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The Devs Who Came Before Us: And Why We Need Their Stories Now
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🎮 Episode Summary
What can a former QA tester at EA, a punk-rock producer at Midway, and the exec who helped launch No Man’s Sky teach us about today’s game industry?
In this episode, Adam Boyes (founder of Vivrato and longtime industry vet) joins Greg to talk about why handcrafted games still matter, how studios can ask for help before it’s too late, and what happens when we actually listen to the people who’ve shipped the games we love.
🧠 What We Cover
– From Floppy Disks to LiveOps:
How QA used to be “log bugs by hand and pray,” and what that taught Adam about modern workflows and AI.
– Midway Was Punk Rock:
Inside stories from Blitz, Slugfest, and the golden era of arcade innovation — where game feel was religion.
– The No Man’s Sky Redemption Arc:
What went wrong, what went right, and why Hello Games stuck the landing where others didn’t.
– The Quiet Crisis in Game Dev:
Discoverability. Burnout. Studios not knowing when to ask for help. Why Vivrato was built to change that.
– Why Every Studio Needs a “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” Moment
Real talk on vision, identity, and how to build games that last longer than the launch window.
🔥 Pull Quotes
“There’s an art to talking to people who’ve made games before. Those are the stories we need to share and learn from.”“They’d sneak into arcades and swap out boards just to watch how players reacted. That’s how they tuned gameplay.”“We logged bugs on paper and stored them on floppy disks. Now we have AI. But the craft still matters.”“No one knows what they’re doing. Game development is improv. The secret is doing it together.”📌 Episode Timestamps
- [00:00] Intro and 90s QA stories
- [05:00] AI tools vs. handcrafted game design
- [10:30] Midway memories: Blitz, Jam, and chaos
- [17:00] Game feel and the obsession with precision
- [24:00] Nostalgia meets the digital era at Capcom
- [33:00] Vivrato: Helping studios find their path
- [40:00] No Man’s Sky and the power of second chances
- [47:00] What we’re playing now + retro game pain
- [51:00] Why the future of gaming is built on collaboration
🎧 Listen & Follow
🎙️ Listen now on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
🌐 More episodes and insights at playerdriven.io
📩 Want to share your story? Reach out to Greg on LinkedIn or Twitter
🔍 SEO Tags
Adam Boyes interview Vivrato consulting Midway game design game studio struggles No Man’s Sky story game feel arcade era game discoverability
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Transcript
Introduction to Game Development Stories
00:00:00
Speaker
What if I told you that one of the best lessons learned in game dev was by watching people play arcade games secretly? Or that NBA Live used to have their bugs shipped on floppy disks? Or how one man was able to have that front row seat of No Man's Sky's bumpy start to the game it grew into today?
Career Journey of Adam Boyes
00:00:18
Speaker
Today we're talking with Adam Boyes. Welcome to Player Driven. Today we are talking with Adam Boies. He is the founder of Virato and he's got an awesome background. He started at QA at EA. He was at part of Midway. He was with Capcom. He was with Sony. He was the co-CEO at Iron Galaxy and now Virato.
00:00:36
Speaker
Adam, you have so much cool stuff. I'm excited to talk about the nostalgia. So many, just so much cool stuff. You to say a little bit about yourself? Absolutely. Thanks for the intro, Greg. Very, very happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's been an amazing journey in my career, 29 years, a very diverse ah background, ah starting Quality Assurance, making five bucks an hour, I think $5.50 an hour when I started in QA Tester, but a variety of different challenges and games that I've worked on throughout my career. So I'm excited to dig into those some of those stories, some of the the lessons that I've learned along the way, and talk more about the state of the industry.
00:01:09
Speaker
ki ki
Evolution of Quality Assurance in Gaming
00:01:10
Speaker
Can we speak bluntly about some of the games? Sure. yeah what Where you want to start? So your first game you worked on was QA on NBA Live 97, I think. Yes, it was. Yeah. Very briefly and then quickly on to Live 98 PC. I remember my formative time, I remember being NBA Live 98 on PC.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah. So and NBA Live didn't always have the best track record. We know two k came in and kind of wiped the floor and took over NBA for a few years.
00:01:40
Speaker
um When you're QAing a game that may have a lot of bugs or is it polished? Like, do you know when you're playing it that something's not clicking here? Uh, you usually do. I mean, at that time, I think NBA live was the top of the pops, right? NBA 2K hadn't even come out yet. I don't think. they that early and nine nine Yeah. so it was very, very early.
00:01:59
Speaker
And, uh, it was also sort of like just right after the era of three d polygons, right? The transition from sprites to polys was just underway. So I look back at footage of those old games. They definitely look like they've aged a bit.
00:02:13
Speaker
ah But I remember just the pride of trying to find bugs um and then, you know, showing them to developers and then asking them if they're going to fix them. And it was almost like a quest to find shippable bugs so of bugs that they're like, that's not a big deal. And you're like, what? But it crashes the game. You know, when you simulate it after you create a thousand characters and like no one's going to do that.
00:02:33
Speaker
was like, What are you talking about? Right? um but But you do have a sense of as the game progresses. And back then, by the way, Greg, you got to remember, we didn't have PCs. So we had PCs to test on. But if you were a console tester at the time, you did not have a PC to log your bugs.
00:02:49
Speaker
So everyone had scratch pads and and and pencils. And so you to write down all your bugs manually, and then you
AI's Role in the Gaming Industry
00:02:55
Speaker
booked time at this one terminal on the team to sit down with your three and a half inch floppy and put it in and write down and type all your bugs in Notepad and then submit that to your lead who would then copy and paste it all into the central bug database and would do regression testing of like, oh, search for bugs to see if they've been done before. So a very different era. If you think about nowadays, wherever it's got a PC at their, at their, um,
00:03:19
Speaker
station So imagine a world where you don't even have a work PC at your workplace. You know, that brings up an interesting story. You know, technologies evolve and things get better. I know when I was at Keywords, they were introducing new QA tools to make it easier for QA agents to log their things. like Even if it's just a quick button to pull up JIRA with pre-formatted tickets, right? and For the most part, that's good for the industry. We're making things simple. where We're automating. And now AI is coming in and we have people who are embracing it, people who are
Nostalgia and Creativity in Gaming
00:03:50
Speaker
hating it, people who are on the fence for it. And I'm curious, do you have a feeling about how AI is? Obviously, it's going to help improve certain things in the industry and and it can help hurt other things in the industry. But I'm curious on where your kind of stance is.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, i think about, I mean, there's so many multifaceted aspects of what AI can and can't do. And I think our industry often sort of takes a theme or a topic and then tries to dictate on how everyone should feel about it.
00:04:16
Speaker
I think AI is very nuanced. And when I think about my old and job my olden days job, like I now so have seen tools, Greg, where you could just basically be playing the game while it's auto capturing everything you're doing. And then you could be talking along with the gameplay and saying, okay, bug number one, this is what was happening.
00:04:32
Speaker
And if it's transcribing my input plus the game state, plus saving that clip out, and then uploading that to the side, and then and then auto sort of like putting that bug in the database. Think about how much more effective I could have been as someone finding those bugs.
00:04:46
Speaker
And especially with the developer now, they have the context of they can look in the code base and see exactly where the state was in the background and the code. And then they can also look at the visuals of the video to see the context. Like all that stuff never, you'd have to literally go into
Midway Games' Unique Approach
00:05:00
Speaker
and engineer's office and try to replicate the bug on the controller in their office. And if, you know, you try it for a couple hours and if you couldn't do it properly.
00:05:09
Speaker
But nowadays I think tools will make, us more efficient in that way. And I think it's very important for us to designate and talk about the impact of AI on the beneficial side of things with also understanding that, you know, that was not replacing a job. That was just, my job was slower back then.
00:05:26
Speaker
And now I can do it more effective and efficient so I could find more bugs and and be more scalable. So i kind of feel like, AI use the correct way can almost be like our Ironman suits, right? Where now we can get up and we can be more powerful and we can use tools and technologies and and be more quick and efficient with communication.
00:05:43
Speaker
But there's obviously a myriad of things that that people are very concerned about when it comes to, you know, gen AI and replacing jobs. So I think as long as we go on this journey with curiosity, I think that's the important part we should do is like as an industry.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, I love the analogy of comparing it to Iron Man. usually go with Batman here, right? You got simple people that just put on equipment, right? but like And I think that's right, right? like This is giving you those powers to be more efficient, to be more effective. I think if you're not going to notice that someone might be at the... ah the bad end of this where someone might get lose their job. But again, we're almost all at the same playing field right now. We all have access to most of the same tool sets. We have the same access to the same YouTube videos, right? I think there's a lot of education out there that this is the time when you can be educating yourself. You can be learning how these tools work and and prepare yourself for what is next.
00:06:36
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think if we look at other, look at other industries where either automation or manufacturing process have, have gone and and sort of accelerated, right. We still have people training as chefs, even though we can go to fast food joints and get food tomorrow, or we can go to the store and buy it all there too.
00:06:52
Speaker
So I think there's ah a lot of different assets. We sell bartenders, even though we can buy craft cocktails in a bottle. Yeah. I think there's always this human nature. think people are always going to be drawn towards things that are handcrafted. You know, even when we look at furniture, we can manufacture those in big, huge factories, but people want hand-carved furniture and stuff like that. So, um you know, I think it's important for us to just go in eyes wide open and then check ourselves and each other um to be curious about the journey instead of being too declarative about what the outcome might be.
00:07:19
Speaker
I think handcrafted furniture is probably one of the better comparisons I've heard about this, right? You can automate everything, but there's something when it's original, it's just... Wow, you're you're drawn. yeah I think, you know, we always talk about human in the loop. And I think that's going to continue to be the most important part of this stuff is have a human in the loop to look at it and say yes or no, right? Because a computer, you know but a human will be able to have that look Yeah, and i mean, even right now, I think when people are are interacting with it, whether it's helping them, you know, write a report or email, I mean, very few people are just taking it verbatim, right? You're adding flavor and you're like, that's not how I would have said it stuff like that. So like nips and tucks and stuff like that. So I think as as long as we're adding that human touch, you know, I think um there's definitely concerns around if if it knows how to, you know, hack algorithms and and dopamine extraction devices, stuff like that. But we've had...
00:08:08
Speaker
psychologists in game design. So we we sort of already have been going down that road of like, hey, what is something that's too addictive or too sticky and making sure that we balance that out with that? You know, we talked before we we go went live about, you know, vacation and touching grass. So that's a life's about balance.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Enough about AI and it taking over the world. Let's talk
Capcom's Strategy and Nostalgia
00:08:30
Speaker
video games because that's why we're here. You have been part of some of the coolest companies I remember. Let's start at Midway because some of my favorite video game memories are from Midway. So I remember growing up playing Rush. I remember playing Blitz. I remember playing NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat. We're all part of this Midway family. And He's on fire. Yeah, right. I mean, we were just boom shakalaka. These are games like we talk about on a weekly basis, not even with this podcast because they're just so memorable. I'm curious, like, what was your role at Midway? how did you get started? And what were the types of games you were working on there?
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah, it was a cool opportunity. I was working at um an external development studio ah called um Next Level Games up in Vancouver, Canada, where I was born and raised in Abbotsford, which is a little bit outside of Vancouver.
00:09:16
Speaker
But we were doing a contract project called NHL Hits Pro for Midway. And so I was a QA manager at the time and I was starting to dabble at the end of the project with production. i was like, oh, you know, Nigel Franks was this awesome guy who's still in the games industry today, was our producer.
00:09:31
Speaker
And he was teaching me a lot about production and what that's like. And so when the project ended, they didn't have another project for us to, for me to go on to. So my contract expired. And so our producer from Chicago called me up and said, would you like, hey, Adam, would you like to move to Chicago?
00:09:47
Speaker
ah You can move down here and you can be associate producer. I was like, That sounds amazing. And then, you know, even as a 20 something year old trying to understand what a relocation is, you know, when you've only ever lived, uh, you know, in Vancouver.
00:10:01
Speaker
Um, so I got to relocate to Chicago. And when I got there, we were making the sequel NHL hits pro two. And within my first week, Greg, they canceled our project. So right out the gate, I'm like, i don't know what I'm on.
00:10:15
Speaker
And they're like, hey, you have got a lot of sports experience because I had worked at EA in QA. And they're like, we're making this game called Slugfest Loaded. And so going to be on the baseball game. And I was like, ah I did a little bit of testing on triple play baseball back at EA.
00:10:29
Speaker
But what was crazy about is that transition from like, EA was a big company, you know, um all the big, you know, fancy execs you would see upstairs, you know, because we were, they put QA in the basement and where I was like, oh, look at all the fancy people upstairs.
00:10:42
Speaker
Midway was just like a bunch of different teams. But I remember the first time I caught a glimpse of Mark Tremell. And I was like, that's Mark Dermell. He made Smash TV. He made Robotron. And then you're like, that's George Gomez. He made Spy Hunter.
00:10:55
Speaker
ah And then you're like, that's Ed Boon. He made Mortal Kombat. And you just see these people around. That's Sal DeVita. And they they made sort of Blitz and and NBA Jam together. So it was so cool for me, Greg, as like an absolute massive gamer growing up, is just seeing these people walk among us and then being able to interact with them and talk to them. And eventually moved my way up to, you know, after Slugfest loaded, ah shipped, I worked then on Blitz the League, which was our unlicensed football game.
00:11:21
Speaker
When EA gobbled up the the Madden EA license, the NFL license exclusively, we pivoted. We got Lawrence Taylor to be on the cover. But at that point, you know I was a producer and then senior producer on that project. And then my third project, I was exec producer, which was crazy because then I was peers with some of these people, you know with
Games to Films: Successes and Failures
00:11:40
Speaker
guys like George Gomez that I looked up to my whole career. So I just looked back and I just spent some time with George Gomez and Ed Boone and Mike Builder and Dave Lang, some of the OGs from Midway.
00:11:51
Speaker
And it it was just such a formative time for me. I feel very lucky and blessed that I was there during that time. And I was able to juxtapose my EA training Right. EA was very prim, very proper, very process oriented and Midway was just sort of like abject chaos.
00:12:05
Speaker
So juxtaposing those two is my first couple of big roles in the games industry was phenomenal. but But their attention to detail and specificity and control and frame rates and just the feeling of the controller taught me so much that I took forward in my career.
00:12:20
Speaker
I want to dig into that feeling. I'm super curious about it, but I want to back up because there's so much cool stuff that you said. So first, I didn't even know Nigel Franks worked at Midway. Nigel and I worked together at Keywords. I think he just took over Snowden Studios. Yeah, he did. He's done couple of podcasts. So cool. He is just such a cool, level-headed person.
00:12:40
Speaker
Like after I left Keywords, he came up to me and I saw him at GDC and he was the friendliest guy in the entire world. And it's so cool how both this world is really a small, tight-knit community, but it also includes so many people, especially these days with new tools coming out. and Anyone can create a game, but the statement you made at the end where kind of the... the attention to detail, the controls, the precision, right? I think there's this new, and maybe I'm wrong, but when people are making games in Fortnite and Roblox and stuff like this all this, all this creator economy type of stuff, right? Like, I feel like you're losing some of that specialty of what makes a game feel special, right? Like, you could play some cool games in UEFM, at the end of the day, you're playing Fortnite, right? And I don't know.
00:13:28
Speaker
That's what I'm thinking about You're talking about Midway, and you had so many different creators there, right? And they created something special. Is that missing in today's games? Well, I think the cre we go back to craftsmanship.
00:13:40
Speaker
You know, imagine a world where what they would do, what what what George and Ed and and Mark would tell me stories of is they would go to an arcade ah in Chicago and they would they would basically, in the morning before it opened, they would swap out a board with three changes, right? With three little bug fixes or tweaks.
00:13:59
Speaker
And then they would sit there unbeknownst to the people playing it. And they would sit there with a notepad and take notes and their feedback. And so when i what I learned from them was this absolute,
EA vs Midway: Approaches to Sports Games
00:14:11
Speaker
just their key details of every single thing from the field. Because you at the time, the original microtransactions were quarters, right?
00:14:19
Speaker
How do you get that next quarter? What's the right amount of time for a play session? How to get people to feel great about their accomplishments, not too punishing when it's like put in the next quarter. Uh, and so their attention to detail of like, again, what the hands-on controller felt like is critical playable build every single day.
00:14:35
Speaker
And to this day, I still, I still sort of mandate that and all the products that involved in, I want a playable bill that we can sort of fire up on a regular basis. We're all playing it together. But the other part, Greg, that I like, I didn't understand or really put a lot of thought into is that dopamine, the feeling of like, how are we going to make people feel great? Like we had this, um,
00:14:55
Speaker
year-long training, years-long training of Sal and Marks are teaching us. You know, when you earn something in a game, what does the bar look like? When that bar fills, what is the animation that pops?
00:15:05
Speaker
And then how does it fly into the turbo or the on fire or anything that stuff? And so pixel language and feedback loop. And so between the hands-on controller feeling that everything has to feel very fresh, very vibrant, and very present.
00:15:19
Speaker
And absolutely agree with you that some of these games, I think, that just already have the tool set there, the ability to tweak and perfect all those different parts. Cause all of them became almost so hyper fixated.
00:15:31
Speaker
And, and even to this, i remember one time somebody put in but years and years later when MK was on console and they put in a one and a half frame, I think, or two frame delay. So instead of it running at 60 FPS, it was 58.
00:15:44
Speaker
And Ed was like, this is not 60. And like, because because again, that training of what exactly they feel and and how they want to express themselves. So I do agree with you that that that absolute fascination and determination around every little detail, I don't see that on a lot of teams.
00:16:02
Speaker
It would make games even longer and and larger and more expensive. But man, when there were smaller teams and you could just tighten it with with that
Virato's Mission and Industry Challenges
00:16:10
Speaker
specificity and it was pretty something some magical watch. I learned so much from all those guys.
00:16:15
Speaker
does I learned a while ago about the three C's, right? That's camera control character. Does this fall under that kind of subset of game design or is this something I'm not yet familiar with? kind of i don't even know if there's a concept associated with it.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, Greg, honestly, I don't even know if they had any names or like no one was trying to write a book there. They were just like, this is how you do things. And the meticulousness. At first, it was easy to reject it.
00:16:38
Speaker
At first, you're like, look at these kooks. These guys are just like, they're all over me about this responsiveness or this one animation or there's an animation glitch or frame delay within this.
00:16:49
Speaker
And you realize you're like, oh, because they're masters of their craft. I mean, think about the innovation that Ed Boon's been in charge of for the last 30 plus years. I mean, every time that game gets better and better and better with the same guy in charge.
00:17:02
Speaker
And that's a testament, I think, to his his sort of mastery of the craft. Yeah, it always boggles my mind. I mean, I go back to MK on there was the Genesis and SNES, right? SNES didn't have blood and Genesis did have blood. And like you had a simple 2D fighter with like eight characters or something. And now it's this massive universe. And I feel like a ah dork, but I don't play Mortal Kombat as much as I did, but I will watch every cutscene on YouTube because it is such a cinematic masterpiece. And it went from just a fighting game to a really bad but awesome movie to like this cinematic marvel where I'm just sitting here. It's like eight hours of cutscenes. I'm just like, what am I doing with my life? And then then I just start the next one because there's such fascinating stories. and And this is a whole nother topic, but it shows you how well gaming is doing, getting into the media side of things of video and stuff like that. Like,
00:17:53
Speaker
It always boggles my mind with Resident Evil. if They don't just tap, was it Capcom? I can't remember. Say, hey, can you make this movie? Because it's so good in game. And then you you get the Resident Evil movies that come out and they're just not great.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think it all depends on how other people interpret it. I think there's been a pretty good track record recently of the adaptation of gaming IPs into Hollywood. and and But we were also really
The Story of No Man's Sky
00:18:20
Speaker
bad at adapting IPs into video games, right? I think I remember the first... I mean, aside from if we take the... the um What was it?
00:18:29
Speaker
the duck, uh, DuckTales games, right back in the, there was, there was an era where Capcom did phenomenal, uh, ports of Disney properties. But aside from that, I think in sort of like more modern era, I remember Chronicles of Riddick that was done by Starbreeze was probably like the first, like, holy mackerel, we can actually do this right.
00:18:46
Speaker
And then, of course, the Batman series that Rock City did a phenomenal job. That was like that brought, I think, IP integration to games to a new level. And now we can't look back because it's like everything people now approach these things with such care and love and affection that, you know, it comes through.
00:19:02
Speaker
All right. i'm gonna I'm going to ask one more question because I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but I'm curious. From EA to Midway, right? you EA is known for their sports. You mentioned how Midway was kind of more of a, let's call it open office, whereas EA was more of a corporate office. Like, did the way they handled sports, did it show you why one was more successful than the other? Yeah.
00:19:23
Speaker
Oh, that's great question. Yeah, i think I think when we look at it, um EA sort of approached the entire thing as a business and how do we conquer each of the different sort of ah pillars of the different sports.
00:19:34
Speaker
And when I kind of look at the way Midway approached things, ah they were punk rock. You know, they were rebels. They were in Chicago. No one really thought Chicago was a game dev scene. And even their approach, i remember there was um there was a game called Red Card Soccer that Midway was doing.
00:19:49
Speaker
And they were so, this is sort of how midway felt or thought approach things. What they did, Greg, at the start of development, they actually greenlit two teams to build prototypes. And then they said, whoever's prototype is better will be the team that takes this game to the end, which is like so savage.
00:20:05
Speaker
Imagine a world nowadays where like, Hey, it's killer be killed. Like imagine it was just every single team was like, you know, we might get, we got a 50, 50 shot. We got a coin flip at the end. Um,
00:20:16
Speaker
And so I think about that you know ah that scenario, and that that sort of was representative of what Midway was wanting to take risks, was hungry for the future. And I think as player tastes change, right, at the time, the start of it, right, obviously NBA Jam and NFL Blitz were just transformative in the arcades. and um But as people's tastes change they wanted more simulation and Madden was becoming a jubbernaut juggernaut, I think that's also a reason why NBA 2K coming out of sort of Not left field per se. I mean, Visual Concepts is a phenomenal studio, but like they really approach it saying, what what's what's the the
Networking and Career Reflections
00:20:50
Speaker
vibe check of the industry and how do we transition and take all those fans of Jam and of NBA Live and bring a whole new world? Now NBA 2K does, I mean, globally.
00:20:59
Speaker
I think it's actually surpassing that in a revenue perspective. So they've done a first class job, but I think it's about approach. um It's also just, you know, EA was becoming a larger juggernaut and they were figuring out how to run the business versus just more of a scrappy, um scrappy punk rock team in Chicago.
00:21:19
Speaker
I like the idea of a punk rock team though. I i mean, all their games were, were, Arcade-style games, right? Which I think was fun, right? We needed that. And I always loved the approach, and I never understood what happened. It just kind of faded away into existence. i don't know if it was the death of the arcade that kind of helped kind of transition that. I think Midway was maybe kind of too spread thin. I don't really know what happened. But those arcade-y games, I think we're starting to see a comeback of them, right? I mean, we have Rematch that just came out. We have a lot of cool games out there. It's just...
00:21:50
Speaker
The Flitz days, man, those were special. They were special. And that's actually why what was really um what made really me really happy as a player and as someone in my career going to Capcom after that was where I got to chase all those things down because at the time then when I left Midway, Xbox Live Arcade had just launched.
00:22:08
Speaker
PlayStation Network hadn't launched yet. And so it was this whole new era where I got to go through and and and dig through the hits on on Capcom and figure out what we bring to market. So that was an awesome time for me, even though Midway was going through some challenges of like, where do we go from here?
00:22:23
Speaker
Their assets all got sold out to both WB and some other buyers. And so that was kind of a sad ending for all of us, right? We all still keep in touch. I mean, some of the people, even Matt Booty, who was the head the studio, who became CEO of Midway is now head of...
00:22:36
Speaker
Head of all kinds of big things over at Microsoft, so he did okay. And so many people that work there also are are crushing it in the industry. Let's talk about Capcom for a little bit. There was one game that, well, first of all, Capcom makes a lot of games that are fantastic, but Dreamcast came out. I remember getting a demo CD and there was a game Power Stone, Power Stone 2. And most people don't remember Power Stone when I'm talking to them about it. It's just like,
00:22:59
Speaker
It was like this four v or for person fight them You could pick up anything on a level. like It was wild. And I don't know if it was like Smash Brothers. It's not because Smash Brothers is too deep. But like Power Stone, Power Stone 2 came out and then it just never came out again. just like, what happened there? But that's neither here nor there. What were you doing at Capcom?
00:23:18
Speaker
So at Capcom, ah join as head of production. So we were basically in charge in the US of figuring out Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. How do we take the amazing you know amount of games, the library of content that we have as a platform and bring it to a new generation?
00:23:34
Speaker
And so I had the absolute amazing job of looking at all the old code and then finding studios that could remaster, remake. And no one had really done that yet, right? You got to think about that era, right? So we're we're talking about 2000.
00:23:49
Speaker
um So it's 2007. And um the first project that we agreed with was Street Fighter 2 HD remake. And so that was obviously a big undertaking because we're going to hand draw every single frame from a game that, you know, ah was like Capcom to me growing up. That was my,
00:24:08
Speaker
Holy mackerel, like Mega Man, all of the megaman Mega Man franchise series were phenomenal. And I was buying a Commando, the original one. so all these So it was such an honor to basically build a team to go and scour the earth for the games and um figure out which ones made the most sense. Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, that was a ton of fun as well.
00:24:26
Speaker
But ah so we got to, we were in charge of bringing games back and and bringing them back on the digital front. And I think at peak, we had six of the top 10 selling games on XBLA and PSN.
00:24:37
Speaker
um Not because we created them from scratch. It's more because we were inspired by the incredible games that Capcom had made through the years. It's the nostalgia factor, especially of doing it from the beginning where you are is ridiculous. There's there's a a guy kind of,
00:24:52
Speaker
Colin Nese, don't know if you've seen him online, he does mind game data. And we talk he talks about like, for example, NCAA last year came out, right? And you saw this crazy boost in everything because people haven't seen NCAA in 20 years. And now year two, you see that boost just completely get eliminated, right? Like there's something about that.
00:25:11
Speaker
that being able to play games from the past. And especially when you talk about the street fighters, people grew up on that. People like died playing street fighter. So, so you tapped into that nostalgia really well, I think, and especially being that first mover, it's like, it gets everyone excited. And I think we're going to see that. And then I think it's going to be worn out pretty quickly.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think the other thing that I realized, I had never discovered, I'd never realized that I had a massive bias. ah And one of my favorite games in the arcade is a really obscure arcade game that Capcom made called Black Tiger.
00:25:43
Speaker
I was always super fascinated with it. ah It was what inspired like Rygar and a few other, those side-scrolling sort of... um action games back in the day but i was hell bent greg on on bringing that ip back and so we did survey after survey research after research it it was like 65th place 63rd place no one cared but i really wanted to push it through ah realized though that oh puzzle fighter in 1943 and and um uh all these other by the commando megaman these are the games that people want to bring back no one wants to see black tiger come back
00:26:18
Speaker
But also, I think we were entering a new era because after as we were working on those IPs, we were also in charge of doing business development finding new projects to greenlight. And so one of the first games we ever greenlit was a game from Certain Affinity.
00:26:31
Speaker
So Max Hoverman had left Bungie. He was the online lead lead online designer of the Halo series from, I think, two and maybe even three and the original.
00:26:42
Speaker
super brilliant guy and they game called age of booty which is just this is fun little hex based pirate game sort of like a bit of an rts but really simple and straightforward and you know we were trying to basically find what's the new next generation of capcom original games so that was one of the games we signed another one was called rocketman um And so exploring that, and I remember at the time, because we're getting pitched all kinds of games, you know, I remember seeing Limbo.
00:27:07
Speaker
We're the first people that ever saw Limbo ah before Microsoft signed it. i remember passing on Minecraft ah because I was like, I don't get it, you know? So, but but these are the things that you start to learn of like, oh, the game industry is changing and tastes are evolving.
00:27:20
Speaker
And even though I'm old school and I love my, you know, Mega Man, Bionic Commando and Black Tiger, the players of this next generation want different tastes. Yeah. They do. And it kind of goes back to what you were mentioning earlier is tapping on that dopamine and how do you get people to do that? ah And for better or for worse, we've seen gaming kind of fracture. I think you have these mobile games that are much more akin to a casual audience that are just pure drips of dopamine. right And it's not even much gameplay there. It's just more of it found a way to like trigger that. and
00:27:55
Speaker
You see it generating millions and millions or billions of dollars. It's just like, what is happening here? And then you see great games that are getting buried because they don't have a live ops operation service or it's not online, right? And it's a one-time $30 thing. It's just like, how does the $30 AA game compete with the free-to-play match game that's making billions of dollars. Yeah, I don't think we're, I don't think there's any way to stop it, right? Tastes are changing.
00:28:21
Speaker
If we think about it though, Greg, like let's go, i ah love using food analogies because I love cooking. And I remember when I used to travel when I was very young. I remember I went to Dublin when I was in my twenty s And remember the food being so mediocre and there was like four things to order at these different restaurants.
00:28:37
Speaker
And I remember getting a nacho and salsa and it was like ah just a bowl of ketchup, right? ah And you look at now Dublin now and there's Thai restaurants and there's Indian restaurants and there's, you know, American cuisine, and there's Mexican, like it has everything.
00:28:51
Speaker
And so you think about the proliferation of different food types everywhere in the world now. Like i remember growing up and being like, sushi's gross, it's raw fish. Now i'm like, I can't get enough sushi. um I think games are the same.
00:29:02
Speaker
When we grew up, we were fed x amount of consoles. We had, you know, either and nes or you know, when we do SNES versus Genesis. and And even back to a Commodore, are you doing Amiga? Are you doing Atari? Are you doing Coleco? Are you doing Intellivision?
00:29:16
Speaker
And so over time now we have infinite choices and with infinite choices become almost like not totally infinite, but close to infinite genres and and creators and ideas. And so the vast sort of release mechanism and in and speed in which games are coming to market it's very difficult so before we were able to sort of be a little bit predictive of like what's going to hit and now it's more uh i don't say random because i think it's but it's a time and a place it's like when people say hey it's not just three things went right it's 50 things went right so trying to replicate that i think oftentimes we'll see a successful game and then we'll be like let's just do that again i was like no no that was it was about the humidity the time of the week it was about the you know what this
00:29:58
Speaker
ah social world was like what culture was like the you know global you know ecosystem and that's why it was successful so i think oftentimes it's difficult for us to approach it and and and crack the nut and figure out the algorithm but i want people to keep making cool new things i think that's been the heart and soul of the games industry from the beginning so as long as we focus on that i think we're going to be okay Yeah. And again, I think with these tools like, you know, Unity and Unreal being so accessible to people these days, right? Like you could get a great online tutorial on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, right? I've learned that these are great mediums to educate people and in a short form video, and it's a really cool place to go. And I want to come back to kind of all the gaming stuff you've been doing, but I want to understand a little more about the vision behind
00:30:44
Speaker
<unk>do I know you're launching Vivrado 2.0, you're calling it, right? But you know you have so much industry experience from so many different cool people. and I'm curious on how that all translates into what Vivrado is doing and how you're trying to share that best practices with others in the industry.
00:31:01
Speaker
yeah It's a great question. You know, what I realized is that the the change happening in the industry is sort of cataclysmic. it's I don't think it's ever changed as much as it's changing right now. And so the more people that I start to ask, what do they think the number one problem is, the different answers that I got.
00:31:14
Speaker
And that was kind of a shocking ah a thing to me of of how are we not identifying what the key issues are and trying to tackle them. So with that, I realized that we often rely on outside of the industry advice from big sort of consultancies.
00:31:28
Speaker
So I had this idea. And over the past seven months since I began, I've been scouring the earth and talking to hundreds of people all ah ah throughout the industry and trying to find other like-minded individuals. And so we're super excited because I've brought on nine other team members that that are going to help us tackle these problems.
00:31:45
Speaker
There's a lot of areas that i I have a ton of experience in. There's a lot of areas that I don't. And we realize that in order for us to impact change and help these big companies, publishers, platforms, investors tackle the problems that they're facing, we need a very diverse sort of mindset and and and superhero suite, right? So that's what we've been doing with finding these people um and being able to be all operator centric, right? So everyone's shipped things, done things, launched platforms. That's critically important because then you understand the context of it.
00:32:14
Speaker
It's like, imagine, you know, somebody telling you how to play a game that they've never played before or that they've never even played a game or picked up a controller, right? We want to, we we should be giving and getting advice from people that have done it before as well.
00:32:25
Speaker
Not because I think we're going to repeat ourselves, right? But the industry is cyclical. So what Verrado's mission is, is to help drive this industry with the heart and soul in mind to a more stable future where we have longevity, um sort of top of mind with the future of the games industry.
00:32:40
Speaker
What are the size studios that you're typically approaching? it And how do these studios, i'm going to take a look at myself here, right? I don't know how to ask for help or when to ask for help. And I think there's a lot of people like that. They're just either gun shy or they're afraid to say, hey, I need some help. Like, how does a studio know they're in a place where like, you know what?
00:32:59
Speaker
Help would help me right now. I think, Greg, it's it's a human nature thing. Most people don't know how to ask for help or when to ask for help. And oftentimes I think when you do, you feel emasculated. You feel like, what am I doing? I'm not good enough.
00:33:12
Speaker
The reality of it no one knows what we're doing. None of us know exactly what we're doing, right? Life is just a big sort of game of street theater and improv. And so we're figuring it as we go. So I think that's that's a fantastic question because it's exactly the nut that I've been trying to crack of. Like, how do you go to a studio and say, we can help, but they need to be ready to be helped?
00:33:33
Speaker
And so we've been we've been exploring and we're excited to talk more ah down the road about like um creating products or basically going in and being being able to do, you know, review of their business and ah and a check in with them of like, oh, here's some opportunities.
00:33:47
Speaker
ah Here's some advice we would give you. And then they can take that and then go on their way um to sort of build the future. Or if they want more coaching and mentoring and stuff like that, that's an option too. But the first thing is really looking back and the question that I love opening a lot of my conversations with the studios is, is what do you want to be when you grow up?
00:34:06
Speaker
Right? When you started the studio, you had an idea. You wanted to make a game or you wanted to do co-development or you want to make a, you know, RPG, whatever it is. But, you know, how do you make them think deeper about the long-term? Do you want to do this for your whole life?
00:34:22
Speaker
Do you want to do another? Is there another career in the future? do you want to transition to other jobs or or opportunities? So it's about helping guide them. But you hit the nail on the head, Greg. It's very difficult for people to ask for help if they don't know. So I think just giving opportunities, whether it's signing up, you know, on LinkedIn, you can go up and and sort of just sign up for 15 minutes to chat with me ah just to sort of pick out what the problem set is.
00:34:43
Speaker
But I love that question because that's what I love. My favorite part of it of of the job is to working with studios and helping them find what that hairy audacious goal is.
00:34:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's that sales engineer side of me. It's discovery questions, right? You kind of yeah ask these questions to lead out of them what their issues are. And they may not even know what their issues are. But when you start to talk it out, it's like, oh, no shit. And then in hindsight, it's like, how did I not see that before, right? It's...
00:35:10
Speaker
I've learned as being this solo person now is that when you have the ability to bounce ideas off people, right, you can shape it better, right? It's it's one thing when it's my idea, but when it's other people's ideas, then you can build what's theirs and be like, now I can give you this or I can sell you this. We can do this for you. And I think it's the coolest thing you have the ability to do, especially when you have that industry experience, right? It's one thing when you're like, oh, you know what? I've used ChatGPT and I'm a pro at this now. I can figure this out. Whereas, you know what? I built these games. I know what it's like. I know the pros. I know the cons. It's...
00:35:39
Speaker
It's the difference between reading an reading a textbook and thinking you're an expert versus actually having that experience and doing it, right? Who do you want yeah operating on you? Some guy that never operated but is an expert at books or some guy that has...
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, some ah some person on the internet that read a bunch of articles. It's a great point. I think it's kind of why, and and one of the reasons I think that a lot of studios don't ask for help is because if you go back to the origin of the industry, it was hyper-competitive, right? Every studio that was starting had secrets.
00:36:07
Speaker
You can't see our code. i can't share tell you what we're doing. The console wars, it was me versus the world. It was bare-knuckle boxing the streets. And what we realize what I've realized now is that it's it the future is together, right?
00:36:18
Speaker
If we don't help one another out, if if we're not sort of supporting one another, it's why our motto is it takes a village because it's going to be about us helping each other. And a lot of people, especially when they're in pain or when they're facing challenges, they don't know what to do.
00:36:30
Speaker
And so if there's a place that they can turn to, right, I think that's important. Doing the fire prevention so hopefully it never gets to a bad place, but that's really what we're trying to build here is a place that for safety, security, knowledge sharing.
00:36:42
Speaker
um So that way we can sort of ah equip the future generation into being able to persevere you know more successfully. Have you seen any common themes around struggles that studios have been facing?
00:36:56
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, even from the questionnaire that I sent out that we made this ah deck of cards, which is the biggest challenges of the games industry. So there's 52 different challenges. The big things I'm seeing right now, Greg, um obviously funding, funding sources, ah publishing platforms and investors are all spending less right now on new games and new concepts.
00:37:15
Speaker
um People bringing their product to market. Do I sign with a publisher? Do I give a back end share? There's also discoverability. How do i get my game found? Oh, I didn't start building my community until too late.
00:37:26
Speaker
So there's, and there's, by the way, there's dozens and dozens more, but those are the, some of the ones that I, that I find the most that people discussing. This is a tangent question, right? yeah Most of the times when I hear about problems in the industry, it's related to that. It's about marketing struggles. it's about It's about community. Do I start doing this now? It's about trust and safety. like How can we never talk about the engineering or coding side of things when there's struggles in the game, right? Everyone always points to the community side of things, but what about the building of the game?
00:37:56
Speaker
Well, because it's not very sexy, right? It's same question, Greg. Greg, people have asked me for years of, hey, why isn't there a reality show about making games? i was like, because most of it's like talking about where the code's going to be or what features going to be or like, it's just not...
00:38:12
Speaker
I mean, it can be dramatic, um but it is it is at the end of the day, you're sort of building widgets. I think finding the fun is the challenging part of any game development cycle. um So, and the other part of it, it's kind of also why oftentimes our headlines don't talk about the contributing factors and the headlines often don't talk about the solutions that we can pursue.
00:38:32
Speaker
ah We want that clickbait, right? We want that big, like, did you know? Gotcha, ha ha, this failed, this went under. That's what we're sort of drawn to towards because that's where human nature is like, I'm curious what's going on with the drama between that publisher breaking up with that developer. And you're like, it's not really any of our business, even though it's exciting and it's interesting.
00:38:55
Speaker
But you're right. I wish we spent as an industry more time. But it also goes to like the player, the relationship between the player and the developer. I think that's also fractured over time. I think players have opinions, right? And they can give their opinions on the regular. I think developers oftentimes take players for granted.
00:39:12
Speaker
And I think that relationship can be a little bit sort of ah delicate at times. But I think all of it is as as long as we're all doing it and good in good conscience and we're trying to do better and and evolve and as, as not only that relationship, but the industry, I think we'll be in a better place.
00:39:28
Speaker
Well, let's take a use case and and kind of see if we can talk this out because it's my favorite use case in gaming and you have hands-on experience with it. We're going to talk about No Man's Sky. You're at Sony. think yeah you can talk about what your part was with No Man's Sky, but it was hyped beyond belief.
00:39:45
Speaker
It did not launch with hitting any much of that hype at all, but the game kept going. It was a little train that could, and they kept building and it It delivered on probably every one of those promises that it made.
00:39:59
Speaker
and then Summon is thriving game. It is mind blowing knowing it came from It's basically the Phoenix, right? it It came back from the ashes and rose. And I just love the story of the game because it's a true game developer that built it and loved it and wanted to build what's right for gamers. So can you kind of, you have, again, a much better viewpoint of No Man's Sky. Can can you tell me how that all happened at Sony?
00:40:23
Speaker
Sure. I mean, it started with, you know, we were always looking for great independent studios to work with over the years. i remember ah my first time on stage at E3, I got to announce the Indy Nine, right, where we had c incredible people on stage. Tribute Games is on stage. We had Lauren Lanning on stage. We had Philippe from Outlast, from Red Barrels.
00:40:45
Speaker
ah That was such a cool moment. And we knew that we wanted to have sort of iconic independent development teams. So, you know, whether we're working with John Blow on The Witness, and so we um i had had a previous relationship with uh sean murray and the hello games team from my days at capcom when they they made a game called joe danger which i was a huge fan of back in the day and that was another one that got away when i was uh when i was at capcom i really really wanted to sign that but they ended up i think doing a deal with uh any playstation with their xbox i can't remember where that ended up being
00:41:17
Speaker
But, you know, Sean and I were friendly and and it was a team that I believed in. And when they sort of told us the pitch and showed us some of the stuff, i'm like, that's very, very cool. I think that the end result of what occurred in this sort of PR stuff, I think it's it's really, it's a challenging situation because you're trying to talk about what you what your vision is. And I absolutely agree with you, Greg, that they delivered on it.
00:41:38
Speaker
Right. It wasn't day one. um And I think it was it was a new era of ah talking about your products and and, you know, being specific about what's there now and what's going to be there.
00:41:53
Speaker
I think we look at Cyberpunk 2077. I mean, same thing. they They at the gate, they had some a little bit of bumps that they hit, but they absolutely crushed it. The game is phenomenal. So I think part of it too is like, we need to take a beat and give people a little bit of grace.
00:42:08
Speaker
You know, Sean, ah Sean Murray had not been on stage like Jack Trenton before, you know, it wasn't, wasn't a a seasoned veteran, but he was a really, really smart guy, passionate guy that had an awesome team behind him.
00:42:19
Speaker
So sometimes I think you get in a situation where, you know, maybe there's some advice from PR teams saying like, Oh, you should maybe should touch on this and touch on that and touch on this and touch on that. And I think um being ah being clear about your and consistent about your messaging and positioning is critically important.
00:42:35
Speaker
And I just think they got bit by the Internet. I think the Internet sometimes swings its tail and wants to take out some. ah And I think in the games industry, it happens a lot. Right. The tail swings broadly and sharply.
00:42:46
Speaker
And so I feel really bad for them during that time because their intentions were sound. They want to make something cool that was different, and new and unique. And they did deliver on that. It was not at the speed in which I think some people wanted it.
00:43:00
Speaker
But in the end, they kept their promise. And I think that's the most important part. so I think whatever they're working on next, I'm super excited about because you know that they're people of the word and are going to deliver on it. Yeah, I know their next game was announced already, right I don't remember the name of it, but yeah, I mean, they were the first probably that, not the first, but they got truly bitten by the community of the internet, right? And they owned it, man. And that's the most you can ask. You don't run from, I almost look at Anthem in the same way where like Anthem launched with crazy hype. Like I could be,
00:43:29
Speaker
I be Tony Stark and fly around and then kind of they just stopped supporting Anthem. Whereas No Man's Sky, that you got that love it. And again, that's I think the difference between a true person that loves gaming making a game versus a corporation coming in saying, hey, this is what the people want. Let's build it.
00:43:46
Speaker
Well, I think to push back a teeny bit, Greg, I think no one on any team ever wants their game to fail. yeah They wish that they had infinite resources and funds to keep chasing that fun. And if if Anthem was built by an independent studio that could self-fund that future, I think it'd still be cooking it.
00:44:03
Speaker
um So it's I think it's challenging because a lot of people are like, oh that team didn't try hard enough. Every team tries so hard. every day to do their best but it's sometimes it's circumstances and and not everything's going to land with every player all the time uh being able to predict big hits and and know exactly where things are gonna you know it's like in baseball we still don't know what people are gonna hit we can't predict what you know but with all our data we should be able to predict exactly where they're going to hit it and how fast we're gonna hit it we can't right because still there's a lot of rng involved
00:44:35
Speaker
So recently we have the launch of Tony Hawk three and four, which is from one of your former studios. Been playing it every morning now. I'm being a big fan. I love the nostalgia factor. I think Tony Hawk one and two remake was one of the better remakes.
00:44:53
Speaker
Three and four was fantastic. I know people are complaining about the the music, but it is what it is. um What games are you playing these days? That's a great question. i On my Switch 2, I just had a quick trip to Europe and I played Dead Cells again. i went back and I cleaned, I wiped my save file and I started from scratch. And holy mackerel, that game is just phenomenal.
00:45:16
Speaker
I love it. I love it so much. with all my heart The other game that's my sort of go-to comfort game is Astroneer. So I've been playing a lot of that. um I just downloaded the Peak, have not had a chance to play that, but me and Johnny V are trying to find some time. And I've been playing a lot of Duke Awakening, our dunes or Dune, sorry, Dune Awakening.
00:45:34
Speaker
Actually, a crossover between Duke Nukem and Dune pretty good so So that I just love. I'm just playing solo. So I'm, ah you know, I got my Ornithopter, my Saltthopter. And, you know, in the deep desert, that's sort of where all the PvP stuff is. So I'm like, just kind of like peeking around, looking around, hiding before like a bunch of barrage of rockets. But, you know, i'm always curious about new games, new releases that are coming out. And I try to sort of play a lot of different things um every week.
00:46:04
Speaker
How about you, Greg? What are you playing these days? playing 20 block 3 and 4. I just finished The Altars on Xbox. so Okay, cool. How was it? Great story. Really enjoyed the story. At my ah my older age, I'm enjoying the story-driven aspects of games. I'm not good at fighting. I finished Doom. That was a fighting one. um Didn't love it as much as it Eternal, but I thought it was still really, really well put together.
00:46:28
Speaker
Doom and Mortal Kombat share this kind of quality to me that you know they they jumped to the modern era really well. I mean doom i remember playing Doom 2 one of my first games. I remember enabling clipping on the wall and doing all that stuff. and like Seeing it in a 3D environment, seeing how much faster it is, it's just just like a...
00:46:46
Speaker
holy shit moment every time i play it like it it really like gets your heart your adrenaline going and that's awesome that's awesome yeah i've ah you know with tony hawk 3 4 remastered i also started playing it and uh my hands don't work like they used to no just pull off crazy tricks and just combos and all this stuff and now i'm just like nope i'm pretty trashed Yeah, same thing. ah My wife wanted to play Crash Bandicoot again. I'm just like, you're going to have a bad time. It's something about how nimble you are as a kid where you can make those timings and now as an adult, like good luck. It's ah so always funny to look back at these old games thinking how easy they're going to be and and you get your ass handed to you.
00:47:24
Speaker
Absolutely, especially the old n NES games. I was playing Kid Icarus the other day on the retro. I was like, This is horribly hard. I remember it so fondly. it was one of my favorite games. I'm like, this is atrociously hard. yeah But then you look at the kids playing Roblox games. I'm like, they have no UX. They have no onboarding. Their games are super hard too. So I think it's just like you grow and evolve as a gamer.
00:47:44
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It's wild. We were talking, i was talking about this with Alex as well. There's so many games that launch on these platforms that like, and you mentioned that discoverability is one of the hardest things. It's like, even on Fortnite, like I'm trying to find other experiences on Fortnite and I can find them, but then there's like 20 players playing, 30 players playing. I'm just like,
00:48:03
Speaker
There has to be a better way for me to find these games here rather than what I'm trying to do right now. And and Minecraft, don't even know how to get started on it. Like my son plays it. I'm just trying to keep up with him. Like, I don't know what I'm doing here. Right.
00:48:16
Speaker
It's wild. But I mean, that's one of the parts about that I love about having kids is that going on the curious journey with them. One time they were playing with a bunch of friends and um I was like, can I hop on too, you know, in Minecraft? And so we were playing together and then one kid started like stealing all our stuff. So they banned them from the server and just all this fun stuff. And, you know, it comes to point, even with Fortnite, I would play with my um my kids quite a bit. And then I remember one time my son comes home. He's like, hey, dad, one of the kids at school wants to play with you.
00:48:46
Speaker
You know, he's he heard you make games. And so we're playing, um you know, I think we're playing just ah box Box Bash and Fortnite. And this kid just murdered me. And theyre he's like, I thought you made video games, you loser. And I'm like, I'm done.
00:49:03
Speaker
i'm I'm good. i don't know. I have nothing to prove to these children. Yeah. So the moment that the kids got better than me, I'm like, i don't need. Yeah, that time's coming for me. I'm not looking forward to it. and I'm still better than my son, but I think I got like six more months in me and then then he's got it. I'm just like, yeah.
00:49:20
Speaker
But I'm more curious. The switch too, man. How'd it do on the flight? Oh my God. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. Cause I'm a bigger guy. And so what I love about it too, is that when the table was down, um, I had a pro controller in my bag, but what I did is I sort of crossed my arms.
00:49:36
Speaker
Cause like for comfort and I had the two and I was like, just playing dead cells like this. And I also hooked it in the back um the back paddle on it. It's pretty cool. Because what I didn't realize on the flight is, that you know when you have your table and you got your little switch?
00:49:50
Speaker
So what it is, I took the back, I put this. hung And I hung it. And so it hung on the back, on the on the chair in front of me. And then I had the controllers that were in my hands, just like you know just like this as I was cross-armed.
00:50:03
Speaker
And then you're not you don't have that that sense of, like I got to hold it out like this the whole time. So I and then I plugged it in to charge it. And so I was right as rain and played too much. I wish I slept a little bit more. It's over. You could sleep. It's worth it. And then people are like, oh like you hear kids be like, that's a switch, too, which is always super fun.
00:50:22
Speaker
I know. I'm both envious and not. It's like I want one and I ah didn't, but now Donkey Kong is out. and just Oh, that game looks so good. I've not played yet, but it looks so good. know. So you've been, again, so many cool places. You've you've dropped off so many names of people you've worked with. And I think networking is something that we all take advantage of. It's something that you're younger in your career. You're like, I'm...
00:50:43
Speaker
LinkedIn is new. I'm not going to network with people. But then as you start, at least for myself, and I started getting a little older, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to reach out to all these old people and everyone's super friendly. like Sounds like you did a really good job at networking and keeping in touch with some of these people. I'm curious, is that something you picked up right away and a skill you had right away or something you've learned to kind of teach yourself teach yourself over time?
00:51:03
Speaker
That's a great question, Greg. um I don't know if it was ever like I should do this. um I think part of it was because when I started doing business development, so for the viewers and listeners that that don't know, business development is when you're out there trying to find new projects or trying to connect people or you're either selling or buying a product.
00:51:21
Speaker
ah Sort of it's another fancy word, I think, fancy name for sales. But when I started doing business development for Capcom, I didn't know what you were supposed to do. I was never trained in sales and never, you know, it was not part of my thing.
00:51:34
Speaker
So being a QA tester, I thought that you just finished the game before you met with them. So I would finish people's games before I had the meeting. And I remember that, Greg, being in sort of a formative moment because then people remember me.
00:51:46
Speaker
ah and then i And then I was like, of course. And then I played their game. and And so when I would meet with them, the game would be fused and the knowledge of the game and the experience the game and the feeling of the game would be fused with the people that I met. And so that was a way for me to like remember very deeply a team because I feel like you really get to know a team.
00:52:04
Speaker
I mean, nowadays, sometimes the teams are thousands of people, but ah back then it was a little bit easier. So over time, it's just checking in with them and then going to a lot of different shows. um And yeah, congratulating them on cool things that they're doing or or posting. I think especially when Twitter was normal, more normal.
00:52:23
Speaker
Who can ever say any social media is normal, but that was a great place for, for interacting with people and networking, but shows were always great. And then, yeah, just trying to follow up and check in with people. um Just be out there.
00:52:35
Speaker
Now, I know that's a challenge for a lot of people that are more, ah you know, I call them indoor cats, right? So I'm more of an outdoor cat. There's a lot of people that are indoor cats. But I think it's about the ah the depth of the connection and making sure you you follow up. And one of my best friends of all time, Carter Lipscomb, had this amazing saying, which is be pleasant and be present.
00:52:55
Speaker
And it's just something that i really took to heart. And so I think that, yeah, I think friendships um and connections are are like a garden. And so your job is to, you know, water it and and take care of it.
00:53:07
Speaker
And then it will take care of you. And that's ah kind of why i feel very strongly and such a big part of my heart is in this industry because people have been so kind with their time and their love and affection with me that I want to give that forward to the next generation.
00:53:20
Speaker
I love it. And I've heard so many good stories about Carter. I know Sean Layden was on here and he was saying he had a great, great relationship with him. And it sounds like he was just a one of a kind of people in this industry. So, so.
00:53:31
Speaker
If you could go back to any one of your previous jobs and kind of relive that experience, which are you going to go back to? o That's a cool question. um Not many people can say they work for such cool companies. Well, I think, ah I mean, in the moment when Shu and I tweeted out the sharing video ah behind the stage at E3,
00:53:53
Speaker
that was That was like this, we thought it was funny. um We didn't know that we would connect with the internet. And that's an example of of the internet sort of responding in a way that was more in line with our expectations.
00:54:07
Speaker
That was pretty cool. I mean, the whole PS4 launching, like working with a team that I did at PlayStation to launch the PS4, that team was one in a bajillion. Like I just, I love that team so deeply and and it was such an awesome crew to work with and to be able to bring the gamers and the players what they wanted.
00:54:22
Speaker
um That was, was awesome. It was, it was definitely a career high. Well, Adam, I love your stories. Your experience is awesome and everyone should be envious of it.
00:54:35
Speaker
um Before we do go today, let us know where we can find you. Where can we find Vivarado? Yeah, you can go on LinkedIn. You can look up Adam, em boys. ah You can go to www.vivrato.com, V-I-V-R-A-T-O.
00:54:47
Speaker
And you can hit up our contact at vivrato.com if you have a question or an email you want to send us, any of that stuff. Or sign up, like I said, on LinkedIn for a quick chat and to learn more about what we do, who we are. And and stay tuned for the next couple weeks. You're going to see the big announcement of all the ah new nine members, which I'm super excited to talk about in the future.
00:55:05
Speaker
Awesome. We'll have links to all of Adam's stuff. And Adam, again, thank you so much, man. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks, Greg. Appreciate the time. That's just a piece of Adam Boyes' story. We have a lot more information on him in the Player Driven blog. So if you aren't following Player Driven, check out playerdriven.io. You can also listen wherever we have, wherever you get your podcasts from.
00:55:27
Speaker
And you can also check us out on all the social channels. So if you're not following, we have all different people in the gaming industry, from studio directors to VCs to indies to all different people. So make sure you're following Player Driven in and have a good one.