultivating Community Through Gaming (#53)

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

About Mark OteroIn this episode, join us for an insightful discussion with Mark Otero, a true innovator in the gaming sphere. Starting with his humble beginnings founding KlickNation, an entity that caught Electronic Arts' attention, Mark's journey is one of risk, innovation, and striking success in game design. His unique perspective on community engagement, in-game economics, and narrative-driven experiences has reshaped how we think about interactive environments. Dive into a conversation exploring the challenges and triumphs that have defined his career, and glean invaluable wisdom from one of the industry's pioneering minds. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, we speak with Mark Otero. Mark is a veteran developer from EA and recently launched his company Azra Games last year with the backing of companies like A16Z. He previously led the development of EA's Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, which has over a hundred million downloads last year, has generated over $1.5 billion in revenue.

He has a deep history in RPGs and these kind of collectible combat-based RPGs, and he talks about how he thinks about designing these things, his philosophy of fun, the importance of fulfilling the fantasies of your players and power fantasies versus other fantasies and how those things develop. He talks about his approach to design and his approach to leadership as a CEO. And you'll learn about the differences between leading like Kirk and leading like Picard. And we get really deep here. He talks about his journey from his childhood in South Korea and how his struggles really inform his ethos of design. He founds a yogurt shop in Sacramento and some of the periods where he's bringing in his first people for his company are lining up outside the yogurt shop. There's a really fascinating way

that he attracted the right kind of people for his work. And he talks about the importance of how games like Dungeons and Dragons and Dragons really created a safe space for him to explore and create and to give him the kind of power that he didn't necessarily have when he was growing up. And so I really didn't know what to expect from Mark, but he really impressed me with his vulnerability, his deep insights,

and there's a lot of great design principles here, a lot of principles around starting companies and a lot of principles around what it takes to succeed at some of the top levels. of this industry and a lot of really interesting insights behind the scenes of what it takes to found a company like the one that he has. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I do with Mark Otero. Hello and welcome. I am here with Mark Otero. Mark, it's really great to have you on the podcast.

Excited to share a lot of your lessons with the audience here. Thanks for joining. Thank you, Gary. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been, you know, you and I had a conversation several months ago, almost seven or eight months ago now, where you came on and, you know, kind of did an immediate tear down of a lot of the stuff that we were doing in a way that I found incredibly enlightening. And so I'm excited to now be able to bring some of that to the world. I, you know, unlike most people, I actually, I love it when people challenge me and break down my ideas. It's the fastest way to learn. And so I knew immediately when, when your team reached out that, we'd have a lot of fun things to talk about. So we always kind of start the same way because you've had a lot of success in your career. You've had projects that have earned billions of dollars with hundreds of millions of downloads. But your origin story is actually a pretty interesting one. So I'd love to start there and just kind of bring people in on how you got started in gaming

and talk about some of your design philosophies as we go through it. Sure. Yeah, thanks, very. You can call me, Justin. I really, sorry. Sorry. You know, Justin, I really appreciate just your humility when we first met. And I say that as another game designer.

And that when people are providing feedback for some of my designs, I listen really, really carefully to what they have to say. Because those are the moments where I find myself learning the most. And, you know, you may not always agree with the feedback. but if you can walk away with one new idea, it makes the entire interaction powerful. Yeah, that's right. A lot of listeners may not know that about you,

but Justin is an incredible, incredible professional. That's just been my interaction with you. And so this is the second time we've met. A bit about me. I grew up in South Korea. I grew up in a very small town called Wee-John-Bu. and the Ouijong Bu at the time in the 70s were like the shanty town of South Korea

and what that basically meant was that's where the very modest lower class blue collar people live and so I was very grateful grown up in that area in Ouijambu because I didn't have very many toys and so when I discovered Dungeons and Dragons

from my brother's best friend, my older brother's best friend, suddenly there was this vacuum that I wanted to fill with all the things I couldn't do in my normal life. And so Dungeons and Dragons became a creative interface for me to facilitate my fantasies. And that then eventually led to me focusing, exclusively on designing role-playing games. And it's because my creation story started at a very young age,

creating my own stories, then becoming a denger master for over a decade, creating stories for others. Yeah. Now, I think, and you'll forgive me my style here is a lot of, you know, interrupting and breaking down the components. Because a lot of us have the same narrative where we start playing with toys, we start making up worlds, we start making up stories, but they are very disorganized, you know, kids play kids playing with toys and making up rules and breaking them as they go. Moving into Dungeons and Dragons as young as you did, I think it was 10, I believe,

is what 10 years old. It was what I read that you would, that structure and being able to craft things in that world, that feels a little bit more on the unusual side. What do you think it was it that drew you to that? Or how do you feel like, you know, you kind of develop that skill, you know, obviously at a very young age for one thing. And then what did you kind of learn as you worked within this, you know, designing games within another rule structure like Dunners of Dragons.

The answer is quite boring in that I was bored. And I didn't particularly enjoy school because I lived in my head like all kids do. But perhaps I lived in my head a bit more than most. And for me, because my life did have quite a bit of chaos, I appreciated the rule sets. because when you have a rule set, we all play by the same rules. And I found myself

just gravitating towards that because I wanted that order in my life. And I really thrived. And so I didn't do as well in school, but I did really well in the world of Dungeons and Dragons as a player and then eventually as a dungeon master. And so the positive side of that is I acquired a very high level of a reading level at a very young age.

And so I remember when the school was testing me, they're like, man, you know, Mark really doesn't do much of his homework. He doesn't really pay attention in class. Maybe he has a learning disability. And then they tested my reading and it was two levels higher than the class. Then they tested my math. It was also one to two levels above class. It was because when you're playing Dungeon Dragons,

you have to master statistics. and you have to master numbers. And they go, then he's just completely unmotivated. High-skill, low-caring. And so there was, I didn't have this ambition or noble cause or this was my calling.

No, it was just more of, I was absolutely bored by my own rhythm of life at the time. And I needed an escape, where I can let my creativity flow, but within rules, within rules. Right. Yeah, well, I think it's a, it's a, you know, a false belief in my opinion that, you know, creativity needs to be unrestricted. In fact, you know, restrictions, the opposite is generally true, right? Restrictions breed creativity, having to play within a specific box,

then forces you to innovate and helps give you direction. And so I found that to be true across every one of the designers that I've spoken with. So then I'm really, you know, so you've found a passion and a channel to drive your creativity, you're learning your intellect through Dungeons and Dragons. This goes on for quite a while. Was there a point there where you made a decision that, oh, this is something I would want to pursue as a career? Was there some experimentation with building your own things?

How did you make that transition from, okay, I really love Dungeons and Dragons. I'm a good player. I'm a good dungeon master too. Hey, I want to craft these kinds of experiences. It was in the mid-80s. And in the mid-80s, I remember my friend had a Combinore 64. And I asked him, what is he playing? What's his older brother playing?

It was a game called Ultima 2 by Richard Gereon. And I saw that. And it was the first time that I saw a role-playing game on a computer. And it was very rudimentary graphics. basically what looked like a, you know, kind of like the, I don't know, you know, these are 2D sprite graphics where you had this guy moving around the map. The animations were very, very basic. But it still caught my attention because it showed for the first time a visualization, a 2D visualization of the 3D worlds I created in my head. And from there, I wanted to learn,

How did this guy named Richard create this software? And I learned that he used a computer programming language. So I started going down that journey. So I begged my mom for years to please give me a Commodore 64 so that I can be a dungeon master and I can codify that within a piece of software. And that can continue iterating on that. The software has memory, has persistent memory. I was absolutely fascinated by that.

And it wasn't so much that I wanted to learn how to computer program, but it was more of that I couldn't find ways to get other people to create sophomore for me. Yeah. It was down that path that I ended up, you know, going to college and majoring in computer science and then, you know, taking some grad school and AI is because I wanted to know how to make games. But then the, you know, then life takes its own turns, you know, my, of my 20s.

there are things I want to do. I want to go date. I want a car. And then I took a different career path. That was very different than the reason why I went into computer science. What career path was that? I joined the startup. It was during the dot-com heyday in the late 90s.

And it failed to run out of money. I became a cheap technology officer at a very young age. So I was able to help convince people to give us millions of dollars and then blow it. And then realized I was absolutely incompetent with that type of responsibility. Then joined a financial services company called Franklin Templeton Investments. Started there as an analyst. And then within, you know, within three years, ended up managing a department, a data department, data sciences departments.

And I realized, my God, I hate my life. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of there's a lot of great things I want to pick apart in this phase of your journey because, you know, for one, I can resonate with pieces of this. You know, I went to law school. I was on my way to becoming a lawyer miserable and, you know, because this is the path where there was money, there was security. There was a kind of, you know, the things that society told me I should want and moved me in that direction. And, you know, I wasted a lot of money time and and, and, and, you know, frankly, was in a little bit. bit of a depression at points. But on the flip side, I learned a lot of incredibly valuable skills that ended up serving me and allowing me to be not just a game designer, but a CEO and to be able to negotiate deals. Clearly, you were part of a startup and went through this period of learning and actively raising capital, actively managing an engineering team. And frankly, and this is the other piece that people don't recognize that going through failure, I think is actually one of the best superpowers you can gain, right?

And so I'd love to piece apart maybe a couple of lessons from there of what was that, you know, what did you learn from the process of fundraising? What did you learn about your capabilities or, you know, where the failings? What were the best lessons you got out of that failings of trying to run a team there and how might they apply it in the future? You know, the biggest thing that I learned, I'm grateful for that, for that experience. You know, the biggest thing I learned about myself, which was the most important thing. that I would need is, you know, when you're going out on a new venture, you have to have a

certain kind of crazy self-belief in yourself. And so what I learned through those failures was that I am someone who can do the hard things. I am someone who can have the courage and to deliver hard things, whether it's delivering hard news to myself or overcoming an incredible obstacle. That's what I learned. And so that nugget stayed with me in my heart. And when I kept getting promoted at Franklin, and Franklin's a great company, they are family-oriented business, they treat their employees extremely well. So there are all these reasons why, you know, there should have been a correlation between my rewards and happiness. But what I found out was that the more money that I made there, now by late 20s,

my happiness didn't improve in the same way that my extrinsic rewards improved. And so I knew that there was an intersection there that was off in my life. And I went back in time and I asked myself, okay, I can do the hard things. So what is the next hard thing that I want to do? And I've always wanted to make games. And then I go, okay, making a game requires a lot of money. And it's probably going to take me three to four years to figure it out.

So I need a sustainable cash flow that allows me to have and work different hours. So I opened up a yogurt shop. A yogurt shop. I didn't know this part of your history. A yogurt shop, okay. It was called mochi yogurt. And so I studied yogurt intensely all the ingredients that went into because I wanted to make the best yogurt if I was going to do it. And it just so happens that at this time, Pinkberry had one store in L.A., which I never went to before.

But I read about it. And I agreed with, you know, their emphasis on quality. and so I hired a food chemist in Arizona and crafted my own frozen yogurt recipe and hundreds of different iterations testing it on my family and most of it was terrible but I finally landed on this recipe that I created called SANG, C-A-M-G. And I opened up the store. I created a PR campaign beforehand and I had 400 people on opening day

and the yogurt shop was immediately profitable, and it was a smash hit in Sacramento. And so there was a moment of times where I had a crisis, where I had this incredibly thriving yogurt shop, and multiple offers for people to franchise it, to build out the next two or three stores. And I was tempted to do that, but I remembered that would I be happy five years?

years from now operating 10 yogurt shops or would I be happier pursuing, you know, something I've always wanted to do. And so I made the decision to follow my heart and decided to take all the profits from that yogurt shop, studied game design, every single book you can imagine, read everything online and designed my first role-playing game. It was about 30-something pages, design the battle system, design the progression system, and I had to design a game that fit my budget. And then as I was designing it, I was like, okay, I'm going to need about six or seven people to help me out with this. So I put up a Craigslist ad, and the ad with something like this, hey, if you want to pursue your dreams, which was to make a role-playing game, and you've

never had the opportunity to do so, here's your chance. But let me be very frank, you will be paid poorly and the hours will be long. And so I didn't know how many people respond to that Craigslist ad, but the next morning in front of my yogurt shops I fell asleep in the stock room on the second floor. There was a line out my door

of people interviewing. Wow. So our first artist was a cake decorator from Safeway. And they're lined up outside the yogurt shop. This is the company, if you want to work long hours, not get paid a lot. Pursue your dreams.

Come to the yogurt shop. That's awesome. And I promise you get a freak up the yogurt. There you go. Okay, now we understand the incentive structure. So I hired a team of six to seven people who had never worked on games before. And I handed them my game design manual. I said, this is what we're building.

We have three months to build it before I run out of money. It took a six and a half months. And I had completely drained. the coffers of mochi yogurt it had about $500 left for the game launch and when it for the first 30 days it wasn't looking good I was making like $20 bucks a day and then suddenly in July of 2009 the revenue went up to $200 then 300 then in the following month in August a thousand dollars a day and then a few months after that, three to $4,000 a day.

And by the end of the year, so we launched the game in June of 2009, at the end of the year, it was doing $6,000 to $8,000 a day every day. And then in the following year, it was doing $20,000 to $40,000 a day every day. That is an absurd and incredible level of success for your first published design, your first new studio. I know that there's plenty of people that are asking, what happened here? Like, how do you, what do you attribute that success to? how do you get that kind of incredible scale with a small team,

small budget, shoe strings? What do you attribute that success to? So I felt the same way. In fact, I had no faith in my game design skills or the longevity of the game. And so if you played the game for three months, we ran out of content.

And the game erred out because it won't go past level 30. Amazing. It's crass. And so we started creating content. I was like, oh, this game's not going to last for another three months. This game's not going to last for another three. And the game just kept making more and more money. And I was like, okay.

So about seven months in, I go, I just got lucky. I was deeply insecure. And I felt like I didn't deserve this success. I literally felt like an imposter. And I go, let me design another RPG that's 70% the same and 30% radically different. So I created this in other game, this other RPG in literally two weeks,

designed it out, and then built it in two months. And this game reached success two times faster and was generating as much money as my first one. So I go, okay, maybe I do know certain things about how to put these things together. And that's when I started paying attention to what really matters for these type of games,

which would eventually lead to what I call the philosophy of fun and the algorithm of fun. But it took many, many games for me to understand why my own games were so successful. It took years afterwards for me to appreciate that. And I think, Justin, you can probably appreciate what I'm sharing here, because you may feel the same way with your own work. Oh, yeah, no, there is no question.

And I mean, first of all, I want to echo and underscore, you know, the imposter syndrome is real. I mean, not only do I feel it and other people feel it, like we all go through that period. And no matter what tier of success you're at, there's always that element there. And then I, as sort of an analytically minded person, have been obsessed with breaking down these principles. I mean, that's why I have this podcast and wrote a book and go through all these things. I try to like, okay, how do you break down? Like, what are the recipes here? And recipe is not in my, I'm really interested.

Obviously, we're going to dig into your philosophy of fun and your algorithm of fun because, you know, to me there is philosophy of fun makes a lot of sense to me. I think that there are clear principles that apply. Algorithm of fun, just the terminology, just reacting to the terminology is more challenging because I don't think it says it's very hard to get it to the mathematical formula. So many new designers when I talk to them want a spreadsheet that will tell them when a game is fun, when a game is balanced, what you need to do. This is how you make cards.

And that's just, in my experience, just not possible. There are principles, there's formulas, but at the end, there is a kind of more art than science kind of balance to this thing. So I'd love to, yeah, let's dig into it. Share the wisdom, my friend. By the way, I agree with everything you're saying. And the algorithm of fun is a recognition that there's a unique algorithm for your game. And so I'll break that even down. further.

And so first, I went on this long journey where after making, so I make a subgenre of RPGs called collectibles and combat RPG, which just basically means at its most, you know,

most common denominator levels, you collect digital toys, you test your digital toys in combat, and then you can upgrade them. And so that's what it collectibles of combat RPG game is. So I've made eight of these in sequence.

And so I can break these games down like few can and understand them like you can. And so that's not good enough. I had to understand what exactly are we doing here? And so at the topmost level, I ask myself,

who do we make games for? Humans. Okay, great. Next level. What do humans do? You know, well, I'd listen to my own life. So if we were to time slice my life, it's got 24 hours a day, just like here as Justin and everyone listens to this podcast. Sometimes I watch HBO, Game of Thrones, you know, sometimes I use a bathroom, breakfast, I go to work. And then there are these other periods of time where I time slice in games. I go, okay, now we're working with at least some

understanding of the realities. The next question, then I ask, Why do people engage in role-playing games? I had to go to my past to answer this question. And in the past, I had learned at a young age that Dungeons and Dragons, when it was in book-only form, was a interface to self-actualizing my own fantasies, whether it's a hero fantasy, whether it's a great leader fantasy, whether it's a power fantasy. And so I go, okay,

role playing games then are a software interface for people to self-actualize their fantasies in a space that's safe and in a space that rewards your participation and maintains the persistency of your contributions within the world that you're playing. And so these things were all super important to me. And so what that basically told me was, I think I understand why people play role-playing games.

Then I went even deeper. What's that mean? Well, let's distill it down. As humans, we can understand some powerful self-actualizing desires, which are one, love, romance, right? That's very powerful. the other one is how do I feel powerful and as a man

who has who's been in this body all my life I can understand that power fantasy and then wealth wealth fantasies and so I begin to distill self actualizations fantasies into single

words that reflected a powerful desire that I had as a human being and I can validate by going to the bookstore. And so if you go to the bookstore, you see love stories. You go to the bookstore, you see power stories.

When you go to the bookstore, you see how to get rich, how to build your wealth, you know, the millionaire next door. And then I started to create something called the Philosophy of Fun. And the philosophy of fun goes like this. If you ever watched that show on on Netflix. I think it's called Lucifer. So Lucifer is the devil.

And he has this power to ask people, you know, what is your greatest desire? And so the philosophy fund is very much that. What is your greatest desire, Justin? Or Mark, or whoever else. And if the answer is, I don't feel powerful in my life, and I want to feel powerful,

Or I don't feel loved and I want love, right? The philosophy of fun asks this fundamental question. So let's talk about power. And so if the response is, I want to feel more powerful in my life. I want to be the hero. I want to be beloved in this universe. that a philosophy of fun goes like, okay,

we're going to then design a game that fulfills the single aspiration as its main focus. It doesn't mean there can't be secondary and tertiary aspirations, but it's going to focus then on the power fantasy. Then the next question then becomes, okay,

how do you fulfill that? And how do you know you're fulfilling that? Well, let's talk about that. And so if we're building a power fantasy collectibles of combat RPG game, how do you feel powerful? Well, I feel powerful

when I can take my heroes and I can beat the dragon or beat the golem. It's basically a binary outcome. Were you powerful enough to win? Yes or no. If you were powerful enough to win, you then get the rewards.

and what do you do with the rewards? You upgrade. Or you buy a new character to supplement your party. And what's really happening is you're delivering a power fantasy, whereas the player continues to win or lose, they are aspiring to become more powerful. Underneath that, to support that fantasy, you get graduated increases,

of generally permanent and persistent power that go up. And how do you know your power goes up? Because your numbers go up. And you test it in combat with more difficult enemies. And so at a very high level, I've shared with you a framework that I've used in creating a game and seeing things for what they truly are, not what people tell me they are,

but what they truly are. And so at a very high level, the philosophy of fun is a question. So let's use an example. So the eighth game, where I was general manager and the director of the studio, the Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes,

I was not the original director for that game at Electronic Arts. In fact, I was not even on the list. There were two other game directors who were already six months building a Star Wars game. But I had a sense that the games that they were building were not the right ones. And so here's what I mean by that. Star Wars, when we think of the game, I'm going to share two points with you.

What is Star Wars using the philosophy of fun? What is the what is the aspiration? When you ask that question, the answer that I discovered what Star Wars was was that it was a power fantasy where the forces of light were battling the forces of dark. And everything else was a story around that fantasy.

So Star Wars was ultimately a power fantasy. The second thing that I learned about studying the Star Wars franchise is I took two weeks off to create my pitch for Star Wars. And I started playing with the toys and watching the movies. And here's what I discovered. I found myself playing with the toys more than watching the movies. And I said, huh, why is that? Okay, well, we'll go research this.

At the time in 2012 and 2013, the lifetime value of all toys was greater than the lifetime value of everything else within Star Wars. I was like, okay, this tells me that collecting toys and unlimited storytelling is more powerful than the movies themselves because people could create their own fantasies. And so I paired the Collectibles in Combat RPG game pattern, a game pattern with a power fantasy, and I pitched it because it was a natural match for Star Wars, which is a power fantasy. So I brought these things together to tell a story, a powerful story that was authentic. And so I know I'm rambling here, but let me give you another example of what not to do,

where the philosophy fund can be helpful. If you're making, let's say, a Disney game and you have Ariel the Little Mermaid as your IP, if you study that IP, at least superficially from what I can see, it's a love story. It's a love aspiration. Love conquers all, right? And so you wouldn't pair that with a power fantasy or a power game design pattern. When you do that, you get a suboptimal return because you're not being fully authentic

to how most people see Ariel from Disney. And so having the philosophy of fun is really a tool to help you understand what fantasy that you're trying to help self-actualize and facilitate the player. I know that was very long-winded, but hopefully that's helpful. Oh, there's a lot of great stuff in there. I've been taking notes the whole time. I now want to kind of pick apart and dig into a lot of elements to it. So it was an incredibly great detailed walkthrough. Again, I usually interrupt mid-conversation, but you were doing, it was.

so much great stuff. I didn't want to do that. So we'll take it from the end and work backwards. I hear and underscore the sort of the power of connecting the IP authentically to the kind of fantasy, the payoff, the core tension is the language I like to use of the game, right? What is really the struggle that you have and what are you getting? What does success look like for you? What does failure look like? Why do you care? Having those things pair is really, really powerful and important. I actually am really interested to dig into this, this moment for you inside of EA. There's two other game directors working on this property. You're not on the list or you're at the bottom of the list and you're taking time off to go and pitch internally for this.

Like what, what's going on there? Like what is the, because, you know, this is a huge company. This is an, you know, you've demonstrated, you know, kind of, you know, kind of ballsy commitment and, and belief in yourself various points throughout your history. what triggered you to kind of take that leap? How did you manage that within the company to then be able to create that space and build it for you? That's a really interesting and unique position

that you crafted for yourself that ended up, of course, working out quite well. So I'll dig into that a little bit before I'll circle back to more of the philosophy. Sure. The story is quite humiliating, actually, and funny at the same time. When my company was acquired,

there were two people who are really, well, there are three people who are really big champions of the acquisition. But at the topmost level, Frank Jabot, who I'm a huge, huge fan of, at the time was president of electronic arts. And he's one of the, you know, he was the first one, one of the early ones that I met. And he asked me, Mark, and his name's going to, this is an important part of the story. He goes, Mark, why are you selling your company? you grew your company from two to 76 people,

your balance sheet is healthy, you're making a lot of money, but why are you selling your company? And I looked at him and I said, Frank, I'm afraid. And at this point in time, I could have made a decision.

I go, do I bullshit him? Do I tell him the raw truth? So I decided to just get raw with him, even though I need nothing about him. And I said, well, you're going to crush me.

I said, you're going to figure out, you know, how I've designed these games, and you're going to come out with a bigger game, and you're going to squeeze out, you're going to squeeze me out. And, you know, I can't compete with you. And your budget, you know, and so he looked at me and smiled. And then he asked me a second question. What's wrong with our, at the time, it was a Dragon Age PC game?

And he asked me, what's wrong with this game? I was like, oh, shit. I was like, okay, well, let me. take a look at it and I broke it down every aspect of the game that was wrong technically and I provided reasons for it and then he finally smiled and then we just we both let our hair down and we just started talking and so he's important part of the story um because within EA you need powerful champions so he knew that I wasn't on the director list to lead the game and so he gave me a tip that someone within EA I'm not going to mention their name

who owned the decision-making for Star Wars was going to be at Lucas in San Francisco and so I happened to be there and for a lack of a better word I got on my knees and I begged for the chance to pitch my vision for Star Wars and it's because I was initially told no. Yeah. And so I begged for it. That's when I fell on my knees and I said, just give me a chance, give me two weeks, let me come back with my vision.

And if you say no, I'll accept it. But at least give me the shot to present what Star Wars should be. And so did a bunch of research, disappeared for two weeks, and came up with division for our game, which was collect all the toys. And past that

and then I was asked to then present what EA calls the key franchise review, which we call the Gladiators Stadium. And the way this works is that the GMs

and directors presents their game and you get stack ranked. Top 30%, good. If you're in the bottom 30%, you're gone. If you're in the middle, you're given more time, but perhaps less resources. So I went

in there as an underdog, and I presented to Andrew Wilson, the CEO, and all of his executives. It's a room full about 20-something people. They had apps where they vote on how well you did. Wow. I love it. And I went up there

and fucking crushed it. I had no profit of them. but just a vision with lots of data and facts to back up why this is, should be the Star Wars game. And so that was the abridged version of what happened. That's awesome. That's awesome. So there's this really, I'm noticing a few themes in your kind of personality and how

you've approached things that I kind of want to dig into. So you know, you have this, you know, a rare willingness to do hard things, a ability to just kind of figure stuff out and solve problems, whether that be figuring out how to make yogurt, ice creams, and different flavors and formulas to, you know, starting up a financial, you know, working in a startup to building this new structure for a Star Wars game. And then you also pair this with a kind of, you know,

a humility here of, you know, the being open about your fears with somebody that's going to be acquiring you. I think very few people would do that. begging and, you know, humbling yourself to be able to have these opportunities. That pairing is super rare because both of those are superpowers in their own right. They tend to be contradictory. Where, you know,

and where do you think that sort of comes from? Or is that something you consciously have cultivated? Is it just something that's just naturally come to you? Because I think that if we could get more people in the world to have those two paired traits, I think we'd be in a much better world. You know, I think you have to be. really tough question. So it's tough for me to answer, but I'll answer

the end of it. I never felt like I was good enough. I think a lot of that had to do with struggling at a young age and through multiple tragedies. And so

I think the humbly came from there and also from my parents, my mother especially, who worked multiple jobs, sold on the black market, in South Korea, where she was selling bananas from the military base there, which were illegal to sell to the domestic population there. She bought me my call at our 64.

It was like my mother's resilience to overcome and deliver things that had a profound impact on me. And where I came up, I never felt like I was good enough. Yeah. And so I have like this internal demon in me that pushes me so hard. to do better. It's never good enough. Yes. I thank you for being candid and for sharing that. I know for sure that a lot of people listening are going to be able to relate that. I know I myself can relate to that.

In fact, I'll tie this in to two really two points. One, related to Star Wars, I have told the same story using the Star Wars lens, which is the dark side is very quick and very powerful, right? I've felt this in my own life, right? That dark side of fear of not enoughness, of that needing to prove yourself of that wanting to control is so powerful. I attribute a lot of my success in life to that force, but it can be soul crushing. I mean, it is not a, it's a recipe for success. It is not a recipe for happiness. And that being able to transition that later on in my career and something that's a continuing process of being powered by light side, by being powered by love, by wanting to create, by wanting to contribute. And that can also lead you to success. It is a

slower path. It is a not as a straightforward, but it is one that is more fulfilling. And I think that that, you know, I can't say I'm upset that I've, I leveraged dark side powers to get to here, right? That was there because I wouldn't be where I am without it. I don't know. And I feel like that, you know, I don't know if that particular framing resonates with you, but it's something I've felt and I've, I've had to make a very conscious shift for my own well-being and my, you know, deeper relationships with myself and with my family to be less, work on that not enoughness and it's an ongoing process so i appreciate you sharing that um and then the other point that i wanted to make which is also really greatly ties into is you know you've shared a lot

about the uh the sort of powerlessness and the struggle and the lack of resources of your youth and when i heard your philosophy of fun i didn't disagree with anything that you said but i felt like you emphasized that part so much that power fantasy that wealth fantasy that ability to have it which it seems clear that comes from you felt that so so strongly, we're unable to realize that in your life so strongly, and role-playing games became the avenue that you felt that. And so your psyche is now, I think our game design process is a, it's a reflection of who we are, right? It is, we are, we are, like any artist, like you're trying to create and tell the story and solve this thing within you that you resonates with other

people. And so I, I kind of have felt that from you here. And I don't know if that, that resonates, but it seems like there's this really deep narrative connection in your life that has really come to fruition in a lot of powerful ways. Justin, you are clearly a game designer. Who pays very close attention to these details. Yes, that strikes very close to explaining things that I've had a difficult time understanding. And the thing I would add on to that is I never thought I would be a father. I never wanted children.

Now that I'm married and I have a two and a seven-year-old, they have given me this love that I don't understand, but I can appreciate and feel. And they are my light sign. You know, I tell the people closest to me that they help heal me and they fulfill a part of me

that was missing where I didn't feel like it was properly you know served or maintained like perhaps with someone who's more balanced I certainly wouldn't call myself balance

and now that I know a bit about you I certainly want to consider you traditionally you would have a lot more in common than we do yes yes and likely would let us down because I can certainly feel it.

I can feel the toe to your voice. I can tell that you understand. Yeah, and I think that the, yeah, that's part of way I love these conversations, the amount of power that we get from sharing, from communicating our own struggles, and from sharing them and connecting with others, I think it just, it helps, right?

This sunshine is the best disinfectant, this kind of, and it, And again, recognizing the power that comes from it too. And so I think now getting back into the, you know, kind of the nitty gritty of the philosophy, I think that the, in my version of your philosophy of fun is the kind of, I think there's a subset of player motivations, right? And I think that this idea of, you know, power or what I call kind of growth, right, that feeling like how do you represent power in games?

A lot of it is not just the ab, the, the, okay, I killed the monster. I did a thing. I didn't do a thing. I think it's the, we have a craving to be better than we were, right? And so games provide us with this path that's very clear, right? When I first start playing the games, if you kill the dragon the first time you play, it doesn't give you the same satisfaction as I start by killing rats. And then I work my way up to that dragon.

And now it feels that that feeling of like growth and progress and reward, I think is such a critical part of it. So I just want to kind of emphasize that piece because I think that, you know, the games I work on all the time sort of deck, building games and really fill that same kind of niche. But you want to, when I think about design, you know, and I just want to kind of frame where you said this is, you know, there's a primary motivation you're looking for. It's either power, it's love, it's whatever.

And I look at it, there is a core thing your game does, right? What is you know, the core design loop or the, you know, the core game loop or what I call the core tension. That's the heart of what your game is. And that needs to be precise. But I think it's worthwhile to look at the games from a variety of lenses, right? How do you attack this from the people that want to connect and want to find, you know, a social group or they want to like find,

you know, love or or some people that want to just tell a great story and be immersed and lose themselves in experience or the people that want to compete and want to beat other people and achieve achievements and find their social status? I think all of those lenses are valuable. And of course, you know, I think you're the lens you emphasize is probably the most prominent and most successful in games. But I think it's important to see all the different aspects of it.

Justin, I totally agree with you. And usually when I have a tendency to explain things, I have a tendency to focus on one thing because, you know, from my experience, when I try to explain more than that, that's not something I have to do with you because you're a very experienced game designer. And you're correct about the nuances. Absolutely support that and agree with that 100%. So I have a tendency to oversimplify things.

So there's less ambiguity, but I agree. The feeling of power is multifaceted. It's in addition to there being a strong mathematical numerical component of the slope of the curve in which the player progresses as they exchange their time for activities, is there has to be a sense of feeling of competency where they feel like to your, you know, to what you said earlier, is that they feel like they're making progress.

And, you know, because they want to be better than they were 10 minutes ago or an hour ago. And so that feeling of competency is very, very important. And the feeling of competency isn't single-dimensional with the power progression curve. It's multi-dimensional in that power could come from knowledge, knowledge of the game, knowledge how to build a deck with strategy. But the impact of that strategy is power. And so the how is the strategy. And the what is, you know, what you're delivering is the power.

And so I totally agree with what you're saying. Strategy is a huge part of the type of games that I enjoy creating. is because those are the type of games I enjoy playing. And so these are not one-dimensional ideas, but that one-dimensional idea is more to drive the point of what the spine is and how everything feeds and drives into that. Yeah, no, and I think, again, I didn't bother to interrupt you during your description because it's fantastic, it's super useful,

and it highlights really critical points. And I, you know, I dig into the nuances here because that's what's fun for me. and what are what's good to do with our audiences. I could have that conversation with you because of your experience, but if you have that conversation with like a junior name designer, they're like overwhelmed. You know what I mean? And the point gets lost.

Right. So this is great. I love these conversations. Yeah, great. That's clear. And yeah, me too. So let's, I'm going to queue in on one point just because of the, what you just said.

And then I want to start getting into your new company and everything, which is, you know, when you're teaching new game designers, right? So there's the nuances. There's incredible wealth of knowledge now that you've, you know, accumulated over decades. And you've trained now large teams. You ran a huge team at EA. You've got, you know, other companies. How do you approach that process of training a new designer, right?

You brought completely rookie people on to the yogurt shop with a promise of free yogurt and loss of hours. And now you've worked with, and I actually remember this from our first conversation, the incredible power of working with rock stars, right? And working with great people who teach you and lift you up. And you've hired people, I'm sure, across the spectrum. How do you approach that process of teaching new designers and getting a cohesive team to work together? That is such a tough question.

And I will attempt to answer it. My general thinking on this has evolved over time. So let me share first a leadership. framework with you. And then we'll get into how that fits into how I'm thinking about creating a zero to one game studio. So if you watch Star Trek, there are really two personalities, two leadership personalities that stand out.

There's Kirk, and then there's Picard. Oh, I love this already. And they each have their own situational benefits, pros and clothes. One is not superior than the other. It's only superior within the right context. And so Kirk is much more directive, and Picard is much more influential in patience. And so Picard empowers, Kirk directs.

And so in the early days of Click Nation, you know, my first gaming zero to one studio, I was absolutely a Kirk. 100% of the time. There was no Picard. And as I joined, when I joined EA, I remember they had a 360 review on me and my leadership score is probably the lowest

as a GM and director, as someone who's very disagreeable, someone who's very directive, as someone who doesn't necessarily empower. Just give a brief description of a 360 review because I think some people won't necessarily. know what that means. Yeah, so a 360 review is basically, they ask all my peers, the people and the people above

me and below me, what they think of me as a manager. There's a scorecard, a very extensive scorecard with anonymous comments. There are a lot of unflattering comments, let's just say. Mark is arrogant. Mark does not empower. Mark is direct. Mark is direct. Mark is not necessarily friendly. A lot of unflattering traits, right? At first, I was deeply offended by that. And I started to use excuses like, oh, who are these people to judge me?

And it took me a couple of years to begin to internalize that. And I would say that my leadership style was more 75% Kirk and 25% McCart. I'll probably be generous, okay? At least I'm in my head. I ordered Earl Grey Hot a bunch. Does that count? So now that I have children,

I'm married and I'm having a great time with them, I made a promise to myself that I will, first of all, be more Picard and work with the best people that I knew that I had worked with in the past. So I handpicked the best of the best. And some were reluctant to want to work with me again

because they had memories of this dictator, this Kirk. And some took more convincing and even bribing, some would say. And so I was very, very deliberate in, first of all, respecting the creative space of these great builders and really giving them three to six months of just complete freedom to do almost whatever the hell they wanted to do to get it out of their system and to prove to them to show them

that I am here more as a professor, I will at times become Kirk when I need to be, but I'm more of a Picard. And so that worked okay. That helped everyone. So I became a teacher. I shared a lot of my frameworks. I had to reteach the frameworks about three to four times

for the wisdom to sync concepts like what I shared with you about the philosophy. But there's many others, like familiar yet unique. Well, what the hell does that mean? Are familiar yet unique? Well, if you're creating a new IP or you're creating, a new game, you have to first draw on what's familiar. You know, something that appears to be derivative, but then there's something magical and extraordinary that they discovered.

And it's because if you initially flash somebody with something that's just weird, they're going to be immediately turned off. And so I shared concepts and philosophies like that early on to see when they would finally sink in. And then I began changing my scale for Picard to now moving more closely towards Kirk to bring more constraints into where we're going. And so I hope that that answers your question and that a lot more patience. And I'm very upfront with people.

All right, everyone, in about two or three months, I'm going to go from Picard to more Kirk. So I'll just give everyone a fair warning. you know, it's the right time. And then when people begin to feel the Kirk, they're almost kind of surprised by it. And so the team that we have, they're so talented. They're so much better than me

and their disciplines and their mastery. Like, I feel so fucking grateful to work with them. And it's just a great honor, you know, to occupy the space and to occupy the space. and to occupy the space with them. It's just so great to be building with them again.

So we're 53 people. And over half the people in the studio came from my previous studio that I found. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. We have our company motto is work with awesome people, make awesome things, help each other grow. And as long as I'm doing those things, I'm happy my career is in the right track. And it sounds like that you've been doing that, right?

It doesn't mean bringing these people over and continuing to learn. And these are hard lessons as a leader. You know, there's a framework. I forget which book I came from, but it resonated with me. It's the difference between a star driven business and a systems driven business, right? This idea of a star driven business is like, look, I'm the star. I know what I'm doing. I'm a great designer.

I can get this done. Follow me. And we're going to be fun, right? And then that is something that doesn't scale and it doesn't empower people. And then when you can create instead a systems driven business where it's like, all right, look, here's the frameworks. Here's what it is that I do and how I think. about these things and then empower people within those frameworks, right, within the constraints,

hey, if you guys can play within this box, go, it's all yours. Or if you can convince me that the box needs to move, cool. Then now you can actually scale. Now you can train people. And then the hardest piece of this for me, and I don't know how this fits in with you is actually letting people fail. When I see that they're on a track that I don't, I know where it's headed. I've learned I have to actually not get in the way and let them fail and learn, right? Obviously, if it's a mission critical company's going to, right, none of that. But like, there's a lot of room where you need to let people fail and learn on their own. And every now and then, they're going to do something that you think is going to fail.

I'm like, hey, actually, that worked, right? But the lessons are much stronger. So I don't know if you have experience with that too, but that's been the hardest thing for me as a leader. It is, you know, for most of last year, so we're founded in January of 2022. Most of last year, I was much more Picard. And I've noticed, you know, I like the language I use about building systems. And so the studio was building systems. And there were many hits and there were many misses.

And I haven't found the perfect balance other than I know. I said this to our creative director, Noriega, and it's great to see us failing in these different areas because it shows me that you're really pushing

the boundaries of creativity. And so to embrace that, because if we aren't making mistakes, we're probably not innovating enough. And if we weren't anxious, it means we're not moving fast. enough, right? Yes. So, yes, I know you know. I do know. I know what you do. And so I have not found the perfect balance, Justin. I do not have the perfect template. I'm learning it just like you are

in terms of what I think is contextually appropriate given limited resources, the time frame we're trying to hit, the partners that, you know, that I made promises to, or the studio made promises who we want to keep. And so I'm trying to manage all these things and juggle them. And it's not 100% then. I think on a good day, it's 60 to 70% accuracy. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great target to go for.

I hear that. All right. So let's dig into the new company. Let's dig into the premise. Why come back? You don't have to do this anymore. You've had successful exits. You've made huge games.

You've got nothing to prove to anybody. why start this company? What's the premise? What's the deal? Let's give some context to people before we can start digging into a lot of the nitty-gritty. So after leading Star Wars Galaxy Puroes for electronic arts, what most people don't know is I stopped enjoying playing games.

And I stopped playing games almost all together. and I don't know what word we use for that. Maybe I was burnt out. I don't know because I don't think burnt out was the right word. I was just completely not interested in games anymore for a variety of reasons. And it took me time to heal. And I knew that I missed games because a few years after I retired from games, guess what I was doing?

I was playing games seven to eight hours a day. I was on multiple guilds grinding away. I was playing League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, X Heroes, War Robots. I mean, you name it. I was just played, I was in love with games again. And I kept saying to myself, man, if I were working in this game, this is what I would do. This is what I would do. Yeah.

And really, I missed it, man. There's no other word for it that I found my purpose in life. And I am oddly and strangely above average in it. And I missed it and I want to come back. I missed working with creatives. I missed working with brilliant creative people. I also miss sometimes the glory of overcoming pain. Maybe that's my own thing.

And so I missed all of it. And so there was this gentleman named Nathan Fogg, and he was home about early hires. We made eight games together. And he would visit me every year on clockwork. He would visit this grizzly game designer. He would always have one question. Mark, when are we making a game again?

And like every year, no matter what's happening in his life, he would come visit me. And I told him in 2021, I'm ready. I miss it. And we started calling up our social network. And suddenly, we have a team before any funding. Yeah.

And before even knowing what game we're going to work on. But I knew just the energy was electric. We were just so happy to see each other. You know, we're just hugging each other and we're like, let's do it again. Let's build something great. But let's do it differently this time. You know, let's set a company differently. Let's make sure that people have overwhelming number of stock options and share and ownership in the company.

So there were some very unusual things that we did. You know, so that I always tell people, when you join Ozor Games, I hope this is the last game company you work for for these two reasons. One, you're going to share in our success. two, you never want to work anywhere else. And I need that. And so, for example, we set up the comp structure for the company. It's an unusual comp structure. We provide and pay for it the full health care, the full health care, by the way, great health care.

And so I believe that if you take care of people what's around their life and you support that and you fulfill that, they can become the best creative builder, you know, here at Osra Games, if you unlock that for them. And so our comp structure early on, even before we had funding, we had these grand philosophies. And we have stuck with that. So this unusual construct is that you have huge amounts of equity earned out as well as complete full 100% paid medical and, you know, the benefits. Yeah. Okay. Great.

Correct. And so then you take this. So you've got the team. You've got the passion. You've got a new philosophy, you know, a familiar but unique design for your company. And you're ready to now you go for, you go to build, are you building a prototype first? Are you raising capital first? Or you're deciding what your vision is?

What's the, where do you go next? You know, I'll probably should share some things, but I'll show them anyway. So our PR team is, hey, should probably talk. about that. You know, we can talk about. When I first came back, I knew we're going to do an RPG game.

I knew we're going to do another collectibles in combat RPG. I just didn't know the theme. I didn't know how much production quality we're going to put into it. But what I did know was this. I gave a test early on to people. It was like the first 12 of employees.

And I said this. Do you want to make a game that hits a niche audience and serves them well. Or do you want to make a game that serves this larger audience and serves them well? What aspires you? What I was really asking was what is your aspiration for the scale of the game you want to build? How much of it? How much energy do you have?

And so everyone picked the most ridiculous, biggest game you could think of, And they were so inspired by that. And here's what I learned from this. Great people are attracted to great vision or great mission. And that's what I learned from that exercise. And so I go, okay. So we have to one up Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. You know, that game's made about 1.5 million gross.

I was like, we have to one up this thing. How in the hell do we do that? You know, we can't just create a derivative product from there, a plus one and suddenly we hit it, right? Yeah. And so we interrogated what that meant, what great meant. And so I share that because initially I thought $15 to $20 million was enough to build our game at the very early days. And so, you know, in our seed and C plus round, we raised a total of about $28 million. So we closed $15 million in April with Andresen Horowitz as a lead at NFX.

Great partners there, by the way. And then they, Andresen Horowitz decided to double down the December of last year with an additional $10 million. And that closed within about three weeks. Wow. And so they saw the progress of the game. But I think more than anything else, they appreciated the third. thinking that goes into making a game. And perhaps it stood out to them as unique.

Because here's what happened. I was asked to provide an update in November and Adrescent Horowitz. I thought, you know, whatever, four to five people were going to show up. And it was funny. I was 15 minutes late. Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of Adresen Horowitz, showed up. And 26 people from Adresen Horowitz showed up. I went on there

and I gave a master class on how to build one of these games and I went into detail about how to build these different systems and what specific KPIs they serve and at what point in the player's journey they serve in addition

to some new novel concepts that we had invented and so an hour after that call, they said we're interested in leading your series C plus. We can have everything wired and funded in two weeks. My goodness. And so that happened rather rapidly. And I'm very grateful. So Arianna Simpson led that. John Lye from Andreasa Horowitz and Gigi Levy Weiss led that from Andreessen Horowitz and NFX. And so in October of last year, the full scope and weight of the game that we wanted to build was coming to

into focus. And we prototype the game that we wanted to build, and we completed the prototype at the end of December. We polished it in January and February. Go, yes, this is the game that we want to build on mobile first, then PC. And then zoom it out now. You know, we're going to need probably twice as much as we've raised to build the game that we believe

can really deliver all the promise of why we came together. It has evolved through a process of discovery and validation, an extensive amount of research. We've created a 20-and-30-page research document of our own, a research memo, about one of the largest paradigm shifts

that are happening in gaming right now. And this paradigm shift you're teasing with with is? Oh, sorry. So, you know, the global gaming market, let's first start there. It's anywhere from $185 million worldwide if you include in-app purchases and general sales, but not ad revenue. If you include ad revenue, it's about $215, $220 billion.

So anyway, it's anywhere from $185 to $220 billion. What's really interesting about this revenue, is that 50% of it comes from mobile. That's not where it's really interesting. That's interesting in itself, is RPGs, they only make up about 7 to 10% of downloads on mobile, but they make up a third of all gross revenue.

In other words, they have the highest aggregate spend on a per-user basis over the lifetime. And so that's interesting. So just let that part for a moment, that little tidbit of information. Here's what's happening. So Justin, looking at you, we're probably around the same age. And so we saw what happened on mobile in the early days.

And here's what happened on mobile in the early days, specifically for RPGs, and even more specifically for my genre that I specialize in. Early days, there were mostly text-based RPGs. They were very simple-looking games, but they were mathematically complex. I call that Generation 1. Generation 1 only lasted about two years. It cost about a half a million dollars to make. So when I say the generation only lasted two years,

I'm in the peak life cycle for that cycle of games. And Generation 2 came. And Generation 2 would have been. Brought was a 2D iconic interface, icons, and animated battles, not interactive, animated. I called that Generation 2, and those games cost anywhere from a couple million to a bit more than that, $6 or $7 million. That cycle lasted about two to three years. I'm talking specifically free to play.

Then Generation 3 came out in 2013 out of China. where you still had the user interface, which was a menu of 2D icons, right? And the battles were turn-based and interactive. That came out of China. And then it was fast followed by Com to Us at Summter's War in 2014. And then Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes was launched in 2015 as the first third generation in the Western markets.

then that game was copied and inspired raid shadow legends and Marvel Strike Force in 2018. And so the third generation of RPGs lasted about eight years. And so if you're going to make a third generation RPG, don't do it. Because the fourth generation is already here.

And the fourth generation also came out of China. In September of 2020, it is called Jin Chin Chin Impact. It's a collectibles of combat RPG, followed by Hong Kai Star Rail. And these games generate over $100 million a month. So here's the good news and the bad news.

The good news is this is the largest paradigm shift in gaming, and I'm going to enumerate why in just a moment. I believe, too, this will be the final generation or collectibles and combat RPGs. Let me bring some receipts. Hey, get hit me.

15 to 20 years ago, something miraculously happened for console PC games. And that was, there was a major breakthrough we all take for granted. We don't even pay attention to it anymore. The camera changed

15 to 20 years ago to behind the head of a character. Instant immersion. And it's one of the lowest common denominators that have survived the test of time for two decades. That's coming to mobile. Interesting. And so you have these confluences of technology on mobile

has reached the point where it's more powerful than the previous generation of consoles. Xbox 360. My phone is more powerful than that. And so your phones are effectively consoles. now. That doesn't mean that the play patterns are the same. They're not. But it's to say that the production quality and what you can do has changed. And so these four-generation games are out-monitizing and out-retaining the third generation of established games that are on the market

by four to six-x on a per-user basis. And in the retention, in some cases, some cases, cases are two times higher. Here's the bad news. These games are very expensive to make. I knew what was coming there. They cost anywhere from 45. That assumes you make no mistakes to over $55 million to make.

That's one. Two, you must have a very experienced team that knows how to build a free-to-play collectibles in combat RPG games. in combat RPG 18. Otherwise, you learn the wrong lessons. And thirdly, they take three to four years to me. And so the barriers to entry

for fourth generation collectibles in combat RPG are high, very high. Does this sound familiar? Yep. Consul's went with this. And so this paradigm shift is the largest paradigm shift I have ever seen in my life.

And so it creates an opportunity if you know what you're doing and you have the resources and you have the time to do some really incredible time to innovate and really establish leadership. And that's what Azra Games is looking to establish. I can see where A16Z was impressed by your pitch. You've got a high moat. You've got an experienced team and an incredibly well monetized category. that you have a decent chance of dominating. That seems like exactly the kind of thing. They are excited to invest it.

Yes. Yes. So all of that makes a ton of sense, and it's a thing that you can see now, thanks to this deep dive we've gone through, the stepping stones from the skills you began to hone as a child and building your own worlds in Dungeons and Dragons to the yogurt shop started game studio

and building those teams there, all the way up to the $1.5 billion category of, you know, with the category defining Star Wars galaxies and now to what you're building here. And I know there's another piece to this, which I'm eager to dig into. So, you know, obviously I know collectibles games pretty well in a, in, you know, different categories slightly, but a lot of overlap. And I think that the new Web3, you know, NFT collectible objects thing has become a hot button subject in the communities.

And I think that's also part of the premise of what you guys are building. So I'd love to dig into your philosophy of collectibles and potentially how that plays a role. Sure. So I spend a lot of my time. I'm an introvert. And I was a very extreme awkward kid. And I'm still an introper. So I spent a lot of time watering my garden.

And that's where I have a lot of my breakthrough thinking. And so I like to create frameworks and architect frameworks. And I work very closely with our co-founder, Travis, I'm going to butcher his last name. Bordeaux. He's a French last name. So I have these crazy ideas and I run by him because he has such a brilliant engineer mind. And, you know, he is a loyal opposition.

in terms of thinking, quality of thinking. So I came up with this construct for Web 3, called the two-funnel system. And it's a solution that I was able to develop while watering my garden. It goes something like this. Using the philosophy of fun, and I looked at Web 3,

I asked myself, what is the fantasy in Web 3? And you know what it is? It's wealth. And speculation is the activity of what you do to achieve your wealth fantasy. In other words, it's extrinsically rewarding. I go, okay, got it.

Using the philosophy of fun, project legends, which is our ninth collectibles of combat RPG, what is the self-actualization fantasy. It's intrinsic, its power. Therefore, to build the game, you must first recognize the aspirations of each participant base,

then design two different funnels where they don't interfere with each other's activities. So you must bifurcate the game in such a way that you serve each one of their needs without them hurting each other. I'll leave it there because I don't want to give away too much other than you can see how that was created. So that's one.

Two, what really profoundly disturbed me was when you think of earning assets within a game, what people are really saying is they're exchanging their late. their time, and they're tokenizing their time. That's what's really happening. And so if that is true, which I believe is true, then we run across what I call the time value paradox. So that's a phrase that I invented and first shared at GDC earlier this year. And the time value paradox goes something like this. Justin, you make a thousand dollars an hour. hour. My name is Mark. I live in Ouijambu in the 70s and 80s, and I make a dollar an hour. We both play

my game. And in 10 hours, you achieve and earn the Emerald Sword of Doom. I too have earned the Emerald Sword of Doom. I then list my NFT in the marketplace for 25 cents. You're going to see that and you're going to either be really pissed off that your time is devalued for 25 cents or you're going to be short-term delighted that you can have it for 25 cents. So you're going to buy all the NFTs that I sell to you or put in the marketplace. However, here's what's going to happen. You have completely short-circuit the process of earning competency. You've optimized the fun out of your game.

that is correct. And worse for Web 3, the time value paradox, basically the TLDR, is because there is a different value of surplus time around the world, your NFTs will drive towards zero in terms of price. The time value paradox, in my opinion, is one of the most important concepts in Web 3, but yet no one talks about it. And hopefully, well, here's the good news. There's a solution, a mathematical solution. But I'm not going to share the solution here.

Oh, come on now. You can't tease us like that. This is just your secret sauce. You just don't want to give it up, huh? And so, Osra Games, first and foremost, is a game company that makes traditionally entertaining fun games, first and foremost. So to make any of this work, these two concepts that I've shared,

you must first build a game if you're free to play. That is web two competitive and world class. You have to do that. To reach a large audience, to reach a large audience, you first have to do that. Once you've established that, you can then, enable Web3 interfaces to help drive more value for certain players that are playing your game,

but also a new player base, who plays games differently. I think most game developers have this backwards, or they used to, but this is always a consistent since the foundation and founding of our company is because you have to first deliver the engine that is intrinsically rewarding

that people will share with their friends before you can build anything else. And so that has never changed and we continue to be an entertainment-first dreaming company. Yeah. Well, I hear you there and I 100% agree that it's got to be fun. I think that this is a tough problem to solve and I guess you've only teased us that you have a solution.

I think that not only is there the time value paradox as a problem as you discussed, but there is also the challenge that when you incentivize people with extrinsic rewards, it actually takes away from the joy of the activity itself. There's plenty of studies that back this up, right? The more that you give people, you know, imagine you're offering your grandma $100 to cook you Thanksgiving dinner, right? It's insulting, right?

That's not even the thing that you would want to be doing. And even my own experience, when I was making a lot of money, I played, you know, magic competitively. and that's how I made a living and paid my way through college, the game became less fun. I was paying for money. I still enjoyed it, but it definitely reduced that.

This play-to-earn philosophy that's come around, there are good aspects to it, but I think it's a real trap in many ways that it takes a lot of great design thinking to get around. I totally agree with that, Justin. We talk a lot about Elise Web3. When I say we, I don't mean you and me, just in general, we talked a lot about

how do we onboard the next million or how do we onboard the next billion? Forget the billion people how do we onboard the next quarter of a million the next hundred million? Not 100,000, the next million people. And you don't do that,

in my opinion, by having a culture of speculation and it being a wealth fantasy because here's the deal. That fantasy, to a large degree, is already served in the stock market with day traders. How many day traders do you know? Not many.

And so there is a marketplace for that, but it's a tiny marketplace. And so if we want to onboard, you know, the next 100,000, the next million, we have to do that with something, in my opinion, is a bridge, which is a traditionally entertaining, products that

onwards them. And so I, yeah, this is, you know, when I, you know, last year, when I was seeing a lot of game developers, you know, do these early token mitts before the games out, these early in-game assets, I just scratched my head.

But I said to myself, they have never clearly made a game before because what they think they're building, and you and I both know this, is going to radically change in about eight months. Yes. Yes. Everybody that's pre-selling the thing that's not even ready and not tested and not iterated is yeah i sell a lot of that and i think it's part of why there was a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths is that people

did not think fun first they didn't come with a product that was actually designed with the you know the actual player in mind it was more about the speculator uh and i think that that's been a it's been a real problem for the community so i am uh i'm eager to learn more um i know you you know we're running low on time here so i want to be i want to be respectful uh there's i would i would normally be prodding you a lot more on details on some of these things we're leaving hanging. But for people that want to find out through your games, they want to learn and play more, what's the best place for them to come find you?

And if there's any other messages or things you want to share before we close, go ahead. The floor is yours. Justin, I just want to say what a great honor it is that we're able to spend more time together. I've got to know you a lot more. And I am so grateful for that. and I would love for us, you know, to be friends in the industry and spend more time together.

Because I feel like we have a lot in common. We have a lot of shared values in common. And there aren't many builders that I've met in the industry where I felt that type of connection to. So first I want to express that. And two, I just want to say to, you know, to every, who aspires to build a game. Just know I know how hard it is. I hope that through today's podcast,

you found some interesting things. But to reach us, the easiest way is follow by Twitter. It's Twitter, I think.comfors. Or is it X now? Yeah, I don't even know. I think both work, but I can't follow it anymore. And then there's azuregames.com. And we were likely revealed the name of Project Legends

in Q1 of next year. So we have a really cool name that we have in the works. We have our game itself will be mostly functional complete at the end of this year. And I can't wait to show you what we're building and working on. I'm just so excited with what we're building here at Oxford Games. Thank you so much for, you know, Justin, for making the time and the platform for us to talk. Yeah. No, the honor is mine, man.

I appreciate your vulnerability. your sharing, your passion, your ability to communicate ideas that are very complex and deep in a simple way is something I appreciate. That is so hard to do well, and you did it multiple times. So I know that everybody listening

got a ton of value out of this. I can't wait to see what comes from your projects. And yeah, I would love to have some more time to connect. I know that I can continue to learn a lot from you. So thanks so much, and I can't wait until we get to see each other again. Me too, man. See, where Justin.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platform, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry, and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Design. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from the lessons from the game industry and compressed it. great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever find books or something.