Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 34: Ben Wilson (Draknek & Friends)
212 Plays15 days ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Ben Wilson the other producer at Draknek & Friends. Topics include his journey through the games industry, crossword puzzles, and card games.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Draknek and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who mix up. I'm Seren, the producer at Draknek and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Draknek at Draknek and Friends.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey. Today, we're joined by Ben Wilson, who you may know from working at Drakonek in France. How are you doing today?
Ben Wilson's Career Journey
00:00:45
Speaker
Hi, um I'm good.
00:00:47
Speaker
How you? Pretty good. Do you want to introduce yourself to listeners, people who don't know you, just chatting about who you are?
00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, um I'm Ben Wilson, he him. I am a relatively new addition to the team at Drackneck and Friends. um Prior to that, I worked at Deguta Fabrique on Saltsy Chronicles.
00:01:18
Speaker
Prior to even that, I was working in in AAA at Sumo Digital in in the UK. And then prior to even that, I was a solo indie making games in my bedroom.
00:01:30
Speaker
um Yeah, so we had indie turned AAA turned indie again career. What got you into game dev the first time?
00:01:42
Speaker
Great question. I think being bored and unfulfilled in a previous job, a previous like pre-games industry job that I had, and ah just picked up game development sort of as a hobby and did that for a few years, and then just started putting my games online.
00:02:00
Speaker
Alan, I think you literally played either the first or second thing that I'd ever made. Oh my gosh. it was just it was It was the first time we met, and it was completely by
Game Development Challenges
00:02:10
Speaker
happenstance. It was at Nottingham Game City, and you were showing a good snowman. And I was like vaguely aware of you because of Sokolbond.
00:02:19
Speaker
And I think I had just been working on this thing for like three months or so in what was then a very nascent Unreal Engine 4, which I was learning.
00:02:29
Speaker
And... Yeah, that was that was the first like public showing of ah of a game that I was really nervous. That's great. I do not remember this game, but please tell tell us about the game that you made. it's Oh, we don't need to talk about Yes, yes, yes.
00:02:45
Speaker
Let's... ah it Yeah, sure. um Well, what's interesting is I also remember your your comment about it. um It was... a local multiplayer game sort of in the vein of sports friends or tower for laws that sort of thing like single screen local multiplayer game and it was sort of about like it was you know like a bomber man style top down thing but um it had a ah weird sort of shared input system where
00:03:20
Speaker
Each player moved independently, but whenever ah player pressed fire, everybody fired. This rings a slight bell, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And um I wasn't sort of at the booth sort of area when you played it, but at some point you had played it, and then we chatted at some point during that weekend of Game City, and you were like, yeah, it's fun.
00:03:43
Speaker
ah You said something to the effect of like, if I was working on this, I would like probably put it down.
00:03:51
Speaker
You'd be like, oh yeah, that's the fun like fun little like proof of concept. Nice. And I, you know, i did do that,
Transition to AAA Development
00:04:01
Speaker
I guess. um I didn't really go that much further with it because it was more sort of I was learning how to make games and learning to make games and finishing games ah are two very different sort of propositions.
00:04:15
Speaker
So yeah, I was very much in the period of like, oh, I've got an idea in my brain, better just build it and see what it turns into. So um it was ah it's sort of a fun first meeting.
00:04:26
Speaker
which was, i I'm going to say that was like early 2015 2014. So 10 years ago now. Yeah.
00:04:38
Speaker
been a while. Sure has. And yeah, what was the translation like from making games in this very, like ah you you can just make stuff for yourself and like you can kind of do whatever, like the very different mindset to having a job in the games industry.
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, I was very much the source of a lot of imposter syndrome in the first like year and a half or so because I was I went from doing that sort of thing. I'd made a lot of games by the time I worked in a studio and sort of gone to more sort of events and but game jams and that sort of stuff.
00:05:19
Speaker
And I was sort of confident in sort of the style of games that I was making, but doing the game thing for real, as opposed to just making them for myself, was a lot of pressure. I think I was the only person at that studio at the time who was not sort of formally you know either some sort of you know veteran in games industry or had formal education in game design or whatever but I was in the game design and the game design team Sumo Digital for about four years and I'm pretty thankful that they sort of took the chance on hiring this weirdo who ah just sort of made games in his bedroom for three years but um
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, that was really a cool experience in that a studio like that is always being thrown wildly different stuff. So year to year you're working on or getting little glimpses of at the very least, really different kinds of projects.
00:06:18
Speaker
and I know that like for a lot of people, the AAA experience is like, oh, you you sort of go into a room where you make like sports games or shooter games or whatever kind of game just forever.
Fortnite's Impact and Ethics
00:06:30
Speaker
for infinity until you leave or you know whatever but yeah it was it was pretty i mean i got to work on sonic the head drug kart racing game i got to work on a pitch for a horror game i got to work on um a little big planet game and yeah, a bunch of a bunch of different things I think I yeah i did a thing for Fortnite that didn't go anywhere in the end, but was fun to and did I don't know, do? Oh weird, everyone in the industry has touched Fortnite somehow?
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's crazy not me I was gonna say, Alan, you are the only person on this call that has not touched Fortnite in a work capacity, yet I haven't even played it Me neither Hey, i don't did this is going to be a controversial topic, but ah sure it sure is a well-made video game.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah. That is spicy. it it sure It sure does have some good fundamentals. A lot of things are well-made. I think um casinos are well-made, you know?
00:07:38
Speaker
look I'm not saying that the business practices of Fortnite are ethical, i I am saying that like, I don't know, the movement and shooting is fun. I agree. Is it true that they disabled the shooting part while there were Star Wars characters in it?
00:07:53
Speaker
No, ah they disabled the ability to shoot at certain Star Wars characters. Sure. Wow. Just like they disabled ah the ability to shoot at celebrities giving concerts.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, they implemented plot armor. That's fascinating. I do not play Fortnite, but I have a respect for the software. Sure.
00:08:17
Speaker
i don't have so much of a respect for the sort of business practices slash cultural singularity that it has created. Yeah, and some of the labor practices. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Absolutely. But like,
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah. um don't know, Fortnite bad doesn't resonate with me so much as Fortnite gross. This has been this week's Fortnite
AAA to Indie Transition
00:08:41
Speaker
sec. You do this every week, right? Yeah, every week we talk every week. You sort a weigh in on your current feelings about Fortnite. We talk about Fortnite, we talk about the the new skins that dropped.
00:08:52
Speaker
ah Hang on, hang on. Let me search newest Fortnite skins. This'll be timeless. Hold on, before you reveal this, can we all make a guess as to what sort of cultural touchstone slash character has made it into Fortnite this week?
00:09:10
Speaker
Yes, go for it. I'm gonna say Baby Shark. I'm sure that that's already been in there. I'm certain of it. Winnie the Pooh? Right. It's right out of ah copyright.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah. No. It seems like this week, it's the Fantastic Four and Deadmau5. That Okay. Deadmau5 less of a for a current... Okay.
00:09:34
Speaker
that's Both of those make sense in their own way. Yeah. You know, Ben Grimm, the thing, holding a gun. Normal stuff. Anyways, uh, back to sumo. Right.
00:09:45
Speaker
lot I'm probably going to do that a few more times. Just, um, love a good digression. No, I didn't mean digressions. I meant specifically digressions about Fortnite. Um,
00:09:59
Speaker
um, yeah, so I was there for a few years. I, and the last thing I worked on now was, um, The game that ended up being called Hogwarts Legacy, um I worked on it before it had a name and it was a very complicated, weird thing that I probably didn't have... it was this This is probably not the place for talking about the weird stories about that project and also the weird...
00:10:29
Speaker
subtext of, of working on that game while yeah the, you know, figurehead of that property was at that time in 2019 beginning to sort of come off the rails publicly.
00:10:41
Speaker
Um, so that was a fun, conflicting thing to work on and then eventually leave. Um, um, and then ah went from there to working at Deguta Fabrique.
00:10:55
Speaker
Which, yeah, was my first time working indie not on my own or with like a couple of friends. um It was the first time doing the studio thing.
00:11:07
Speaker
And what was that transition like for you to go from such a... like Sumo, like you said, it's it's not necessarily a traditional AAA, but it is very much a AAA, to going to a much, much, much smaller studio.
00:11:22
Speaker
The main difference is that it was sort of unlearning this thing or readjusting to... So when I joined Sumo, i was I was going from being a person who just did everything. So I had, like, understanding of, like, oh, this is, you know, how you would implement a thing that you've designed, or this is how it would affect, like, art or whatever, or sound. or So I just sort of had that experience of, like, oh, because I'm the the guy who just would implement everything. um But I had to sort of learn to, like, not...
00:11:56
Speaker
a stick my nose into other departments because you know you have this like departmental sort of organization structure and you sort of you're in one department right at a time but then leaving there and going into indie again it was sort of unlearning that and sort of putting on a bunch of different hats again and um yeah sort of in a really loose sort of way. We had departments, but it was not as hierarchical or sort of, it was much more permeable.
00:12:25
Speaker
And I
Indie Studio Dynamics
00:12:27
Speaker
think I enjoyed that. And I enjoyed like when there's between half a dozen and a dozen people there like any given person's contribution sort goes a lot further there's lot less sort of level something has to go up before just make it into the making it into the game or being a part of studio culture if you're you know introducing like a process or something like that and so it yeah it it suited me pretty well it was a pretty good change especially after like
00:12:57
Speaker
being in triple just long enough to sort of start to tire of that whole deal it was a well-timed change and yeah we worked on salty chronicles and um that was for the most part like really fun to work on like we we didn't crunch on that game, which is crazy in the this industry.
00:13:21
Speaker
We didn't, I don't know. I think I really appreciate from that studio is sort of, there was an outlook of putting the people who make the games before the game, which was really refreshing.
00:13:36
Speaker
Like one of the, you know, early milestones, we had this sort of, we got into a call and had this talk about like, hey, like nobody needs to like kill themselves to make this video game. It's, it's we're doing video games here just to put it all in context. Like it shouldn't be a sacrifice in the way that and often it often is. So i really appreciate that. And I think that sort of changed something about my understanding of like, you know, how I like to work in in games.
00:14:05
Speaker
so Yeah, I think that's sort of fed into some of the transition from there to Direct Neck and Friends is that sort of outlook of like sustainable working and sort of putting the people who make the product before the product.
00:14:24
Speaker
Not to turn this into like an advert or like PR piece for the studio, but yeah something I appreciate.
Development of Salty Chronicles
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, so talk a little bit about Salty Chronicles and like the process there other than the sort of people first production of it all.
00:14:48
Speaker
um Yeah, so for people who are aren't aware of it, it's sort of story-based, story-first sort of adventure game. It has a lot of writing in it, and so the thing that was really different about that project was that the whole sort of pipeline was sort of engineered around this sort of writer first workflow where we were able to have this structure where we could sort of invite writers in to sort of this writer's room situation and
00:15:25
Speaker
they didn't have to touch unity which was the engine we were using at the time they were trained in like sort of this like relatively friction free formatting of of ink that we'd sort of put together and that was their sort of interfacing with the the game it's like okay we've got these sort of script files and in them they have queues for when things should happen or you know um And then the game was put together in a way where they were able to sort of get feedback on that before even like level art was there. And so you could sort of really quickly do revisions over revisions.
00:15:59
Speaker
And that was cool, like sort of figuring out like, it's usually like, I don't know, you don't really get the opportunity to do rewrites in that way or have like revisions in that way. But it was something that was...
00:16:16
Speaker
really important for that game. And so we made it sort of work. Outside of that, I helped make a card game, which was really fun. We did like a sort of card game mini game, which showed up in that game.
00:16:27
Speaker
um And I got really into it, me and um Douglas Wilson, who you may know from, ah well, the Guta Fabrique, but also Johann Sebastian Joust. And the card game was cool because it was,
00:16:43
Speaker
sort of fictionally situated within the world of the game. ah We thought, what if we make a mini game that is the card game that people in this world would play? And so it sort of the rules of the game sort of reflected the sort of culture and politics of the world. That's a very like pretentious sounding like I minded like concept, but yeah,
00:17:06
Speaker
And because it's a game where you're like traveling between different islands, we thought, OK, what if there's like house rules on different islands where you have little rule twists and variations or um and that sort of thing?
00:17:18
Speaker
And we had a lot of fun thinking about how to embed that sort of thing within within game rules. um But also keep it simple enough that like It's just a game that you can play with a standard like playing card deck.
00:17:33
Speaker
So that was a really fun process. It was nice to like, I was mainly at Digita Fabrique doing sort of producery bits, a little bit of design, a little bit of sort of studio um management stuff. But um the card game was where I got to sort of just flex design chops for ah little sliver of the project. And that was really cool.
00:17:56
Speaker
And yeah, it got me really into card games for a bit, really into trick taking games. Really cool. Yeah, with with spoils, that card game, I'm curious how much of the development of that was spent on the core rules.
00:18:09
Speaker
And how much of it was spent on the variations of it? Well, the core rules had to... ah The core rules took a lot of prototyping because it needed to be something that sort of felt like it had like a Oh, yeah, there's like an allegory in this, but also it needs to be lightweight enough to have other stuff stacked on top of it when we do the variants.
00:18:33
Speaker
And so... I think there was a lot of stuff that worked as a game, but, you know, wouldn't have suited variants really well, or were just sort of a little bit too heavy for like, we had to bear in mind that this is like a mini game and sort of the onboarding of that, something like that has to be a lot lighter than if you were presenting it as the main thing. So it's a lot of considerations, but It took ah i like a few months to like sort of... And that was this was like a lot of analog prototyping.
00:19:02
Speaker
We used an online tool called playingcards.io, which is just a sort of virtual playing card table, which is really all you need if you're prototyping a card game.
00:19:12
Speaker
um And then from that, it was one of those... like It was one of those design ideas where like once it falls into place, other things just become obvious. And so designing the rest felt like a lot less of a undertaking.
00:19:26
Speaker
don't know. It was a fertile enough idea that just the rest of it just sort of. Yeah. So you mostly tried to design the core idea. and get that in a place where felt like solid and like there was space for building on top of it. sure And then did the variance after that core game with Login. Partly because like you know when we started we had this vague impression of like oh what some of the chapters were going to be in the game like what the story was going to be but we didn't really like have nailed down like okay these are the all of the areas you go to and these are the areas that need card games attached it so like you know we we really couldn't have done the variants first because we really wanted to sort of match them to the places and so um
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, we we there was a lot on the cutting room floor that was fun, but just didn't suit a place or didn't suit. It just didn't have anywhere to go in the game. And so we were just like, oh, just leave it.
00:20:26
Speaker
But that's just a designing for for card games, I think. you just There's a lot of ideas which are fine, you could work with, but you know it's about finding the the purpose. And was it always a card game? Was it always a trick-taking game?
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, that was sort of the... That was like the only thing that had been decided by the time that i joined the studio. sort of had a first call with Douglas about it, and he was like, oh, the thing I really want to do for this game is a card game. I've gotten really into trick-taking card games, and I just think that's like a really... Heck, yeah. Sort of fertile format for, like, you know, um expressing sort of stuff within it, so...
00:21:09
Speaker
And yeah, it's it's true. I mean, it's like one of the oldest sort of genres of game. Like when you think about like the history of games outside of video games, right? So it's got a lot of history attached to it.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, what, like a formalized physical game kind of starts with Mancala and then you probably get cards only a couple centuries later.
00:21:36
Speaker
But yeah I mean, like, within card games specifically, the trick, oh if I, yeah, I guess I should define that. it's It's this sort of format where there's four players around the table or however many, and the the loop of the game is each player plays one card into the center of the table, and then some resolution happens,
00:21:56
Speaker
And then somebody wins the trick or loses the trick, depending on the ah situation. And then you go again and you keep going until everybody's run out of cards. And that's but like the format of trick-taking games. And like every, it feels like so many directions within that framework have been taken over over the course of history because it's such a like, yeah, it's such an old format.
Role of Mini-Games
00:22:19
Speaker
So yeah, like that was something that was creatively rewarding as a small part of your job there. But i'm I'm actually also curious from the other perspective, like the the production side,
00:22:31
Speaker
um like i i guess I'm looking at this minigame and so I'm applying it to my own like way of making games and it would be the kind of thing like...
00:22:43
Speaker
I don't think I would even propose having like a mini game in any of our games because I'd look at it and go like, well, that's not essential. And sure, in a world where we have like infinite resources, it would be great to put a bunch of them into something like that.
00:22:57
Speaker
But it seems like very risky to put a bunch of time and care into something that's like not the main thing as like from a production process like how was that thing supported within the company how how did you justify its existence how did you avoid having to go like oh this is like nice but it doesn't make sense to keep going with it basically the the case for it was that like you know it's situated within a game where there is a lot of reading salty chronicles is a game with you know lots of text and that's sort of the primary thing you're doing in that game is making decisions and navigating but also doing a lot of reading and so it felt like a good it would be good to have a palette cleanser activity in there just from the point of view of like
00:23:54
Speaker
okay, it's been, you know, 35 minutes or however long and now we're giving the player an opportunity to just do something else or just think about or like even just to like let a bit of a story beat sink in while they do some other activity. And it sort of helps to, you know, create an experience where you're not just sort of doing too much of of one thing for too long.
00:24:16
Speaker
Or at least like, you know, it's i mean the the card game was like always optional. And so if you wanted to just steam ahead with the story, you could totally just do that. but I think it it worked in that it was sort of a bit of a pit stop.
00:24:31
Speaker
And we also, i mean, that game was one where we sort of also you know tried to encourage people to just step away from the game. You know, we put it into chapters deliberately because like we wanted to provide like you know easy off-ramps to just going and stepping away and then coming back tomorrow or something like that. and um Maybe some people played it like that, but that's generally not, I don't know, just as audience an audience, um people are not really used to like... It's a bit of a binge medium, isn't it? So um it was sort of another way of like providing that.
00:25:06
Speaker
And like I said, like it was another way of like delivering the themes of the story that was going on, sort of without being explicit about another avenue of sort of steeping you in the world building and and that sort of thing. so There were a couple of cases for going off and fighting around with card games for months.
00:25:25
Speaker
Also, while I'm on the topic of the card game, I do want to also shout out. I mentioned Doug because he was sort of the first person I was working on it with. But also later on in that process, we were joined by Daria Radu, who helped program and implement a bunch of um She put together this cool, crazy machine learning system for the computer control players. That was really cool to see.
00:25:56
Speaker
Um, and Alexandra Labusova who wasn't with us for long, but also helped out. Just wanted to mention those names before ah forgot. Yeah. Speaking of the multiplayer implementation, you think designing for a designing a multiplayer game for a single player game was any different to just designing a multiplayer game?
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was. I mean, i think, like, some of what we had to do is inject a sense of, like, sitting at a table with people that you would have gotten if it was, like, an actual, like, you know, real human people playing a game together.
00:26:34
Speaker
um And so we we had, you know... a system of like dialogue barks that were contextual based on what was happening in the game or whatever that you know just sort of felt like people were talking to you while you were playing and responding to your moves and in a way that like you would just get for free if you you know made a online multiplayer game or just sat around a real table with with friends but um it's something that like felt strangely eerily absent as we you know before we had that so we had to put it in
00:27:07
Speaker
Ben, when are you and I going to sit down and play card games? Great question. um Anytime you like, Seren. oh Yeah. ah I know that... and know that we I mean, we were talking about ah different kind of card game, albeit card games, earlier this week.
00:27:25
Speaker
And I really want to hear about your... We don't have to put this on the cast because... Yes. No. There's reasons. You've got ideas. Yes. I also am big into card games.
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah. All right. But pivoting away from card games, even though that's a hard thing for my soul to do.
Crossword Construction Enthusiasm
00:27:45
Speaker
um Talk to me about your enthusiasm for crossword puzzles.
00:27:52
Speaker
Oh boy. Yeah. um How long have you got? um ah About 30 minutes. Perfect. um Because that's exactly how long I can talk about crosswords. But no.
00:28:04
Speaker
ah I got into crosswords. And by crosswords, I mean constructing crosswords. last year, like ah yeah around this time last year. And making crosswords is fun, folks.
00:28:18
Speaker
If neither of you have tried it, or if you're listening to this and you haven't tried it, and it sounds like a thing that you might be remotely interested in please try. it is something that I can imagine would really appeal to people who generally like puzzles, because but the construction of a grid, particularly where you have like a theme involved and have these sort of requirements for what you want to do with the grid but also have to make it work as a valid sort of thing where all the you know words are sort of make sense for what you want to do with that puzzle it's a real yeah it's it's a bit of a brain to in in ways that i sometimes hate when i'm like up in the late hours of the night just trying to get a grid finished so that i can submit it but
00:29:04
Speaker
when I, you know, I'm not under a time pressure. It is a lot of fun sort of prodding away at the problem of and approaching it from different angles of like, oh, how can I fit these five elements in here into this 11 by 11 square space?
00:29:18
Speaker
But yeah, I got into crossword construction. when I was, I had this period of being a little bit ill. Like i had a vertigo for a few months and it sort of put me out of like going outside and sort of doing the regular sort of things that I was doing. And so I just sort of had a lot of time to fill And I picked up cross-wording just sort of on a whim because, ah you know, there's like free software out there you can just use that is really good for like maintaining word lists and like, you know, designing grids on.
00:29:55
Speaker
It's a whole rabbit hole. Like as like a, you know, formal puzzle format, but also within that, like there's ways to subvert that given that like it's a thing that everybody has some passing awareness of right everybody has like solved a crossword grid in their time there's a lot of cool sort of ways that you can surprise a solver based on sort of what they expect a crossword to be whether that's in like the content you know like I like to make
00:30:26
Speaker
my crosswords usually like about things that I care about and so that you know like just in terms of like cultural touch touchstones and sort of queer references and like in a way that you don't you know see if you open up the newspaper and do that crossword um so it can be surprising in that sense in content but also in terms of like format like they can have like weird twists like mechanical twists that yeah can be a lot of fun to like discover as a solver but then also um the design yeah so it's it's a good i've been doing it off and on for about a year i've had to take a little bit of ah haven't taken a break but i've slowed down a little bit in the last few months but it's uh yeah i recommend it awesome and where can people find some of your crosswords
00:31:15
Speaker
um You can find my crosswords at 051.net or at AVCX, which is a crossword puzzle sort of distributor, and um also on Puzmo.com.
First Months at Draknek and Friends
00:31:30
Speaker
ah So what's it been like working at Dragneck in France? you want the short answer or the long answer? Either one. I'm kidding. I'm bluffing. There's only one answer.
00:31:41
Speaker
um It's been cool. it's i i still I have not been... long has it been? Like two and a half months or something like that? um Yeah, something like that. Something like that, yeah. Like ten weeks.
00:31:52
Speaker
So it's not been super long. I feel like I have been there for longer because the first like three weeks were crazy, like... Not in terms of like, oh my gosh, it's on fire. But like we had Spooky Express announcement on my first week.
00:32:11
Speaker
And then on my second week, was it the... I get them mixed up now, but one of them was the the the demo and the other one was Cerebral Puzzle Showcase starting.
00:32:22
Speaker
um and i I forget now which... Oh, it would have been the demo first, right? Yeah, the demo was a couple of weeks after announcing Spooky. I want to say, though, that there was something in between announcing Spooky and releasing the demo. I don't remember what it was. Yeah, there was something every week for like four weeks, and I forget what the second thing was now.
00:32:44
Speaker
Was it like announcing submit like a submission thing for Cerebral? Maybe i don't know. don't know. Or was it? There was definitely something.
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah. Or was it monster no i didn't think so suffice to say it was a very actually like fortunate sort time to sort of just be a fly on the wall and like sort of figure out what is happening like because uh you know there was it was a space of time where a lot of different things were being talked about and i was getting up to speed and sort of like uh i don't know it was it was cool it was like uh usually when you join a new studio you're sort of like
00:33:27
Speaker
um Kicking your heels for a bit. Kicking your heels for a bit. You don't really like understand the sort of flow of how people work together and you know what everybody is you know doing there and and whatnot. But it was you know straight into it.
00:33:41
Speaker
It was like, oh, okay, right, okay, cool, cool, cool. This is what we're doing here. And then like even after that sort of flurry of that full week period ah at the beginning, like now we're we're getting into some other stuff with the... Can we talk about the new voices that we're doing the planning for that now?
00:33:57
Speaker
I think by the time this podcast comes out, that will either be just announced or it will be close enough to announce that we can tease on this podcast. Right, okay. Well, we've been planning that and that's, you know, been a cool experience as well.
00:34:12
Speaker
And so, yeah, like, never a dull moment is is the short answer, I would say. It's, a yeah, I feel like i I've gotten to... The real surprising thing is just that how such a small studio does so many things in different, you know, places. Like, it's sort of wild.
00:34:31
Speaker
it's It's not just developing a game or publishing games. It's also doing events and um grants and and all of
Excitement for Spooky Express
00:34:41
Speaker
that. Yeah, it's it's ah pretty cool.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah. I haven't had the problem of of of showing up and not knowing where I i fit in because there's always something to so be working on and it's been a good start.
00:34:57
Speaker
Great. You want to say anything about Spooky Express to get people particularly excited about it? Wait, what can I say that is... that is I mean, I guess like the question is more like, yeah, is there anything about Spooky that you're personally excited about?
00:35:11
Speaker
I think Spooky Express is charming in a way that... I mean, several of the previous games have been charming in their own way, but I think Spooky Express has like a...
00:35:24
Speaker
I don't know, it it has a real, like, potential for... but The first time I played it when i I joined, I was just sort of like enjoying the characters, even though they weren't necessarily like doing anything and I didn't understand the mechanics yet at that point. And like, I just think, yeah, it's it's it's got such a like a sense of like setting, but it's really fun. And I think it's like really ah approach approachable in that way. And i think it's the sort of game that you could play with somebody because it is like on, it is at such a scale that you can sort of,
00:35:58
Speaker
It's not too finicky to sort of share a screen with somebody and sort of talk about you know how to solve it together. and i I do like when you can sort of cooperate on a puzzle like that. yeah i think it's just um I don't know if that was an intent at any point, but like it is sort of framed in such a way that it seems to welcome that sort of play or that sort of reading of reading of of it Yeah, that's never been an intentional thing with any of our games, but I have really enjoyed the occasions when I've seen people play it cooperatively. Yeah. Yeah, like particularly at events where there'll be a queue, but then the queue becomes just a group of hot people huddling over the computer. It's like a lot of fun. I really enjoy playing games ah with with my partner and...
00:36:48
Speaker
I also really enjoy puzzle games, but often those two things don't match up into a situation where I'm playing. I'm trying to think of an example of the last sort of Because I played Blueprints recently and I sort of tried to get them into It's just not. It's too too many moving parts and it sort of takes sort of, sort of i don't know, it's too difficult to... It's like um starting The Sopranos or something.
00:37:14
Speaker
like like it with it's It's like committing to watching a long TV show together, that game, if you're playing it together. Whereas I think a game with levels...
00:37:24
Speaker
thats that like are pretty small and sort of have like a concept that, you know, they're about or two concepts that you're putting together. um it feels like something you can sort of tag team a lot easier.
00:37:38
Speaker
um Do you have any questions for us before we wrap up?
Evolving Perspectives in Game Development
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, you were asked when we spoke earlier this week, you said that I could ask a question. Um, and I was thinking about this question this afternoon and I guess the thing, the thing that i sort of came to was knowing that like both of you in your sort of respectively have been like working in games, involved with games for a long time now and I wondered, like, I haven't been working in games for as long as either of you two and and my relationship to games and making games and my priorities and my sort of like what I get out of it has definitely changed over that time. And I was wondering what has been the thing that has sort of changed for you and stayed the same for you about a sort of practice of making games.
00:38:31
Speaker
Alan? Yeah, good question. I feel like even though the the games themselves I'm making, like there's a very, very clear through line, feel like the way I make games is like so different.
00:38:49
Speaker
And like partly that's because of what you were saying about like, we're just doing so many different things. And that's just a mindset that is very different to when I was just like,
00:39:01
Speaker
poodling around and like just making games for fun and like didn't really like, hopefully, hopefully people would play it and enjoy it. But like, it wasn't, uh, wasn't the whole thing. It was just like a thing.
00:39:14
Speaker
And now like, because of the successes we've had, we have this opportunity to do these impactful things that aren't making games. And it feels like really valuable to do that stuff. But also like Monsters Expedition just really did shift that.
00:39:30
Speaker
Like before starting Monster Expedition, it was basically a games was a full-time hobby for me. Like i I didn't have a day job while I was making the games before that, but I was approaching them very much as like, oh, this is just a thing I'm doing and I'm burning through savings and eventually I'll run out of money.
00:39:50
Speaker
And so after Monster Expedition, was in the position of, okay, I guess I'm like running a company now. yeah And like that happened, like that transition happened during the development of Monster Expedition.
00:40:03
Speaker
And then for a while it was like, oh, I'm running a publishing company for a while. i ah we We weren't even making games for a while. So now we've got like an even further development of like, okay, well now we want to do publishing and development at the same time. And that's easy, right?
00:40:20
Speaker
huh
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Yeah. It feels like a sort of allegory for growing up, you know, how like sometimes you just forget that you used to be like a kid who had zero like obligations or like, oh gosh, now I like pay taxes and like go to work, like what's the deal with, like, you know, it just feels like ah the realization that like, oh, this used to be way simpler and now it's a whole, it's a whole thing and there people involved and livelihoods and yeah God, yeah.
00:40:54
Speaker
How about you, Theron? I mean, journey's been documented. people If people did not listen to episode zero of this podcast, which was an episode about me and my journey in games, ah if you want and if you if you want to know more of the short version of this, go listen to that.
00:41:13
Speaker
But the sort of TLDR ldr of like what changed for me is I think... I just got better at identifying the parts that... what What am I good at and what brings me a lot of joy?
00:41:29
Speaker
and really trying to isolate my role. Because like I didn't get into games to be a producer. i got... you know I started into games writing about games, and then I started making games, and then I was testing games, and then I was release-managing games, and then I was producing games. And it was like, all through this, it was like a lot of narrowing down, like, okay, these are the clear skill sets that I can provide that overlap greatly with what people other indie developers, et cetera, need. Like, what are the what are the pain points that almost all of these developers experience?
00:42:07
Speaker
Well, what a coincidence that overlaps very, very easily with the kind of stuff that I'm good at. OK, I guess I should, like, if I want to keep eating i and having a roof over my head, I should probably find a way to monetize my strengths.
00:42:25
Speaker
And sort of just as a freelancer, identifying that, continuing to chase it and move in that direction. And like that transition took a couple of years. But then, you know, I pretty much got to where I'm at.
00:42:39
Speaker
So that's that's sort of the short version where for me it was just a lot of increasing hyper specialization. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, of course.
00:42:50
Speaker
Anything else you want to touch on? We are basically at the hour mark. Yeah, this is the point where you just sort of edit in the entirety of episode zero into the back of the... Oh, God, yeah, Melanie, please don't do that.
00:43:05
Speaker
You do the um you know the flashback sound effect, the do-do-do-do-do-do-do, and then you just... Yes. so Now, what we should do have a future episode, which the... The Clip Show. The Clip Show, yeah. Edit the through line for the whole podcast series. It's just every developer asking, how do you make a game sell well?
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah, Saren and Alan are stuck in an elevator. oh no! Hey, Saren, you remember that time? Yeah. Remember the time that we had on... didn little did Right, exactly.
00:43:43
Speaker
That's not how I remember it. didnt Goodness. i Oh, 90s sitcoms. Yeah, I mean, put it in the ideas bag. Yeah, sure. ill right right Right behind the list of 300 people we want to have on the podcast first.
00:44:00
Speaker
All right.
Conclusion and Podcast Credits
00:44:01
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Ben. It's been a pleasure to get to record with you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's also been a pleasure to get to work with you. that's lovely. Thank you.
00:44:12
Speaker
um Likewise, both of you. And yeah, you are obligated to say that, but I will take it at say faith value. You can, yeah, you can take it at face value. You can take it at non-face value. that it It's your compliment. um Yeah, thanks for having me on. I was a little bit intimidated at sort of, oh, you're having me on after you've had all of these like amazing puzzle people, which I don't really like. I mean, I make crosswords, but I don't really like...
00:44:40
Speaker
put myself in that same sort of bag. And so I was like, what are we going to talk about? to Should I prepare? Should I like bring things? um But it's been it's been lovely. Yes. turns Turns out that usually once, as as long as there's like so strong chemistry, ah it's it's pretty easy to fill an hour.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah. yeah All right. Well, thank you again. Thank you, Alan, as always. And thank you for listening to the Jack Ticket Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com.
00:45:13
Speaker
Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:45:32
Speaker
you