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20 Years of Wadjet Eye (w/Dave Gilbert)
129 Plays11 hours ago
In 2006, Dave Gilbert's game The Shivah went on sale, and now 20 years later he's still working at it, designing and producing adventure games. We spoke with him about it all, from the early days when he was making small freeware products to what's coming up next for Wadjet.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
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Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Appearance
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast. Jess, we have such an exciting day today because he already got it.
00:00:42
Speaker
You know, when we talk about when we have guests, there's there's one thing that happens, and it happens right away, which is that we play the theme song. And some of our guests pick up our psychic message, which is you have to dance to the theme song.
00:00:59
Speaker
Absolutely. I was holding myself back. You're bopping. We can see the bop. I was bopping. was bopping. Okay. I don't know if that does that count as dancing? That counts. That counts. All right. So I was dancing. There we go. Yeah. No, no, no, no. We're all sitting down with headphones on and all of that. That's fine.
00:01:18
Speaker
I think if anything, it's just proof that it was really worth paying the 30 K to lessons that theme song. I mean, it worth every penny. I mean, uh, just good stuff. That's a, that's Mark Mothersbaugh, uh, playing that, uh, of Devo fame. Yeah. It was hard to get him, but worth every penny. yeah But yes, uh, today we're joined, uh, uh, why'd you die games?
00:01:43
Speaker
Dave Gilbert. Hello. hello Um, so I just outed myself as a bopper. So, uh, you know, Oh, well there you go.
00:01:54
Speaker
Like yeah as as long as you're not a big and don't get on a plane, you'll be fine. Oh, good
Podcast Recording Timings
00:02:00
Speaker
God. it's Wow. Too soon, been wow man. Come on, man. We have a guest here.
00:02:07
Speaker
Um, that was not very La Bamba of you.
00:02:11
Speaker
Oh my God. We're awarere off like a herd of turtles, aren't we? Oh my God, we're already. Dave just disconnected. oh no What? In a fury. No, no, no, no. Oh, I thought you said I did. I'm like, no, I'm still here. what are you talking about? It was a joke.
00:02:27
Speaker
I get it. i get humor. I get humor. Good. How are you, dave Welcome to the podcast. I'm good, thank you. It's ah rare that i record um podcasts so late, but time zones and stuff.
00:02:43
Speaker
It's a nighttime record. Yeah. It was, I, having done, and I'm sure you've done this too, like, uh, podcasts, like with, uh, friends internationally, ah it could, that means that it could be at any time, uh, Although usually it's folks in Europe, so it's usually the opposite. Like i'm I'm usually on the earlier side. So it's rare that I'm later than the person interviewing me. Yeah. The latest I've recorded was was with ah was on an Australian podcast, which would be, yeah. yeah
00:03:24
Speaker
It is funny. Occasionally Ben and I will get the chance to record in the morning if we're if we're both not at work. And we are like two completely different human beings at 11 a.m. m versus the evening hours. And boy, I would love to listen to a podcast from those two guys. I think it would really be ah ah a great experience to listen to. But you get these two guys instead. So you make do with what you can.
Regional Convenience Store Rivalries
00:03:49
Speaker
when When I did my previous podcast, we would sometimes record early in the morning, sometimes record at night. And there were a couple of listeners that would actually like say, like, that was a morning record.
00:04:02
Speaker
That was a night record. That means you have those are the real fans who can tell the difference. Yeah. yeah yeah Eagle-eared listeners. So, so let's talk about something really important, which is, so, so Dave, you, you moved recently, to to Pennsylvania, the Keystone State.
00:04:22
Speaker
How, how long have you been there? Uh, we moved August of 2024. almost two years. Almost two years. so i Like, and and when when I was DMing you, i previewed this question, ah which was, do you have an opinion on what the, the ah which Pennsylvania convenience store is the correct one?
00:04:53
Speaker
This would be Wawa or Sheetz. Honestly, we haven't been to Sheetz yet. because There's a Wawa very close to us, so we go there. um But we haven't been to Sheetz. At least i personally, I haven't. maybe Maybe my wife has, but I haven't. My feeling is that Wawa partisans are considerably more strident.
00:05:15
Speaker
and like their hate of Sheetz, whereas Sheetz people are like, yeah, I'll go to Wawa. That's my understanding as a non-Pensilian. I think that Sheetz hasn't tried to cultivate that sort of that sort of following behind it. Like, it's cool. It's like, we're just a gas station with some food, man. But Wawa, I really want you to like buy into the to the cult of personality there. i think there's a big, Sheetz is a lot more secure in itself. I think it's what's going on there.
00:05:40
Speaker
I'm a Sheetz man. We have Sheetz everywhere around here. Sheets is in West Virginia. Ben, I'm in a town with three stoplights and we have two sheets. Sheets as is, uh, sheets is everywhere. and You get, you go in there, you get yourself like two hot dogs and a medium drink. That's going run you like three bucks. It's amazing. You're saying your town is full of sheet.
00:06:05
Speaker
this Full sheet. Absolutely. Uh, Someone had to make that joke. I'm just i'm just fulfilling the will of the universe here. That's that's what I'm doing.
00:06:16
Speaker
So what do you get at Wawa? Is it a grinder situation? Is that what people love about Wawa? What do we do at Wawa? Usually we
Trader Joe's Popularity and Challenges
00:06:22
Speaker
just get sandwiches. It's just if we can't bother. We haven't gone that often because we have a Trader Joe's within walking distance. whenever we need something quick, we usually go there because I find Trader Joe's better. So that's where we go.
00:06:39
Speaker
walking to a trader joe's it's great and they just they just opened up about six months ago so it's like we're really happy joe we're like all right because we used to drive to the one a whole 10 minutes away now we walk and it's we could just fill up come back home our international listeners trader joe's is a uh grocery chain which i don't i don't think it's anywhere other than the u.s s maybe canada maybe It's the evil U.S. s offshoot of Aldi. Like when Aldi came to the U.S., it split into two companies, right? Like you had... I think there's some... Yeah, I think there's like some strange story there. So I think, yeah, Trader Joe's is like Aldi's evil ah evil twin brother. But everybody loves Trader I didn't know there was lore.
00:07:24
Speaker
There was lore. Yeah. Gosh. This will be two episodes straight with a lore reference. we're doing We're doing great here. Behind the Joes. You're dialed in. i But, I mean, walking distance from a Trader Joe's is the dream because there's no such thing as a Trader Joe's without a nightmare parking lot.
00:07:45
Speaker
Oh, actually, the parking lot's not so bad, probably because it's new and not everyone knows about it yet. I know and when I was living in um and the East Village of Manhattan, there was a Trader Joe's that opened up close to my neighborhood, and the line was out the door. Yeah.
00:08:03
Speaker
Like you could not like you just, just to just, like it was just everyone's out on the street on the sidewalk with their carts because the line, they just were not prepared for how many people were really desperate for a Trader Joe's because groceries are so expensive in in New York, especially in here at Trader Joe's everything is like half the price and really,
Potato Chips Preferences
00:08:22
Speaker
really good. And so it was just, everyone went flocked to Trader Joe's. Um, so yeah, it's always no nightmare parking lot, just nightmare in general. Well, there was a and there was a deep hunger in New York to have light conversation with someone in a Hawaiian shirt as yeah yeah they checked out your your items.
00:08:42
Speaker
Now, yeah Dave... Are you much of potato chip guy? Because I have a potato chip recommendation. But if you're if you're not, honestly, I'm very boring when it comes to potato chips. I don't like anything flavored, just like salty. Like I'll eat Pringles. I'll get like I'll i'll eat a whole can of Pringles if you put one in front of me. But um for the most part, I'm pretty boring when it comes to potato chips. I just like them plain. I'll make this recommendation. Any kind of flavoring? It's just, ah no, no, thank you. Yeah, so you're not going to like this recommendation. then Probably not. I am going to to finish it for anyone listening, which is Middlesworth Kettle Barbecue Chips. I think I've already made this recommendation on on the podcast. They are tremendous. Trying to score that sponsorship.
00:09:28
Speaker
I want those Middlesworth dollars. My daughter might like them. She likes potato chips, so she might like those. They are so i have a lot of family in Pennsylvania.
00:09:40
Speaker
Um, and we, ah for many years, ah would, uh, like do our summer full big family rent a house in the Poconos.
00:09:55
Speaker
Hmm. Um, and we would just get,
00:10:00
Speaker
dozens of bags of them because we would just demolish these chips.
Tropico Game Series Discussion
00:10:06
Speaker
We would, it would be like two or three bags a day. Each.
00:10:11
Speaker
Wow.
00:10:16
Speaker
But anyway, so with that preamble, i'll ah I'll throw to you first, Jess. Jess, what have you been playing?
00:10:28
Speaker
Oh, wow, Ben. Well, got an email a few days ago um asking me to apply for a closed beta. I haven't found out if I'm in yet, but I got the email. It's like, please sign up if you'd like to sign up for this. It was the Tropico 7 closed beta, which made me...
00:10:51
Speaker
reinstall Tropico 6 and I've been playing Tropico 6 again lately. I love the Tropico series. If anyone out there is not familiar with Tropico, it is at this point like where the elder statesman of the like city management style games. It's you are essentially Presidente of a small Caribbean island. You're building up your industry and your city there while enacting laws and other sorts of things to maintain control over the island.
00:11:21
Speaker
And the great thing about the Tropico series is I think even more so than the average strategy city builder type game, every one is exactly the same. Uh, you go back Tropico one, it's like straight through to Tropico six, very little has changed, which very comforting for me. I don't need a lot of new features. just want a few cool new buildings I can build every few years. And, uh, yeah, I've been playing Tropico six to warm up, uh, for, uh, for Tropico seven.
00:11:51
Speaker
Uh, It's a game that I have, like, I'm kicking it. want write something about the Tropico series. I've been wanting to write something about it for a while. And there's not a lot written about Tropico, like, in academic circles. I don't see a lot about it necessarily on gaming websites. I'm working on an essay in my head. I'm going write something about Tropico.
00:12:14
Speaker
There's, I mean, there's a heavy political element to these games. absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it is, you're passing edicts on everything from, you know, sort of suffrage to church and state kind of stuff, all the way down to, like, subsidizing certain industries and things like that. So there's ah definitely a political angle alongside the just laying out city grids sort of stuff.
00:12:38
Speaker
Well, and and also, I mean, i haven't I haven't played up to the more recent ones, but also, like, isn't a large part of Tropico games playing off, like, the great powers? like Absolutely. United States and the Soviet Union? Yeah, you are constantly trying to balance relations there. Like, if you enact too many pro-communist-style policies, you risk things like a U.S. liberation taking place, or... or vice versa. Later in the series, you have to court China and the EU as well in your trade policies as you get into the more recent years. there's There's a lot of fun stuff. I mean, it's like I said, the game has felt very the same since it launched, just prettier and bigger and everything. But Yeah, always enjoy coming back to it.
Aethus Game Experience
00:13:28
Speaker
Probably out of that style of genre, I've spent far more time with Tropico than I have like SimCity, which is a game I also love. But I'm a Tropico guy. Also just enjoy, you know, it has lovely Cuban music that plays throughout all of it. Yeah, which that alone, a good Cuban soundtrack is is always a treat when playing a game like that. So that's why I've been playing Tropico 6, fingers crossed.
00:13:53
Speaker
Pretty soon I'll be playing the closed beta of Tropico 7, but you'll never know because I'll be under an NDA. We'll get to this segment next time, and it'll just be one big long beep because we've had youract to redact what I've been playing just and for the sake of the NDA. I'll still talk about it, but we won't be able to share it with the listeners. But yeah, that's what I've been playing. Dave, what have you been playing lately?
00:14:13
Speaker
I just started a game called, i'm not entirely sure how to pronounce this, I'm just i'm really digging this music by the way. It's hard to focus on what you're saying because I'm bopping again. Aethus, or A-E-T-H-U-S. I just read about it on um bit the buried treasure website the other day and I hadn't heard of it. it was apparently made by some Rockstar Games alumni and it's not normally the type of game I play. but it's ah kind of like a base builder yeah kind of thing where you're on this like here this sci-fi miner on a claim that your grandfather had. And so you're kind of you know going deep into this mine, gathering resources to like bring back to your base, to build more equipment, to go deeper into the mine, and you know trying to uncover the history of what happened there. And it's ah it's just really engaging. It's just a very simple gameplay loop. it's um
00:15:10
Speaker
I'm finding it a lot of fun. It's not normally my thing. I but i decided to try something new and I'm kind of enjoying it. it's ah I also played... um I got into
Pet Stories and Humorous Banter
00:15:21
Speaker
these kind of games because I played the altars last year and I loved that. So I'm like, maybe maybe I like this genre. I don't know. So I just started playing this and I like this too. so um Yeah.
00:15:35
Speaker
Athos. I am. I am not familiar. i'm I'm just playing both of these games up on Steam. It just came out like about Yeah. yeah Yeah. The altars looks really neat.
00:15:48
Speaker
Oh, altars is really good. Really good. Like I um it's. It merges the narrative in the gameplay so seamlessly. It's like you want to keep going just to talk to these guys more. It's really, really good.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah. Huh. All right. Well, let me wish list this. This looks really neat. It's a very pretty game. Yeah. Yeah. The altars in a face. This is digging deeper and deeper into space mines. Seems like it could potentially run the risk of awakening a space Balrog, which you have to be. Hasn't happened yet. OK, good, good, good. You have a funny robot with you. He's kind of. o But um yeah, and they all have Scottish accents, which is interesting.
00:16:34
Speaker
The robot or just the people? Both of you. Both of you have Scottish accents. That's kind of cool. I bet that takes extra programming on a robot. o yeah Hello, doggy. Hi. Or is that another cat? Never mind.
Board Game Night and Lords of Vegas
00:16:48
Speaker
That is Jess's cat, Blood Clone.
00:16:51
Speaker
Blood Clone? It's a long story. Your cat named Blood Clone. Well... My cat was born with a rare condition called pituitary dwarfism that made her itty bitty tiny. And my wife's a veterinarian. And to save little blood clone's life, she gave her a transfusion of our other cat, Jax's blood, which helped kickstart her system. And eventually, with some other treatments, managed to help her grow to full size.
00:17:19
Speaker
But somehow, our daughters started calling her blood clone as a result of the transfusion. And then that's just her name. We call her BC most of the time, because it's a lot less creepy. And it reminds of that great comic strip, BC. But inevitably, it leads to people asking you why the cat's called Blood Clone, and then you get to tell the story. So there you Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Icebreaker. She's a little miracle kitty. So, you know, there you go.
00:17:43
Speaker
Ben, what have you been playing? Oh, brother, what have I been playing? What haven't you been playing? What haven't I been playing? That's that's the better question. I, so...
00:17:55
Speaker
Uh, Board Game Night, uh, has continued apace, uh, for me. And, uh, you know, as I said, uh, we have not returned to the board game version of Slay the Spire now that the sequel with co-op is out. It's made me a little sad. I still think we'll go back to it. But, uh, last night, uh, on Board Game Night, we played Lords of Vegas.
00:18:24
Speaker
Which I don't believe I've spoken about on this podcast. ah Lords of game where you and the other players are land developers in 1950s Vegas building casinos.
00:18:49
Speaker
And the purpose of the game is to build the largest and most like sprawling casinos on the Strip.
00:19:00
Speaker
And you do so through constant expansion and spending money. And ah one of the great mechanics in the game is that you can gamble in each other's casinos.
00:19:17
Speaker
And when you gamble at another player's casino, where the odds are in the house is favored, but if they lose, you take the money directly from them.
00:19:32
Speaker
Which means that like, you know, like so many other strategy games, uh, you know, you, you should be like kind of planning ahead and where should I put this piece and like, where, where do I want, like, what do I want to do next?
00:19:46
Speaker
And then you're doing some math in your head of like, it's like, okay, well I need to, to spend X, Y, and z And then some prick, uh, just washes you for 20 million. Hmm.
00:19:59
Speaker
and your whole plan just completely collapses. That's great. that's great I'm looking at this game on boardgamegeek.com and Ben, is it fair to say that this game has roughly 900 pieces?
00:20:18
Speaker
Like I've seen like countless cards and mini dice and chips and like all kinds of other crazy
Reflecting on 20 Years of Wajidai Games
00:20:25
Speaker
stuff going on here. this Well, everybody I think gets 10 or 12 dice.
00:20:30
Speaker
okay wow So you got a lot of dice. That's Vegas, baby. Yeah, you gotta have a velvet bag for that many dust. You can't just carry those around.
00:20:42
Speaker
Um, it is, like, you know, like so many other games that aren't like Parker Brothers games, like it feels kind of a little intimidating. Wow. first That's right. I'm coming for, uh, uh, and Larry, the famous Parker Brothers.
00:20:59
Speaker
Um, but, uh, uh, like so many, uh, games, like uh, You I'm reading off the rules to my friend last night and reading, like, dryly reciting rules from a manual, especially as somebody that is just constantly tempted at all times, like, to make a joke and to entertain and to do stuff, a like, is the most torturous and miserable thing.
00:21:28
Speaker
But it's actually pretty straightforward. Isn't that basically running a podcast? Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:34
Speaker
but But yeah, I highly recommend, I think it's just an excellent board game. I have a lot of fun. It looks fascinating. I love the concept. But yeah.
00:21:46
Speaker
Oh, music stopped. you know, the music has ominously stopped. So i we're we're going to get to the the topic at hand, which was, I believe, a week ago, maybe a little longer,
00:22:03
Speaker
I think it was during GDC. you Dave, you said, I'm not going to be GDC, but YJ games is 20 years old if anyone wants to talk about it.
00:22:15
Speaker
And we were like, and here you are. And here that seems, I don't know about you from the inside, from the outside, that seems impossible that it's been 20 whole years. I mean, maybe the inside feels like 60. I don't know. i don't know if it's, I mean, it doesn't seem impossible, but it does seem ridiculous. Because I mean, I guess...
00:22:39
Speaker
yeah All it took was time, but it just doesn't seem like it's been that long. um And when I started, I honestly did not expect it to last two weeks, let alone 20 years. If I did, um i might have chosen a better name than Wajidai. Yeah. And I've been saying it wrong, apparently. i'm I'm starting to think it's too late now to change it, so I'm stuck with it. But that's all good. um Yeah, it's 20 years this year. I think ah when I first i released the Shiva...
00:23:11
Speaker
um Who's either... the The Freeware, the original Freeware version of the Shiva... was either beginning of July beginning of June. I don't remember. One of the two. um But the commercial version was released in August. So this summer, it'll be 20 years, which is nuts.
00:23:28
Speaker
Wow. You know, I think I've seen some people talking about this on social media, too. When we think about, like, back to that golden age of Sierra and LucasArts, that is comparatively a very short time frame. you know like You think about how many adventure games LucasArts put out and you have you've outpaced them by a good bit at this point in terms of pure adventure game output. I mean, to be fair, like they had they were able to get stuff out a lot quicker than I did.
00:23:59
Speaker
ah So there there's a lot, they have a much bigger catalog, but um yeah, I mean, I just, it's just very different. I don't have to worry about, you know, shipping and logistics and I don't have a staff of like a hundred some odd people. i don't have to manage an office. It's like, I just have to worry about myself for the most part. And, you know, the, and the handful of of people who work full time and the freelancers and that, that's, That's about it. I keep things very simple and manageable. Um, and I try not to, you know, um spend more than I can afford or do more than I, uh, take on more than I can, bite more, bite more than I can chew as it were. So I've just sort of kept going, um, which doesn't seem miraculous, but considering all the studios that are closing up shop, um, And laying people off, I feel extremely lucky and blessed just because I'm still around and I feel i still feel pretty stable as a company.
00:25:04
Speaker
You know, you mentioned the fact that, you know, given the advances in, you know, online storefronts and everything like that, you don't have to worry about physical media. You don't have to worry about shipping and those sorts of logistics that go into that. It's funny, you know, I teach at a university and teach a course on ah um sort of the politics and economics of video games. And when I talk to my students who are, you know, mostly 20 years old and have have grown up in the era of digital storefronts.
00:25:35
Speaker
I think that a lot them don't realize how much that transformed the opportunities for independent because they take that for granted. They live in a world where indie games have always been around and where everything could change go straight to a digital storefront and maybe if you're lucky it gets a physical edition someday you had to have a you had to have a whole shipping department and logistics and you know you had to have a warehouse to store everything and it uh when you're dealing with physical stuff and you had to deal with stores you know they can they can only keep your stuff on the shelves for a limited amount of time Oh yeah. Once, you know, the games, once no one's buying it anymore, they're not going to stock it and that's it. You're done. Basically now I could sell my games forever.
00:26:16
Speaker
They're always going to be on, you know, because there's infinite room. Um, there's like, it's, it's always going to be there. Games I i made 20 years ago, people are still buying because they're available. Um, buying a game, you know, uh,
00:26:31
Speaker
that was available in a shop 20 years later, it's a lot harder to find. And usually it's used. The money doesn't go to the creator. It goes to the, you know, it's like whoever is selling it that That reminds me of when i was like a little kid and kind of going through, like I would look through ah like this here catalog and I would see a game that I would be really excited about. Like, you know, see some...
00:27:01
Speaker
ah see something, let's say Laura Bow 2, because that's what Jess is playing right now. And I would see it and I would get my mom to to call and they would say, oh we're sorry, that's discontinued.
00:27:15
Speaker
And that was so, like, I was just like, discontinued. What does that mean? Why can't I have it? can't they just That's when you go to kabe's that guy when you went to KB Toys that's where and looked in the it looked in the the bargain bin. 20 bucks. and yeah You would get even less than that. like i would sometimes find I remember finding Police Quest 2 and it was like in an envelope.
00:27:37
Speaker
It didn't have any, it was just, I didn't care. I just, I didn't care about boxes. I just wanted the game. It had like the discs and like a man, a photocopied manual. And that was it. But was like, I got to play the game. But it was like five bucks, you know, whatever.
Infocom Games and Adventure Game Nostalgia
00:27:52
Speaker
Oh, I love it. of that KB Toys bargain bin. I would dig, I think, oh my gosh, I got Rex Nebular out of there at one point. I got The Lost Treasures of Infocom is one that I remember picking up out of the KB Toys. That's what I grew up on. A lot of folks say LucasArts or Sierra. like i was I was Infocom. oh What some of your favorite Infocom games? Because this we had a New Year's resolution episode back at the beginning of the year, and one of mine was I need to play more Infocom games. It's ah it's a blind spot in my gaming. So what what would you recommend? a Mine Forever Voyaging is is kind of brilliant. I love the Enchanter series. um
00:28:32
Speaker
I've never replayed the Zork games, but I love Beyond Zork. That one's really good. the um Not Return to Zork, Beyond Zork. That one's really good. Brian Moriarty with like some light RPGing. Yeah.
00:28:49
Speaker
And he also did Wishbringer, which is the first game. I love Wishbringer. I've talked about how much I love Wishbringer on here. That was the first one I played. I loved that one. The Planetfall series, of course. Although Stationfall is so hard to play. It's so sprawling. I can't. The last time I tried playing it, I'm like, I'm lost. I don't know where I am. And then I die of hunger in the game, in the
Community-Driven Game Projects
00:29:12
Speaker
game. um What else? i mean, they did so frigging many of them. um Again, very prolific. They were extremely prolific. When you look at the years, they were actually in business. They did so much. Yeah, they were not in business for very long.
00:29:27
Speaker
And they did so much. A thing, and I was trying to Jess a little bit about this, that I'm a little curious about is, so you you know, came out of that early period of, like, kind of the, like...
00:29:47
Speaker
early ags games, adventure games, studio games. Like you did a reality on the norm. oh yeah yeah you done your research Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. um And I didn't even, there a friend of mine, i I was talking to a friend and I asked them like, what should I ask Dave about? Yeah.
00:30:06
Speaker
You know, he made a very good reality on the norm. I made i made four of them. Which one? you made four? Okay. I made four, yeah. The one that they shared was the one with death in it. I don't know. maybe that was the whole Oh, that was the very, very first one. i hadd ever First game I ever made. um It was called, yeah, it was called The Repossessor. I mean, it says a lot about my state of mind because it was just after 9-11 when I wrote that. um And I was kind of like, but I had been laid off from a job like a few months beforehand and 9-11 happened, you know, id lived...
00:30:40
Speaker
not close to it, but reasonably close, being in New York, especially. And I had no desire to like leave home and I discovered AGS and I made a little game in a weekend and it was the repossessor where you play the Grim Reaper. um I mean, it was, it was funny. You know he basically, cause the thing about reality on the norm, for those who don't know, it was, I don't know what you'd call it. like um It's kind of an, like an open source world. It's a really clever idea. Yeah. Where one person, i mean, they kind of got together and came up with the idea of like some characters and how the town would be laid out. And it was actually Yahtzee, you know, Ben Croshaw, zero punctuation guy who made the very first one. um It was about like, ah you know, a teen wizard who raises a zombie. You know, Harry Potter just started to come out back then. um
00:31:30
Speaker
And so, and my game was about a, about death coming to claim the soul of that zombie who is now running for mayor. And then in the end, the zombie convinces death to be be his campaign manager. And what's kind of funny is that it's kind of, you could throw, you create a story and then see what other people do with it, you know? And then then in later games, like, death becomes, you know, like, ah becomes the mayor you like becomes the mayor's assistant and, like, works in the office. And it's like, it's just sort of funny to see where other people took my idea. And then when I made a new game, I would take other people's ideas and do stuff with it. And it was very collaborative and very fun, but there was only so long that could last that Because it wasn't long before, you know, there were just too many damn games. And unless you were there from the beginning, it was very overwhelming to see like 20, 30 of them. Yeah, to see like 20, 30 games and be like, I'm not playing all these. Even though they're all very, very short, most of them. um
00:32:31
Speaker
I could see why it would not attract new people to the series because they're just too many. And back then, you know, you had to download them as well. You couldn't play them in a browser. So...
00:32:43
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it could only last very long, but i feel very lucky to have been part of that because that really, it was it was just, it was the first time where I was like really being creative and then getting feedback on it and like kind of, you know, it was, it felt like a group project, even though each individual game we all worked on individually. um And it was, that without real and the reality on the norm, I probably would not have gone on to make other games because, know,
00:33:10
Speaker
I just wouldn't have been inspired because like just the fact that I would release a reality in the norm game and people would play it and like kind of like take my ideas in weird directions. That was very inspiring. It was not just exciting to release a game, but to see what other people would do with whatever characters or ideas I came up with.
00:33:28
Speaker
that's really That's really interesting. And also, like, so i was not part of the scene at that point, but I was, like, a spectator. I didn't post, I didn't comment or anything, but I was just, like, kind of watching, and I was playing all of the games, starting with...
00:33:46
Speaker
ah like the first Rob Blank game by Yahtzee. That wasn't a reality on the norm game, but that was. Yeah, yeah know oh but yeah i no I'm talking about ah early AGS. Sorry. Yeah.
00:33:56
Speaker
It has the distinction of being the first full game to be made with the engine. Wow. um And I just remember... and that would have been what, 2000, 2001? Would have been 2000, either 2000 or 2001. I know I discovered the AGS and the AGS community like just after he had left the community. So I never got to, I never got to interact with Yahtzee when he was part of the community, but um it was roughly around then. yeah I don't know. Yeah.
00:34:26
Speaker
And so, you know, I think a lot about, and And I think what you were saying about Reality on the Norm is really interesting because I think a lot about those those games, which I haven't gone back and replayed, ah you know, maybe, like, it might be interesting to just kind of revisit, like, Rob Blank and Larry Vales and some of these other, like, really embryonic...
Reviving Adventure Games with AGS
00:34:52
Speaker
Wow. Oh, gosh, yeah....like, you know, AGS games.
00:34:58
Speaker
Um, and, but it's really interesting because I, I, I was playing these, these games and, ah like I, I kind of associate like that particular era of those games as, as something that has like a very specific,
00:35:21
Speaker
feel and I don't even know what the the correct way like how to verbalize what it is I know exactly what you mean yeah I know because I'll tell you I'll tell you what my thoughts are about that yeah please because even at the time because adventure games were considered dead again this was it's it's so quaint to think about it because in 2001 you know when I first joined um they were considered all these are dead no one makes this anymore and meanwhile like You know, the year before our Longest Journey came out, two years before that, you know, the last Quest for Glory came game came out in Gabriel Knight 3 and all these games. There copies of these things in stores somewhere still. Yeah. Yeah. like So, like, it seems quaint. Like, i remember someone made a a Quest for Glory fan game in 2002, and it was like, oh, my God, it's so retro. And the last game came out, like, three years beforehand. It was bizarre. It was wild. Crazy time. But um it was...
00:36:18
Speaker
there was this weird sense like that we were the ones now making them you know and they were rough hewn and janky you know um but at the same time no one else was making them and so this engine allowed folks like us to make these games like the vacuum was filled with us and um it's it's not to say that we like didn't It's hard to put into words exactly, but it was it felt like being on the like the the crest of something.
00:36:49
Speaker
Like something was happening, and it was like this was something new, and the technology the new technology at the time enabled us to to do this. And so it was exciting because no one else had done this before, but we were doing it. And these are all games games that we loved, and now we were making them. And it felt really cool to be a part of that. um it's very It's very esoteric and a bit, you know, um i don't know what the word is, but ah it felt, even at the time, it felt like, oh we're doing important stuff. um Even though in in hindsight, it made night it was like I was making AGS games, but at the same time, no no one else was making these games. no you know There were other engines, but no like they weren't AGS. like AGS was like pretty much the the engine that made these games, that enabled us to make these games.
00:37:43
Speaker
You know, i think back to that era and I wasn't there in the early AGS games. I kind of missed that revolution, but you know, not long before that, I was definitely very like plugged into the adventure game fan community online. And, you know, I was on forums and everything like that. And something that probably isn't unique to adventure game fans, but I do think it's something that is very defining of this fandom.
00:38:08
Speaker
is you know from the time I started creating my Space Quest forum in 1996 and people started posting there, you know that desire to among adventure game fans to create their own games always seemed very powerful. you know like from Even before these tools were readily available, I remember on my Space Quest forum there were people making like little click and play arcade style games with Space Quest sprites. Yeah, yeah. yeah And then, you know, certainly, you know, once tools like AGS were available, you know, we started to see people, you know, certainly we saw countless announcements of games that were going to be made with it. And a few of them actually became games, you know? Yeah, some of them were even good. Like, yeah it was a lot of crap, no question. But, yeah you know, the ones that were really good, it was, they were just, it was just,
00:39:01
Speaker
it it felt they felt like a miracle. i remember like some of the ones that were big at the time, I still remember. Plurgberg. Yeah. Even though it was so, the graphics were so blocky and basic, but it it felt like a police quest game. You know? It just, and at the time, I think it was like 2002, 2003. mean, you look at look at it now, if you Google it, I mean, if you can spell it, don't ask me to spell it.
00:39:23
Speaker
Plurgberg. Plurgberg. You wouldn't believe that a game that looks like that, you wouldn't believe that a game that looks like that rock the community, but it did. And it it just, I don't know, yeah, there was something very unique about that time. Also, when you're in these communities, because this is before social media, you know, when you're in these communities, it feels like your whole world. You know, it feels a lot, sometimes it feels a lot bigger than it is, but um it was it was kind of interesting to see, like, which games...
Dave's Indie Game Development Journey
00:39:55
Speaker
like just broke out of the AGS bubble and like got written up on Adventure Gamers or Just Adventure or one of the ah one of those websites back when those were a thing. um Yeah, that was exciting when my first one of my freeware games was written up on Adventure Gamers. I'm like, ooh, big time now. yeah um That was so cool. yeah I remember one of my Reality and the Norm games had a review on the Adventure Gamers forum. Okay. And I'm like, Oh my God, that's so cool. Like that blew my mind that like people were reviewing quote unquote, i shouldn't put it in quotes, like the game, even though if it was just on the forum, um, where I was just like super exciting. Yeah.
00:40:34
Speaker
And yeah, I think, you know, when I think about those, those early games, like, and maybe I'm just repeating what you just said is that there's just a real sense of, it's like, finally, now we're getting to make these.
00:40:49
Speaker
it's like, we're all like, we have all played, we've played every single one of these games and we know them chapter and verse. And also there was no competition because no one, else no one was making these things. So where else, if you wanted to play adventure games, where else were you going to go? And that was, that was pretty cool.
00:41:08
Speaker
um Yeah. And so what, so, so you, you made like the, the, the freeware version of the Shiva.
00:41:23
Speaker
And then what, what, like what, was the thought of, I'm going to make, like, I'm going to sell this. Did it have such a strong reaction?
00:41:35
Speaker
Well, yes and no. I mean, i may i originally made the Shiva. i had... um It was a weird time in my life because I had spent about a year doing like the English teaching thing in South Korea. And before I left, I owned a little apartment, a little one room studio in in the East Village and I had rented it out before I left. And when I came back, um the woman living there had a few months left on the lease, so I wasn't gonna kick her out.
00:42:04
Speaker
So I was living with my parents downtown and they had just retired. And I was, I had just turned 30 and I'm like 30 years old living with my parents and unemployed, you know, i just felt like the biggest loser. So I went to, um, a cafe with my laptop and made the Shiva, you know, spent, you know, however, you know, I made a point of being there from nine to five. Cause I'm like, that's what working that's, that's what a job is. It's nine to five. So I had to, I had to at least be there from nine to five, working on this game as a way to kind of pretend I was working. Because I had just gotten home after a year abroad. I wasn't ready to like get a new job yet, but i you know didn't want to like face the the withering judgment glare of my parents, um who had been very supportive in case they're listening to this. They've been great, really supportive the entire time. um
00:42:55
Speaker
But at the time, like i doubt I doubt they, think no one, you know, I wouldn't take myself seriously back then. But anyway, I made the game and it was ah it was released for a jam. It was like a month long jam.
00:43:08
Speaker
And I realized I kind of couldn't envision doing anything else. Um, cause most every other job I had, I really didn't enjoy at all. And i had money saved up from my time in Asia and the rent I'd collected from the, from the woman living in in my apartment. And so when I moved back into my apartment, I'm like, well, when am I going to have the opportunity? I've got money saved up. I'm not working like it's now or never. Right. So I just went for it. And at the time it was like,
00:43:40
Speaker
It was a weird thing to do. it was a very, it was just the indie thing was just starting to become a thing. um But and we weren't even calling it indie back then. I don't know what we were, I did call myself like a, like a independent game developer, but we didn't use the word indie like we do now. Do you know what the first commercial AGS game was? i was Yeah.
00:44:03
Speaker
What was The Adventures of Fat Man. The Adventures of Fat Man. Oh yeah. That was, um I think, either 2002 or 2003. Okay, so early. Yeah, ah he kind of paved the way. um And the next one was, I believe, Alamo by Himalaya. Yeah, I think that was, yeah, that was not...
00:44:24
Speaker
i Man, I played Alamo a very long time, like around then. i suppose i know they were like the um they were the remake Kings because they remade a bunch of Sierra games and like they did they remade King's Quest 2 and made it good.
00:44:42
Speaker
Yeah. added so much extra story and stuff to it. It made, and made it into a cohesive story, you know, and it was really good. And they, you know, they were kind of known for doing these really great remakes of Sierra games. And so they decided to sell, um, a commercial game. And, um, I, I,
00:45:02
Speaker
I haven't played it myself, but I know that um then they did, ah what do you call it? They they did the... Mages Initiation. Mages, yeah, yeah. About a decade about a decade or so later.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah. And then I think, i I don't know if there was another game between Alamo and the Shiva, um but i if not, I was the third. Mm-hmm.
00:45:27
Speaker
And, and so, and what was real, like, because now, you know, it is, it goes up on Steam and GOG and, you know, like itch or, or wherever, like online, like there's a whole ecosystem for it.
00:45:46
Speaker
That doesn't exist in 2006. No, it did not. So did not how do you do that? Oh gosh. I mean, well, it was funny because this is a, I love plugging this game because no one has ever heard of it. And yet it kind of inspired me.
00:45:59
Speaker
There was a game I had in 1999. I had a Mac and there were very few adventure games or games in general for the Mac. And one day I found this game, adventure game, and it was called zero critical.
00:46:11
Speaker
And um I'm like, well, you know, This looks interesting. And I found out it was made by one guy made in madeen Macromedia Director, of all things. And so he made this they made this game himself.
00:46:25
Speaker
Wasn't very good. It was reviewed terribly. But I remembered it years later because in 2006, I'm thinking, could I do this? Could I do this? And I remember thinking about that game and how he managed to get this game in stores.
00:46:39
Speaker
Like if he could manage that, I could somehow manage to sell this online, I think. and um And so my brother-in-law was like a web developer. He managed to create this very basic online shop for me, which didn't work very well. It could only take orders through PayPal. Yeah.
00:46:56
Speaker
But it's so or people could like mail me cash, which some did. It was the weirdest thing. People would mail me. It was five bucks. It was a five dollar game. People would mail me like like foreign currency.
00:47:07
Speaker
And, you know, I'd have to like take the subway across town to a a bank that would change it for me. Like by the time I you know paid for the subway ride and back, like most of the money was gone. Like. I didn't even, i don't know why I bothered, but back then it was just whatever you did, like it was just whatever you could do to make it work. like i like I did not want to get, like I said, I i didn't really enjoy or like any other job I had. And I kind of had this this like manic feeling of like, i have this has to work, this has to work, or I'm going to like get one of those crappy jobs again, like this has to work. And i just sort of kept going and until I guess eventually it did somehow work.
00:47:45
Speaker
And Blackwell Legacy comes out ah pretty shortly after that, right? Yeah. um The commercial version of the Shiva came out in August. And then um the Blackwell Legacy came out in December. Yeah.
00:48:01
Speaker
Damn. wow that's their bo they're They're very short games. They're very short. but and But that's like, it was kind of the most unintentionally smart thing I ever did because I didn't have a lot of money to work with.
00:48:15
Speaker
I didn't have a lot of experience. No one knew who I was. i had no clout. um No one took me seriously. I had some reputation in the freeware community and I managed to get like some people to like work with me very, very cheaply.
00:48:31
Speaker
But the fact that the game was really, really small kind of helped there because it's one thing to like do a fun, cheap project, you know, for for free or for for cheap um for a game that's only a few months. But if you're asking someone to work for like years, like you can't do that. So i having really small games enabled me to get stuff out. And so, but I knew I still nearly killed myself getting it done. Like I still remember the week because i promised that the game would be out on a certain day and back then i'm like well i said it would come out on this day i can't not do i can't delay it you can't delay games video your game yeah come on and i like that week i like i barely slept it was insane i remember um like the night before launch like going out at like 3 a.m m for like a pizza because i hadn't eaten that day and just thinking okay i know i'm not going to sleep tonight I didn't sleep last night. Did I sleep the night before? I don't remember. And then, you know, the game came out and of course, like I, you know, my marketing strategy was just like post about it on my mailing list and a couple of forums and went to bed. Like that was my marketing. Um, and it wasn't an overnight success, you know, shocker.
00:49:45
Speaker
Uh, so like I had a lot to learn, but I knew that I could not live that way. I could not do that to myself. self-imposed crunch. Yeah. But I mean, at least I got it done, but I think maybe I saved two months maybe because the game is so small. Like if it came out a month or two later, big frigging deal. um But you know, like I'm living alone um in one little studio apartment, you know, I'm, I was the only one really crunching all the art had been done. So I didn't harm anyone but myself. I would never ask, I would never ask anyone else to do that on my behalf. But doing it to myself is totally okay. But I try not to do that now.
00:50:25
Speaker
I'm curious within the AGS community, was there any pushback as some of these commercial games started coming out or were people just happy to see people take it to the next level? I'd love to hear about that.
00:50:37
Speaker
because It's so wild to think about it now. I mean, it's um because, yeah, um that these games should be free. You know, the the engine was free. like Everyone was used to playing these games for free. um And so, like, they should...
00:50:55
Speaker
I don't know people kind of resented the fact that I was asking for money. um But it was easy to ignore, i think. Because what else could I do, right? i wrote Well, it was a big issue when I first i released the Shiva as freeware.
00:51:09
Speaker
And then I decided to sell it. So I got some of the graphics improved and I added the voice acting and the commentary because I thought, well, I need to give it some value to justify charging for it.
00:51:21
Speaker
And so I released it. I released the commercial version But then like, you know, i that many people bought it maybe because again, like no one knew who I was, but also at the same time, the freeware version was still out there. And I remember thinking, well, it's a kind of a dick move, but I need to see if there's something there. Like I can't really test if I can sell this game when there's a free version out there. So I removed the freeware version and people were in were not happy about that. And I understand But like i had I needed to see. you know i needed to see if I could sell this. um like I could push all i could like do marketing and push it like crazy, but if there was a free version out there, I would never see for sure if it worked. And i mean it never it never became a huge success. The Shiva was probably a game that was always talked about more than played, which is, I guess, fine. In hindsight, that that was a good thing, because i was just starting out. you know like I need to get the word out about myself.
00:52:22
Speaker
And so i guess because the subject matter, i was like, oh, rabbi, that's weird. And so people would write about it or talk to me about it. And that was kind of cool. And um I think the the online shop that my brother-in-law set up would take orders through PayPal, as I said, and I got a PayPal card. It was like a debit card that just you know took the money from PayPal. And I still remember this. I was out at dinner with um a few friends of mine and I had a really good sales day that day.
00:52:49
Speaker
Um, and because they took orders through PayPal, but I got the money right away or my PayPal like account got the money right away. And we got the bill from the dinner then I'm like, Hmm, I could totally pay for this. I'm going to, and I just, I took out the card. I'm like, this is on rabbi stone. And I put the card down and I felt so proud of myself. Um, again, it felt really good to be able to do that. and yeah, so that, that was really cool. Um,
00:53:17
Speaker
ah Sorry, I've completely forgotten your question. The question was because I also because I could remember the the The question was about ah selling an AGS game.
00:53:30
Speaker
Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the time, like, ah because I remember thinking, and I don't think I was aware, like, I don't think I was aware of your games, actually, until maybe,
00:53:45
Speaker
ah like, I remember reading about the Blackwell games on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. they Oh, really? were Yeah. Okay. ah So probably a Deception, maybe. Anyway. It was probably after Gemini Rue.
00:54:02
Speaker
Yeah, it was. Because that was the game that kind of put us on the map. Yeah. And then like more, that's when rock paper shotgun started writing about us. That's when like a lot of major outlets started writing about us, but, but it was interesting back then. um what I had to do to just like, uh, get, get these games sold was just like, i approached every, you know,
00:54:27
Speaker
basement dwelling blogger and YouTuber, and just if ed they showed any love to any indie game, I would like be like, Hey, you want to, you want, here's a download link to my game. If you want to review it, here it is, you know, it just, and then once I got, you know, once that reached a critical mass, I could kind of take that to a bigger outlet and be like, Hey, you want to review? Like, look at all the attention the game has got. Maybe you would like to try. Um, and that's just sort of, you know, it was just like, Building the foundation brick by brick, I like to call it. Because it took, it felt like I was making no traction, making no progress. But what was interesting is like, you know, Blackwell Legacy did not sell very well at first. But I just kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. And, you know, I'd get like, you know, 10 sales here, 15 there, you know, whatever. And then um I got the next game out a year later.
00:55:20
Speaker
And because I had done all that work, suddenly all of those people, like they all came back for the second one. And so that was like, oh wow, look at all these look at all these look at all these look at all these customers. like i've got And that was really cool. So i can sort of see things growing.
00:55:35
Speaker
And the fact that the games were small and I was able to get them out reasonably quick, um, without like breaking the bank or my energy or myself, I was able to kind of like slowly and very organically grow.
Success of Gemini Rue
00:55:50
Speaker
And i think that was the one thing I did unintentionally smart. And I realized that is not the answer to your question. Again, I'm really sorry. Yeah. But no, I think it's probably great at advice for people who are thinking, you know, like, how do how do I someday be on a podcast talking about 20 years of my successful indie game development studio? And i mean that's fascinating because, you know, I think that, mean, we've all seen around this community, you know, it's like,
00:56:22
Speaker
these pro these projects don't get off the ground without ambition, but overly ambitious projects have a way of not reaching completion and find that, you know, building that slowly with small games and gain reputation for quality and gain a reputation for a good gameplay experience and things like that. You know, uh, that sort of slow build, I can, you sort of see how it pays off on, on the long end of that. Like, and, You said it was after Gemini Rue that you really thought you'd made that breakthrough into people knew Wadjeti was at that point? Yeah, I mean, because we had... um we had
00:57:00
Speaker
progressed far enough along. um I ah published the game called Puzzle Bots. I thought, well, you know, these games, at it it seems quaint to think about this now. i was saying that a lot. Wow, this is quaint, wasn't it? How these games took ah yeah at least a year to make, and I used to think that was a long time. um But, like, the the margins were so tight. Like, if I had one flop, like, that was it. Like, I would have nothing else left in the tank. i would have And I thought, well, maybe...
00:57:27
Speaker
i I had just been published by somebody and I thought, well, maybe I could publish somebody else and like pay them to make a game for Wadged Eye. And then that would like spread out the risk a bit. um And so we made Puzzle Bots and with a developer named Aaron Robinson, who now is working for, um oh my God. They make Horizon Zero Dawn Gorilla. Gorilla? Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she's she's working on Horizon Zero Dawn now, which is which is awesome. But we made this game Puzzle Bots, which is this the small, cute game about robots. It's adorable. um
00:58:02
Speaker
And then that kind of cemented us cemented me as a publisher, um which was cool. And then Josh Nuremberger was working on Gemini Roo. And he originally wasn't going to sell it, but then decided he wanted to sell it um because he thought it was good. And he's like, would you be interested in publishing this? And I played a build. My wife and I played it together and we were like on the edge of our seat. Like we loved it. It's a very tense. Like I remember when I first played it, like it pulls you.
00:58:32
Speaker
It blew my mind. He was like in college. He was the high school when he started making it. He was a sophomore in university when he finished it. And he made this brilliant thing. And so he asked me if i wanted to publish it. And I said, yeah, like let's let's do it. And so we added the voice acting. We got some of the art redone. We got through some QA at it. And, you know, essentially took care of it. And it took off. Like it really... um, did, uh, it blew everything we did out of the water. Um, and that's when like more mainstream attention started to look at us. Like, you know, we got a big writeup on giant bomb, which was a really cool. I can practically shut down our website, all the traffic from giant bomb. I may ended up making like a special deal with them. Like, you know, like, like a special disc, like giant bomb discount. If you, you know, go through giant bomb or whatever, because I was just so thankful to them. Um,
00:59:25
Speaker
And so that was really cool. So, um but at the same time, like I you can't say, oh, if it wasn't for Gemini Rue, like, ah you know, we'd be nowhere. But like, but the thing is, like, I always think of it as like, it's that foundation is like, because we had done all that stuff beforehand.
00:59:41
Speaker
Like we were able to, we were able to take advantage of a game like Gemini Roo. You know, if we hadn't done Puzzle Bots, we wouldn't have like been a publisher. If we hadn't done the Blackwell games, like no one would know who we were. Like we had already gone out of reputation. So it's like everything built on what came before. And after Gemini Roo came out, you know, that sort of, made me think, oh, this is a really good business model. um But Gemini Roo was kind of lightning in a bottle because it was handed to us practically complete. And I knew that was not going to happen again, probably. So um we looked for other games that could maybe use some help getting the rest of the way. And so 2012 was like the year we published um
01:00:27
Speaker
we did We did a lot of publishing that year. We did with that. And after Gemini Rue came out, that's when Black Bull Deception came out the same year. So that's why you probably heard of it, because like people were talking about us that year and that was cool.
Publishing Other Developers' Games
01:00:37
Speaker
But 2012, we published a game called The New Guys Resonance and Primordia. And Primordia is a game that really took off. Like Primordia did really, really well. Primordia is absolutely the game that I remember it like in just various like adventure game things.
01:00:57
Speaker
threads that I would just see come up constantly. Yeah. yeah I mean, it actually, i mean, it was kind of ah a perfect storm, like the launch, just like, it was funny because I, with every game we would submit to steam and they would reject us. Um, and we'd have to do this whole big song and dance, like,
01:01:14
Speaker
push for preview coverage, you know, make a whole pitch package, send that to Valve and be like, please take us. And, but every time we'd have to do that, they wouldn't just accept us, even though by that point, I think we had seven games on Steam. Is this Greenlight era? Yeah, well, that's what they did. i submitted Primordia to them and they're like, why don't you just go to Greenlight?
01:01:35
Speaker
And so, all right, we'll go to green light. And so put the game on green light and um we, you know, it, and it, Since Greenlight was a new thing. And and we were for those who are unfamiliar, what what was Greenlight specifically? Greenlight was basically, um you could submit, rather than have to go through the approval process through Valve, excuse me, you would submit your game and need to get votes from Steam players.
01:02:05
Speaker
And then every month, the top ten the game with the top 10 number of votes would just get accepted to Steam. And so, and so like, all right, well, I guess we're doing this. And it just, you know, can't, trying to explain what happened. It's just so bizarre. um Like the, we got, cause we were known, you know, Wadget was known. um You know, I just went to to my mailing list and Twitter was the thing at the time and just my community, whatever. and we like, I guess, please vote for our game.
01:02:38
Speaker
yeah, It went through the ranks really fast. And then all these articles started to come out about green light. And a lot of them, they noticed like, why is Wajidai on green light? and I think because at Valve at the time, um Oh, ah the the rep I had left the company. And so the new rep, no one knew who I was. So they pushed me to green light. Like, what is this? Go to green light. And so, you know, like all these articles coming out or like, why is why should I on green light? This is very silly. um And so that just gave us more attention. And so it just went through zoom through the ranks. And because it was going through quickly, they just, they just let us through.
01:03:17
Speaker
They just put us on steam. They're like, yeah, you don't even, we're not going to wait for you to get in the top 10. You're, you're just in. And. because of all that attention, and what was interesting is that the game came out in November, towards the end of November. So the game got all that attention, and so that helped with the launch. And then in December, this was back when ah they had very curated holiday sales. Now the holiday sales is like every game on Steam is on sale. yeah Back then they chose which ones were on sale.
01:03:48
Speaker
And because it had all this attention and they decided, like hey, you want to put this game in the holiday sale? I'm like, well, the game just came out three weeks ago, but you don't say no. At that time, you do not say you did not say no when that kind of thing happened. So like, OK. And of course, that just gave it even more attention because back then, you know, being on the front page of Steam was a license to print money. Like it was just, so that game was probably our most, probably still our most like successful launch in terms of its first month. Like it just went, phe it just did so well, but it was a perfect storm of all these wonderful things. And, you know, maybe the game is good as well. You know, I hear that matters. Sure. It's a curious, good game. Yeah. Maybe the game you know maybe the game is actually good too. um so But it's like, there's so many good games that don't ah that aren't a success. And its just it was just interesting how that game just had a perfect storm of so much like good stuff happening that just really
Navigating the Indie Game Market
01:04:45
Speaker
pushed it. And that was really cool. like when that that Like, oh, wow. And of course, then there are games where it's just a perfect storm of suck, where just everything goes wrong that you can't predict. Yeah.
01:04:56
Speaker
So, yeah, that that was that was really cool. um And so, yeah, yeah, yeah. so the Wormwood, the Wormwood guys were were quite happy with that, you know, for the most part. what i What I've, like, you know, i hearing hearing your story of, like, just this constant, like, kind of persistence, it sounds like this is, like, kind of a a story of both, like, there's luck, but also being prepared to, like, accept, like, ah you know, that you're there for, like, a really great opportunity when it happens. Exactly. And, you know, hearing this...
01:05:31
Speaker
And even like when getting ready to, uh, to have this conversation, um and like kind of reading up on, on these 20 years, it's like, I kind of think about, so I have a ah friend, uh, like one of my ah listeners now, like I'm a big pinball guy.
01:05:50
Speaker
I'm a competitive pinball player. And here in Chicago, i knew this guy and he was Twitch streaming pinball and like for an audience of like five to 10 people.
01:06:08
Speaker
And he was one of the first people to do it. He built like a rig. He set up a rig. There were multiple cameras, like one camera over the table and a camera pointing out like the the screen so you could see the score. And then a third camera pointing at the player.
01:06:24
Speaker
And then ah like, ah you know, he he built these great graphics and all of this stuff. And I remember thinking like, dude, damn Jack, like that's so much work for something that no one cares about. And now ah but now Jack works at the pinball factory and was a co-designer of the Pokemon pinball machine and is' like his stream became like massively successful. And like he was just doggedly, like he saw something that I did not. Like like he he just had this vision.
01:07:08
Speaker
And I don't think if if you asked him back when he started streaming all those years ago, was like, would you imagine like 10, 15 years later that you'd be working at the pinball factory and designing pinball machines? I don't think he would say yes to that. I think he was just kind of keeping it.
01:07:27
Speaker
Like he was he just knew that he was just going to keep following, like pulling this string, you know? Yeah, that's all I've done. And it's just, you can't really, um it's not enough to like hope for luck or
Big Fish Royalty Check and Marketing Strategies
01:07:42
Speaker
good opportunity. Like you need to be in a good position to take advantage of those new opportunities. Because I i know that that year, 2012, was the year so many like amazing things happened that year. Not just these three games I published, but like there was...
01:07:57
Speaker
Indie Game the Movie came out that year. right. And that was suddenly like being indie was cool, you know, and I kind of got some, got a, got a, I was a part of that because I had been, know, indie for while. The, um, the Double Fine Kickstarter happened that year. And so suddenly, know, journalists were wanting to talk about adventure games and being a guy who was, had been making them for six years at that point. I was interviewed more often that year than time in my career. You were an elder statesman at six years at that point. Six years, six year veteran of the, of the industry. Yeah. And so, know, and also, we had finally, uh, gotten, um,
01:08:41
Speaker
we had gotten a bunch of our other games on Steam ah through, it's a long, long story. We'd gotten like our back catalog on Steam. um And like I said, back then, like it was a license to print money when you're on the front page. So like, that was a very good, like that was a very good year financially. um You know, but then there are some, so that was a really good year, but there's other years that have sucked.
01:09:05
Speaker
um But like all these great opportunities happen. Also bundles became a thing. Bundles started happening. And because we had all this big, we had this reasonably sized back catalog, we can now put all our stuff older stuff in bundles and like bring in money that way. And so it was like we were just able to take advantage of opportunities as they came because we had been around for a while and kept going. And, you know, we were able to to take advantage of these neat opportunities. um excuse to me, you never, you never know. You can't plan for that stuff. Like I can't, I didn't plan for double fine to have a Kickstarter and like, earn ah like all the money in the world, however money they earned. Um, it's just, it just happened, you know? And of course then like all those kickstarted adventure games came out mostly to lackluster reviews and suddenly journalists didn't want to talk about adventure games anymore. And so that sucked, but whatever, um, it happens. There's always like ebbs and flows in, in any industry. And this is no, no exception.
01:10:00
Speaker
Do you, do can you think of a moment where like, so, uh, you know, you have a couple games out and you kind of like, was has there, was there ever a moment of like kind of exhale?
01:10:15
Speaker
It's like, all right. Like, when did you look around and go like, oh, this is real now? Yeah. You know, i you that moment like I remember, I remember this moment. Um, all right. Because, uh, it's funny because it, in, in, in the long run, this almost destroyed, wajai almost shut our lights off. But, um, back in, uh, I guess it was 2009. no, or so.
01:10:42
Speaker
yeah it was around two thousand nine or so Like, I was still struggling. I was still really struggling to push my stuff. um And ah I was friendly with um a developer named Amanda Finch, who did a game game series called Avion. I don't know if you've heard of Avion. Not familiar. but Which is a shame, because she basically started...
01:11:04
Speaker
the RPG maker, like selling RPG maker games commercially like that. basically she started that she, and she did all of her artwork from scratch, you know, and started selling these games and they did really, really well.
01:11:16
Speaker
And she, but then that, that market kind of ate its own tail and it became very hard for her to sell them eventually. But yeah, during the mid to late zeros, to late aughts, like she was she was doing extraordinarily well. And she did really well on the casual portals like Big Fish and Play First and I Win and Alawar and all them. And I was chatting with her and she says, you should should try to go on, get on those websites.
01:11:41
Speaker
I think your games would do really well. And I thought, well, like my games aren't casual. Like they just just really aren't. But she introduced me to the folks at Big Fish and they, um I think the first two Blackwell games were, were finished at that point and they agreed to take, take them.
01:11:57
Speaker
And so we released them. And I remember, um, like I didn't have like proper wifi in my apartment cause I had no money and I would go to like, it was like 3am. And so I went to this 24 hour Starbucks in union square, you know, like sitting between two homes guys. Uh, wait, really? Yeah. No, I grew outside in New York. i Oh, no way. Okay. I grew up in Connecticut. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, because okay that's that's really cool. Yeah, there was ah um I think that Starbucks isn't there anymore. but um So yeah, I'm like surrounded by homeless people working on you know just thinking what I should do. you know And suddenly I get an email, I get the royalty report from Big Fish. And the ah the amount was like the most I had ever earned in a single month. Like it was... Like it was it was like 15 grand that my my take was like 15 grand. That was the most I'd ever earned in a month. And it's especially weird because back then they still Big Fish takes 70 percent.
01:12:57
Speaker
is that They don't give you 70 percent. They take 70 percent. And so that was because also ah their business model was very different back then. I wasn't upset about it. A, basically because that was the most money I had ever seen at one time. in ah in a while. And like, I remember thinking, Oh my God, like, ah, like I've made it. This is like, I'm i'm earning money now. Oh my God. And, um, I remember like, yeah, I was like, I just closed my laptop and just like walked out of the Starbucks and kind of like blearily walked home thinking like, you know, just like kind of walking on air, like I've done it. Like it's It's taken three years, but here I am. um And then the next month, like Blackwell Unbound went up and did the same. And I'm like, well, this is where, this is my audience, I guess. This this casual audience is is where I should like direct my focus. That's who I should be making games for.
01:13:47
Speaker
And then i when I released the next game and sold it on the on the casual sites a couple of years later, um like it bombed. like It bombed on the casual sites because they just moved on to like other types of genres. like the cute They were very into cute pixel art games, but now they're into the gritty hidden object games. and so Yes.
01:14:08
Speaker
And so like suddenly, my the black well even though I think Blackwell Convergence is probably the best looking of the first three games, Like it's got the best art. Oh yeah. But they hated it. They thought it was so ugly, but they never said anything about the first two games. But conversions, they're all like, yeah this is gross. This is, this is so ugly. Are the graphics really that bad? Oh my God. Is something wrong with my monitor? What's wrong with this game? They hated it. um And that kind of. So like I said, like at first I thought, oh, I made it, but then it's like, oh crap. Like i I thought like I had cracked the code. I would just put my games on the casual sites and then I wouldn't have to think about marketing or whatever, ever again. And so like, I'm kind of telling the story out of order. That's when I like started approaching, you know, like the bloggers and the YouTubers and all of that to try to get as much coverage. Cause I realized I kind of had to do things.
01:14:57
Speaker
I really had to work to get, real attention and like, I shouldn't focus on like, uh, on, on what like a hypothetical casual audience might want. I can only really, cause I have no way of knowing what the market, like what's the hot, audit what's where the market's at. Like what's the hot genre. I have no idea.
01:15:17
Speaker
Companies with millions of dollars to burn have no idea. They get it wrong. I don't have a prayer, so all I can really do is make the games I want to make. It kind of taught me a real lesson, you know? And so I was very lucky that that didn't like destroy me, but it did almost shut off my lights, like the company's lights, because suddenly it was like, okay, this is this is how I'm going to be earning my money. And then I'm like, I'm earning no money. And I had to quickly shift to like figure out the best way to like move forward. And that was, yeah you know, you got to, the industry changes constantly, constantly. and you
01:15:54
Speaker
like's There's things you can predict and there's things you can't. You just have to be flexible. you yeah Something I think about, yeah I mentioned earlier, I think that Wajidai has deservedly developed the reputation of you know people expect a pretty high level of quality of these games. show You have a history of producing. pressure, God. Don't mess it up now, Dave.
01:16:19
Speaker
I mean, even when I was away from the adventure gaming community for a few years and really kind popped back in in 2012. And I know when I started talking to people on social media, that's when first joined Twitter. And all my old adventure game buddies from through the years are like, you've got to play the Wadget Eye games. It's like, this is what you've missed. This is what you've got to go back and do. I'm really curious,
Role as a Publisher and Team Synergy
01:16:41
Speaker
you know, when you're working...
01:16:43
Speaker
in your capacity as a publisher. um How do you, what sort of steps do you take as a publisher to make sure that these games are you know building on that existing reputation? yeah And it sounds i mean it sounds like some of these, you stumbled on you know a game like Gemini Rue that was like ready to go and you come in and help put the fish in touches on it. What does that look like for you? How hands-on are you as a publisher?
01:17:08
Speaker
It depends. okay Some games ah are more hands on. um Some games we like do. There's a game like Resonance, for example, where my wife handled a lot of the programming. A game like Technobabylon, where um we did all the art.
01:17:27
Speaker
um I personally wasn't as involved, but like the company was involved. like i the The artist I hire to do art for Wajid, I did the art for Technobablon. Ben Chandler, right? That is Ben Chandler, yes. I really love Technobablon.
01:17:42
Speaker
That's a really oh thank you. I love Gorgeous game. Thank you. ah Some games I'm less hands-on, like Gemini Rue, for example. like That was practically done. Primordia was interesting because I kind of came in like toward the middle. And so for the most part, like it was ah um a team of four and they all worked really well in tandem. You know, there was the artist and the writer and the programmer and the composer, and they all did their things. They all are incredibly talented. And so all these four disciplines came together really, really well. And I sometimes had to like step in and like try to you know, corral them or like try to move things forward or or whatever. Um, you know, cause as a publisher, my, my priority is just to get things done. and
Voice Acting Passion and Collaboration
01:18:29
Speaker
Um, it's like, yes, I know it's not quite perfect, but like we can't spend another three months on this. Let's just go. Um, stuff like that. So it depends. Uh,
01:18:42
Speaker
I am, it depend always depends on the project. And a lot of them are just kind of like, it's a gut feeling. Like I might take a project on just because I like it.
01:18:52
Speaker
I might have no idea how well it's going to do. um You say, how does it build on the the previous things? I have no idea. I just think, ah you know, I like this. Like that was Hobbs Barrow for me. I played their demo. oh And the first thing I thought was like,
01:19:06
Speaker
this needs voice acting. I wonder if they, if they have no plans for voice acting, I'm going to ask to publish it and offer to do the voice acting. Cause I really wanted to do the voice acting for it, like direct it and cast it and stuff like that. And they agreed. And that was awesome. Um, especially working with Sam Bayard, who's just wonderful. That's a really fun voice cast.
01:19:26
Speaker
That's a very voice cast. And also was the I knew i had knew all these British voice actors and I really welcomed the opportunity to to work with all the British voice actors I know. And and i feel it's a point of pride when people tell me that, because it's not just, they're not just British accents, they're Yorkshire accents. oh And so the fact that people tell me, a not a British person, that the the accents are very authentic, um makes me feel very good. I mean, my wife is British, but um the problem with a lot of it was that I couldn't, if the accent was really good, I couldn't understand it sometimes. And if the accent was really bad, I couldn't understand it. So I worked with the developers to like make sure everything was right. And I was very happy with how that turned out. Anyway, I'm i'm getting, i could, you get me talking about voice acting. I won't stop just to warn you. I'm actually, I'm curious about that because it's like, I know that you know, having played a bunch of like,
01:20:20
Speaker
I know that you you are involved in directing and I know like the voice acting and I know that like you know there's certainly like some actors that that you'll hear a lot and I feel very embarrassed I didn't write his name down. Joey.
01:20:36
Speaker
<unk> Abe. Abe Goldfarb. abe yeah like he' One of my oldest friends. I've known him since you were like 13 years old. It's crazy. Right. We went to summer camp together. That's how I know him. It was that we went to summer camp together. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah.
01:20:51
Speaker
We were in shows and he ended up becoming the actor. So there we go. That's fun. Yeah. And so it's like, you know, yeah, I know I'm playing. It's like I hear him come in and I'm just like, oh, there he is. there Oh, he's got he will always. Yeah. Like, at least for my stuff that I write, like he will always have a place. He will never have to audition. Like you're playing this guy. OK, let's go. But um yeah. How did like, how how did you, ah like, start to approach, like, obviously this is something that you really enjoy that you like to do and you you've done both on your own games and a bunch of the produced ones. How, like...
01:21:30
Speaker
How is this just something that like you just got better at as as you went along? do you have much acting background or? I mean, I did some theater and stuff. I have always been like I like directing. I directed like little TV shows in in college, but I never really did. i guess what I thought how I got started was with the Shiva, how I decided i think I mentioned earlier how when I decided to sell the game,
01:21:58
Speaker
i one I was trying to figure out ways, how could I make this worth spending money on? And the first thing I thought of was voice acting. Mm-hmm. And at the time i was, um well, first I knew that Abe would do Rabbi Stone um because I needed, he was like one of the strongest actors I knew and i needed someone I could trust with a large role like that. Although it's funny because we are like closer in age to Rabbi Stone now than we were then. i mean, he's like doing like the gruff old voice and now he is like almost that age. Time just keeps happening. um But the rest of the cast, I was part of a um an improv group at the time. And I just sort of pulled from that. I asked if, ah you know, if anyone would be interested in in in doing voiceover work for this little game. Again, like I said, a short project. um I would like take him out for pizza afterward. I couldn't really afford much. But, you know, as long as everyone's on the same page and is agrees and there's no surprises, like,
01:23:00
Speaker
especially when you're like small and scrappy and, you know, struggling. I think people are generally okay with that. Like when you're more established in doing that, not as good. But um so I bring, these were friends. I bring them in and they'd record. And I had no idea what I was doing. I had a headset mic like this, $20 from Radio Shack. And I would just like plop the mic on the headset on the actor and be like, all right, go. I never adjusted levels. I did not know the term breath pop, which is obvious if you play the game. Some of the actors really blow out the mic. um
01:23:34
Speaker
But I, people, no one really seemed to, no one minded. Like it it it doesn't sound bad. And I use that same headset mic from the Shiva all the way up and including Gemini Rue. Which is considering how big Gemina Ru ended up being, the fact that I used this dinky little headset mic to record the voice acting. No one, and I said, listen to it now, it still sounds fine.
01:23:58
Speaker
still sounds great. I don't know how, there was something magic about the acoustics in that old apartment. I don't know what I did. um But then I got a proper mic. I got like a Blue Yeti, I think for Blackwell Deception.
01:24:10
Speaker
and then everything after that was recorded on the Blue Yeti. And then my wife and I had our kid and we moved to a Brooklyn apartment. And something about like the acoustics are all wrong.
01:24:22
Speaker
I could not get anything to sound right in that apartment. And I like, I think Golden Wake and Blackwell Epiphany were recorded from there. And I i cringe. There's a scene at the beginning where people are like, wow, I really, you know, you're in this like big abandoned building. Like, I really like the echo filter you put on the characters really makes it sound weird like, no, I did not put a filter on it. That was just the crappy acoustics in my apartment. I came standard with the apartment. That was, unfortunately, that was like this first scene I recorded. and later I like started putting pillows and blankets on the wall and I could never get it to sound right. And I gave up and started renting a studio in Midtown. But in turn, I kind of got sidetracked. But um getting better as I went along, I think like the and it was the actors. I just had i working with good actors gave me ah and a really
01:25:11
Speaker
good, a strong instinct for other good actors. Cause I knew, sorry. but yeah oh No, no. I mean, you have this existing relationship with Abe who obviously he's a very talented voice actor. And so I assume that that, you know, like that makes it a little easier if you're already starting with like somebody you have an existing relationship with. I'm sure. Oh God. Yeah. Well, there's an element of trust, you know, especially for a lead role.
01:25:34
Speaker
um For the most part, with some exceptions, I will usually cast somebody I know in a lead role. Because... I need to trust them. I need to know them, you know? um That's why i had i had met Rebecca a few times before she did Rosa. um I knew, the only the only exceptions were Techno Babylon. The actresses who played Max Lau and Lotha, I didn't know beforehand, but I had worked with a casting director who I did trust.
01:26:07
Speaker
And she found them and they were both great. Like they were both wonderful. So i that that's the now I cast them in everything. Ariel is like my go-to lady all that. I cast her in so many things. um But yeah, I just, also I love the process. Um, just watching, cause there's something about voice acting that's very grounded and very internal. It's, uh, it's like, you can tell that an actor is connecting to something, right? It's like, if they're like a space captain, like maybe they're not believing they're a space captain, but they're connecting to something where they believe they're in a position of authority, you know? And it's just seeing that come out and the microphone picks it up. It's like magic.
01:26:49
Speaker
It's indescribable. I love seeing that in action. i love working with the voice actors. They are some of my my favorite people. a lot of them have become dear friends of mine. And yeah, I love it.
01:27:01
Speaker
I mean, and i think it's one of the hallmarks of the brand. I mean, yeah think i think the voice acting, you know, is something that I think he just receives consistent praise. I feel very proud. I feel very proud because some folks say like they um they will cast an actor that's already well known. Like, oh, this guy, this person is already famous. I want them. i like what they did in something else. I'll hire them.
01:27:24
Speaker
And then typically I will go through the audition. And I end up working with them and they're brilliant. And then I later see them go on to do amazing things. And I just feel this pride, like I knew it. I knew I saw something in you. Like seeing Sam Bayard go on to do Carlack in Baldur's Gate 3. Oh my gosh.
01:27:45
Speaker
Okay, like that's cool. Like that made me very, very happy. And um
Significance of Game Settings
01:27:51
Speaker
some of the other actors, um Dave Jones, he was in Hobbs Barrow. He did Halston in Baldur's Gate 3. And just seeing them, like seeing all these actors like kind of glob blow up and just become really big. Like Abe, we he was in Pokemon. He was on, you know, he was ah he was on Broadway. He was in Beetlejuice. You know, he's just done so many, so many countless things. Like Sarah Amale, who I used to work with regularly. She's now in and l L.A., like working with Jennifer Hale. Tiana Kamacho, she's in like, she's like every anime ever now. Yeah. It's just all these actors are just that I've worked with when they were nobody, but i I knew they were talented and I could see it. I'm like, come be in my game. Now they're all too cool for me. And that's, um, it makes me very happy to like, see them go on to do good things, great things where it's like, Oh yeah, i knew I knew, I knew I saw something great in you. I feel very justified in my choice.
01:28:45
Speaker
You know, as one one thing i want to talk about with the games that you've ah designed is that all of them, I believe, ah are are set in New York.
01:29:00
Speaker
Yes. And that's something, like, for me... i've always I've always really appreciated playing your games. First, again, like saying as I did earlier, i grew up in the the suburbs about a...
01:29:19
Speaker
like, i don't know, 90 minutes, 70 minutes on a Metro North train. Um, and, um like you, you don't, or you didn't see cities as well represented. not going to say they weren't because there's the Manhunter games.
01:29:40
Speaker
Uh, in adventure games. And like the, to me, my favorite part of like the longest journey is the first like two hours.
01:29:57
Speaker
when you're in ah When you're in the city and like before a lot of the fantastical things even begin. You're Venice, I think? Yeah, Venice. That's right.
01:30:08
Speaker
And it's based, I believe, he went to NYU, I think. So it's like kind of based on... like his experiences there. I know that he's not a New Yorker.
01:30:20
Speaker
i didn't know he went to NYU. I think he did. Hold on. Let's, I want to, I want to real time fact check myself. I was going to say, Oh, because I lived right by the NYU campus. um And I figured, maybe he was there at the same time. He couldn't have been because longest journey came out the year I moved to New York. So from, um and so no, this would have been before. ah From 90 to 93, he was an undergraduate at Tisch.
01:30:50
Speaker
and Oh, that guy literally lived a block away from Tisch. So that's funny. That's really funny. And so the the Venice sequence at the start has always felt very, like, kind of, like, it it always kind of felt like that, like that area to me.
01:31:11
Speaker
And it also always felt to me when I would play it, like kind of the romance of being young in a city because you're, you're April and I think what you're 18, maybe 21. I forget. She's in college. and yeah Yeah. And, um, you know, you, you're in like this really crappy, like,
01:31:34
Speaker
like not even a studio, like kind of a flop house type situation with like really terrible neighbors on on your floor and a real like a landlord that gets a little too involved in your life.
01:31:49
Speaker
And, but it doesn't matter because it's so beautiful there. And like things are kind of ominous in this city, but it doesn't matter because like you've got all your really cool friends and there's a lot of really beautiful art and there's a lot of really like strange stuff going on anyway.
01:32:04
Speaker
and ah And so like, I i don't know, i love i love games that take place in a city and like really capture like the feeling of the city.
01:32:16
Speaker
I mean, that's what I tried to do, because at the time, when I first made the when i made the first Blackwell game, I thought I wanted to do for New York what Jane Jensen did for New Orleans. And that was mostly, I'm like, well, I want to create like a spiritual like a supernatural conspiracy surrounding the city. But then...
01:32:33
Speaker
Mostly I just sort of wanted to write stories about the city. and It sort of became Blackwell over time became a story about urban isolation and kind of mirroring the feelings I was feeling at the time. And Rose's growing confidence kind of was mirroring my own. um i put a lot of myself into these games. And i think...
01:32:54
Speaker
putting them in New York, a city that I'm very familiar with and a city that I really love, even though I did leave it two years ago. um But I, i'm I'm able to bring that across. I always feel, it's very esoteric. I get very esoteric when it comes to this stuff. Like, I always feel that you really need to be connected to whatever you're making.
01:33:15
Speaker
And since, because then you're able to like, if I'm connected, if I'm not connected to it, If I don't have a love for it, then I can't make you feel the love for it, right? And since I feel very connected and familiar and love New York City, I'm able to i'm able to like make that bridge with the players.
01:33:32
Speaker
And it's no coincidence that most of the locations in Blackwell are within five blocks of where I lived. Cause you have, um you have the Washington square, Grace church, the Minetta Tavern, Astor place, Tompkins square park. You know, you have all these areas that are like right in my neighborhood. And then even, and then when I'm, we moved to Brooklyn, suddenly it's like, oh, we're going to Greenwood Cemetery. like either I lived a few minutes from there as well. We're going to Prospect Park. I lived right there. um It's just sort of an easy shorthand for me to be like, I love this place. Now I'm going to make you love this place. And um i I'm kind of... And I get to now that I'm out of New York, I'm I don't know if I'll keep making games set in New York, but it's like I it's a way of staying there. It's a way of kind of like remaining in the city because I still I still love New York.
01:34:31
Speaker
um We we left for certain reasons, but, ah you know, it it'll always be my first love. yeah Ben and I talk a lot about this on the podcast, just how adventure games that are able to establish that sense of place tend to be some of our favorites. you know and yeah yeah Gabriel Knight, I think, is a classic example. and When I got to college and first had a chance to like travel anywhere on my own, one of the first trips I took was...
01:34:58
Speaker
to new Orleans just to take kind of the Gabriel not walking tour. Cause you know, it takes maybe five, 10 minutes. And then it's, it's all, it's all in the same area. Yeah, exactly. It's like me and Blackwell. It's all in the same area. Yeah. And you know, that, that's certainly there in the Blackwell games. You've been, I've talked a lot about our love for Norco as a game that also does that in a really fascinating way. But I do think that sense of place is, is so huge. And I think when a game can nail that, even if it's, you know,
01:35:28
Speaker
and not ah even it's a fictional location or in your case sort of a real location that has this supernatural element overlaid on top of it it just it can make the characters the puzzles the stories everything else fall into place if you just feel like okay i kind of know where this is i can even yeah yeah i can feel And I could visualize myself there. And often it's like someone remarked that, yeah, i don't I don't do many big New York landmarks. I think you go to the Empire State Building at one point, but it's like in a parallel pocket dimension. So I don't think that counts. um But all right, you go to the High Line. You go to like this this restaurant that I'm familiar with. You go to like this park that I like or whatever. The cemetery that's, you know, um just my new, it's like my New York that I'm i'm familiar with. Because you know you live to you live in New York, you don't go to the major landmarks. so You live in Chicago, you don't have deep dish. Like, you know. yeah
01:36:29
Speaker
yeah like yeah butby You don't go to Uno's every week. I mean, you'd die if you did that. So probably don't go to Uno's every week. I think, you know, he gives it not only like literal authenticity, but I think more importantly, that sort of emotional authenticity that goes with it. When you can feel that the person who's made this game has a connection to this locale and it comes through in the in the game itself. That's also why sometimes my games take so deeply.
01:36:54
Speaker
long because I'm like I'm hungering for that connection like I need to feel something and that's not something that can be faked it's like I just got to like work at it and think about it and kind of shift and like oh what what is it do I like this idea what is it I like about this idea and I have to home in on what I like about it before I can actually make it I'm really jealous of like some developers or creators who just like I'm making a game about space marines and they just do it You know, they don't, they just make it. They be like, okay. And they just design it. Like they, they have that focus. They can just make it. And it's great. I am. That's not me. I have to like, really like, what is it about space Marines that speaks to me? You know, like I have to like, really go, I really have to go into the weeds. That's what, that was, um, what I did with old skies that, that took a while to like, get down the throat of, it didn't help that I started it, um, at the beginning of, of, of COVID that didn't help. But when I finally did nail what I really liked about,
01:37:48
Speaker
time travel and what I could do with it, then it was like, I, it was, it was ah not a pure pleasure, but it was, um it was a lot smoother sailing once I figured that out.
01:37:59
Speaker
And it seems to be resonating with a lot of people that came and I'm very happy about that. I, you know, and, and an interesting thing, uh, about like kind of thinking about old skies and unavowed in very different ways.
01:38:14
Speaker
They're,
Creative Freedom in Game Design
01:38:15
Speaker
they're, they're kind of, uh, looking at, uh, adventure or, or, or doing adventure games in very like non,
01:38:29
Speaker
non-standard ways, if if you understand what I'm saying, in in the sense that like Old Skies departs from like the the pixel look that defines a lot of, and like Unavowed has a lot of like the the BioWare Yeah.
01:38:46
Speaker
Yeah. In it. And it's like, you know, in in both of those games, like there there's a because I think right now, if you think of adventure game, indie adventure game that comes out, there's a very specific image that you have in in your mind.
01:39:05
Speaker
And so i was just kind of fascinated that those two games, especially Old Skies, which, you know, like ah Ben got to ah Ben Chandler got to do this, you know, a completely different type of art Yeah, he he asked to try it and I saw no reason to tell him no. And it took longer, but that also gave me more time to to work on the design, which yeah time travel, don't never make a time travel game. It's just, will it will break your brain. um i am still recovering. It was lot.
01:39:39
Speaker
it was a lot Time travel is is not for the faint heart. I wrote a whodunit play with a friend of mine many years ago, and it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare writing it. It was a nightmare, like, arguing over whodunit with my friend.
01:40:00
Speaker
That's the whole point. And it was a nightmare also, like, and I'm sure this was very difficult with Old Skies and probably with other projects. Every time we made an edit,
01:40:13
Speaker
It wasn't clear, like with a whodunit, like, was this a load-bearing thing that we cut? yep, yep, yep, yep. Because writer brain remembers all of the stuff and all of the motivation and all of the plot.
01:40:31
Speaker
even if you remove that Jenga piece. Sally and I would joke because she was at my sounding board for a lot of the process, Sally being the voice actress behind Fia. um she was She did some writing on the game and oh cool she was ah yeah she she um did a lot of ah consultant and writing on ah chapter four, the clock blocking chapter. And also, like, we just chatted a lot. And I bounced a lot of ideas off her because she was involved from the very beginning. And um and Fia, like her backstory changed so often. Like at first, it was kind of a military organization. Then it was um that it was just like two people working in a garage, you know, kind of like a ah Doc and Marty relationship. In other words, another iteration, they were like married, Fia and Nazo, which lasted maybe five minutes. That did not work. And then it kind of you know it kept changing. you know I kept rewriting it and changing it based on, oh, maybe Fia's more corporate. Maybe she's more like, maybe it's more military. Maybe what it maybe this, maybe that. And then
01:41:35
Speaker
and then Sally would always joke that that actually gave her a good ah background for what it must be like to be Fia because her her history does constantly change. so And so like that, OK, that worked great. Like that intentional, but I'm happy it helped.
01:41:58
Speaker
Yeah. And ah yeah, i'm I'm now I'm just kind of reliving how miserable it was to write that. Mysteries are not as easy. They're harder than do you think, yeah because like there's not only the the mystery that you're solving, but there's also the actions. There's also how the mystery is solved and both.
01:42:19
Speaker
ah Sometimes like one is engaging, but not both. It's like the actual solution to the mystery maybe is not as interesting as, as the process of, um as uncovering it. And sometimes vice versa. Sometimes the backstory the actual mystery really engaging, but like the actual actions you take to uncover it. Eh, no big deal. well Um, so and you have to meet, need to make both strong to be really good. And for something like,
01:42:44
Speaker
unavowed where you, you can swap out the characters that you're going to do each like kind of story mission or like, you know, in how was like kind of designing that to have some sort of cohesive,
01:43:05
Speaker
narrative where it's just like, oh, well, you know, I might pick these two characters instead of these two. Does that... It was actually... Sorry. yeah No, no, right no, go ahead. It was actually easier than I thought it would be. The only issue was it was that it took longer.
01:43:20
Speaker
And it was all stuff that I had done before. Like the writing, the characters, like all of that stuff I had done before. With Unavowed, there was just a lot more of it.
01:43:32
Speaker
um And so that was that was the big challenge. Like once I got figured out the technical aspects of it, like how to you know how does the game know which characters you have, blah, blah, blah. Like how do you detect which characters are with you? you know Where do they stand? you know That kind of stuff. um i After I did that, I wouldn't say it was easy.
01:43:52
Speaker
but it was it was stuff I knew I could do. There was just a lot more of it and I just took a longer, that's all. um And often it's just like I had to, um I really wanted each path to be fun.
01:44:07
Speaker
And I also didn't just want it to be fun. I wanted you to also see the potential paths you're not taking. Like if you have if you have like Eli and Mandana, for example,
01:44:18
Speaker
and you see a ghost, you know that if you brought Lagoon, you could talked to that ghost. yeah So you think, oh, if I replay this, I'll, you know, I don't want you to not see the ghost. If you don't see the ghost, you don't know you're missing anything, right? I wanted you to see what you were missing. So you would potentially think I should play it again. um But what ended up happening was that ah like if you saw, you know, Madonna would climb things, Eli could fire read or set things on fire. Vicky could talk to, you know, she was friendly with police officers.
01:44:47
Speaker
And if there was a police officer and you didn't have Vicky, or if there was like a drain pipe and you didn't have Madonna, the players didn't really get that upset. But if there was a ghost and they didn't have Logan, they did get upset. And so, because they really wanted to talk to that ghost, because that's an inherently interesting thing. Yeah. And so what ended what ends up happening is that they always take Logan with them. i did. who it and he Yeah. that's what yeah and and And because... And because you eli and Mandana have to be with you, one of them has to be with you, so you could never have a Logan and Vicky party. That meant Vicky was chosen the least, and I feel really bad about that. I was going to ask, who is it, yeah, who is it that... that
01:45:29
Speaker
got like didn't get seen the most by the players. So it was Vicky. Yeah. OK. For that reason. Also, like I think like my thought, like I didn't really think of the player character. I thought of like this group of four. And I thought, well, Vicky, she's the more mundane one. She's the most grounded. She's the one who can like talk to regular humans without weirding them out. And like i that's her dynamic. But that's been an actual practice. That's the player character. So Vicky didn't have all that much to do.
01:45:55
Speaker
Um, which I, which again is my own design fail. Uh, if I ever do a sequel, I'll, I'll try to make Vicky a little bit more like give her, give her something more, but I love working with Ariel. Like, ah there's a reason why i I brought that character back in old skies because I love working with Ariel and that accent.
01:46:15
Speaker
Oh, man. Now I'm like, do I go? Do I play the Vicky stuff? Gotta play the Vicky stuff. Well, it's a game designed to be replayed. don't have to, but it's there. And it's been a while.
01:46:29
Speaker
it's been a I don't think I've played Unavowed since release. I liked writing for Vicky because my thought process behind her is just, okay, Vicky says something. What's the absolute first thing that pops into my head, no matter how terrible. Cause like I just think of Vicky as me with zero filter and I'm like, Oh my God, that's terrible.
01:46:50
Speaker
Okay. She's saying it, you know, there we go. Whatever
Upcoming Projects and Industry Evolution
01:46:53
Speaker
she say, that's terrible, but she's saying it. Um, and for the most part, it seems to have worked. Yeah.
01:47:02
Speaker
All right. Well, Jesse, do you have ah any any other questions? Well, I mean, what's coming up next from Wajida? Tell people what they can look forward to. Okay. Well, there's two games we are publishing at the moment. There is Nighthawks by Richard Cobbett. Very excited for that one. I'm a backer on that one. Can't wait to see how that one turns out. Sorry it's taking so long, but it's getting close. He's making a lot of progress this year. Richard was dealing with lot of stuff. He's, for the most part, over it, and he's just been like... The game is fully playable, like everything's in there. We're just testing it a lot because there's a lot of choices, a lot of paths, lot of branching. Even though the game took a long time, you will not be disappointed by...
01:47:47
Speaker
short content. There's a lot in there. The demo was very cool. Yes. Oh, thank you. I'm glad. Absolutely. um it's It's shaping up really cool. The testers are loving it. It's like all the characters are are just so great. He's such a great writer. Yes. So I'm really looking forward to that. There's also Gilt, which is a G-I-L-T, which is being spearheaded by Ben, Ben Chandler. He um asked if he could write the next game and I said, yeah, let's go for it. And so he designed a
01:48:18
Speaker
I knew at the very minimum it would look good yeah because it's Ben, but the design is is excellent. The characters are great. The world he created, he's doing this like gonzo sci-fi fantasy world, which is it which isn't normally in our wheel wheelhouse because usually I'm all about like urban fantasy, but this is like this is like fantasy, sci-fi gods, you know, magic. It's awesome. Uh, so he's been working on that for about a year. um he submitted the first chapter to the testers. They seem to really like it. Um, and so, yeah, we're working on those.
01:48:54
Speaker
I haven't quite, I'm not quite ready to talk about what I'm working on next. I'm still, I have an idea. I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm doing it. So we'll see. I'm taking my time ah because, you know, there's other projects happening. So I can take the time and I'm i'm quite quite happy to to to give myself the grace ah to recover still and and figure out what I'm going to do next.
01:49:20
Speaker
i I think what's really exciting about both of those games, Guild and Nighthawks, is that both... ah Ben and Richard are such thoughtful writers about adventure games. Yes. You're right. You're right.
01:49:37
Speaker
Like, you know, he wrote all these wonderful pieces for PC Gamer all those years ago. A long while ago, yeah. Which are wonderful. And then Ben... That's also the best writing on the genre out there, hands down. i mean, yeah. Oh, wow.
01:49:51
Speaker
tell him he said so. um Ben, ah like, you know, he had... I mean, I think it's still out. Like, I think it's still up there. I don't know if he updates it that much anymore since he's busy on this project. But he had this wonderful blog where yeah he would... He just updated it the other day. Oh, wonderful. Then I'll have to check it out. He has a ah blog where, like, he...
01:50:14
Speaker
like analyzes art in adventure games ah from the point of view as an artist and provides such like a thoughtful and interesting viewpoint that i had like I really enjoy reading his writing about the the the art of these games because Like I never quite thought of that because why would I? I'm not an artist. he Ben and have worked together since full time.
01:50:46
Speaker
We've worked together since 2010 and since And like my first worry when hiring him full time was like, oh my God, I hope, what if, what if like there's no work for him to do, you know, and he'll, I'll just be paying him to do nothing. That has never happened. He has always managed to find something to do. And, um, it's, it's,
01:51:07
Speaker
it's been really kind of great that he decided to spearhead the next project because after Old Skies, I was burnt out. I crashed hard. And so I'm like, oh, great. Like now I can, I can, I was able to like take the time, relax, recuperate. And now I'm kind of being a producer on the, on both projects. And that's kind of nice. And that was, that's the great thing about publishing is that I can kind of you know, go through, i have the best of both worlds where I do my own thing and I'm burnt out. And then I'm like, Oh, I can't even like the, the, the prospect of starting something new is just so daunting and so exhausting, but I can help other people with their projects for a year or two. And then,
01:51:47
Speaker
after those are done i can get all prima donna and be like enough about their vision what about me and then do my own thing again uh it's it's it's been nice to be able to work that way and just to have all these games and work with all these developers who you know i've just learned so much from and um i consider myself extraordinarily lucky i don't know Like I just sort of fell into working this way. And as I said, as we all know, it's been 20 years. So I guess I did something right. And I'm I just hope it keeps going. That's the only thing I hope for in life is to be able to keep doing this for, you know, as long as I'm able.
01:52:24
Speaker
Well, ah thank you so much, Dave. And when this comes out, we'll still, the the Steam sale will still be going on. So be sure to check out ah right up all the various ah games. I think everything has some sort of discount. Everything. Everything has a discount. Yeah. That's how you, but that's what you do now. yeah Like I said, before Steam used to curate it. Now it's just, every game is on sale. Just buy the publisher, Bambadol. Just get the whole thing. Just get whole thing. Yeah. Yeah.
01:52:54
Speaker
It's one click. I'm sure there's an option there somewhere. I don't even know if I have a publisher. but i I probably shouldn't advertise that. I mean, I doing this 20 years. I still have no frigging clue what I'm doing. There's just some basic stuff like, oh, yeah, publisher bundle. I should do that. I, you know, I just something that most developers or publishers would kind of know to do. don't.
01:53:21
Speaker
didn't even know, think about it. So that's, that's me. How ah how I've managed to keep going for 20 years is a mystery to me. um But ah yeah, be sure to check those out. And, ah you know, and on our part, if you'd like to send us an email, questquestpodcast at gmail.com and also rate and review and all that. um And ah join us.
01:53:45
Speaker
Oh man, I didn't talk to Dave about this part. ah Join us next week when we talk about Space Quest 4.
01:54:10
Speaker
So Dave, I'm going to get a little meta here. We're still recording. This is the part where we continue to talk on the podcast and we talk briefly about Space Quest 4, a thing we're not going to do a podcast about. Oh, so okay. Wait, what? This is like 30 seconds.
01:54:24
Speaker
Okay. Wait, so you're not doing a podcast on Space Quest 4? No, we're not doing it. It's a running joke at this point. Oh, is this a joke that you do every week? Next week, there's always going to be Space Quest 4, and it's never Space Quest 4. It's always on the horizon.
01:54:38
Speaker
Okay. All right. We have a lot of people that like your Space Quest 4, and we're not giving it to them. All right. Fair enough. Yeah. Do you do you have a single Space Quest 4 thought?
01:54:51
Speaker
um It's time travel, so, you know, i've ah I have to love that. Yeah.