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Building Shooters at Scale: Thad Sasser on Battlefield, COD, and the Future of FPS
55 Plays4 days ago
Episode Overview
What does it take to build a shooter that can handle millions of players and still keep people coming back for more?
In this episode, Greg is joined by Thad Sasser, a veteran designer whose career has touched some of the most iconic shooters ever made, including Battlefield, Call of Duty, PUBG, and Rivals. Together, they dive into the realities of scaling franchises, balancing innovation with player expectations, and the leadership lessons learned from building at AAA scale.
Topics Covered
- Thad’s journey from QA to designing levels showcased at E3
- Why community is the hidden feature that keeps shooters alive
- The balance between innovation and expectation (and why not every player voice should shape the vision)
- Leadership lessons in delegation, trust, and building creative teams
- How global studios are reshaping game development and what the West can learn
About the Guest
Thad Sasser has spent over two decades in game development, contributing to genre-defining franchises and leading teams at some of the biggest studios in the world. His career highlights include Battlefield Hardline, Call of Duty: United Offensive, and PUBG. Today, he continues to focus on building great teams, innovating within FPS, and shaping the future of multiplayer experiences.
Listen & Connect
- Subscribe to Player Driven on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen
- Visit playerdriven.io for more episodes and insights
- Follow Greg and Player Driven on LinkedIn and YouTube for clips and updates
Recommended
Transcript
Exploring Game Modes and Value in Call of Duty
00:00:00
Speaker
When you look at something like a Call of Duty, it's three or four games in one, single player, multiplayer, you know, zombies, war zone. There's like so many different offerings in there. It creates immense value for the players. And that's something that's really hard to approach as somebody who's got a new product that doesn't have x these layers of depth.
00:00:19
Speaker
That's let alone the 20 years of experience of all the user feedback of all the individual tweaks and tunings of all the really, really smart people putting in hard work to make this thing performant and scalable and robust and secure.
00:00:33
Speaker
And you can't neglect any of that. That's all super
Introducing Thad Sasser: Influence in Shooter Games
00:00:35
Speaker
important. I am thrilled to be joined by Thad Sasser, whose career has shaped some of the most played shooters in the world. From battlefield to rivals, few people at a front row seat to the challenges and breakthrough that building a great game of scale.
00:00:48
Speaker
In this conversation, we're going dive into what it takes to deliver shooters at scale. how to balance innovation with player expectations, what true leadership looks like inside a AAA team, and of course, the next chapter for the genre.
00:01:00
Speaker
But rather than me trying to sum this career up impactfully, I'd rather hand the mic over to Thad and let Thad tell his story himself. Thad, man, how are you? Greg, it's great to see you again. It's been a while since we talked. you know We've done a little bit of conversation before, and I'm always happy to get back on your podcast and chat with you. always have a good time, and hopefully the the audience really enjoys it as well.
00:01:21
Speaker
Let's talk about
Thad Sasser's Journey into Game Design
00:01:22
Speaker
you. Can you kind of give us your background on how you got into the gaming industry and what it was like when you started to where you are today? Boy, it was very different back when I started. As you can imagine, there weren't many degree programs for game design or and there weren't that many known avenues to get into game design.
00:01:37
Speaker
In fact, I didn't even know I could be a game designer. I'd never imagined this as a career for myself. And I got really fortunate. I actually, yeah I was in Los Angeles at the time and I'd started my own IT company and I hated my boss, myself. I was terrible.
00:01:50
Speaker
And I thought, OK, I need to go find a job where you somebody else is going to employ me because I'm not having fun doing this. So I looked in the paper. I know jobs used to be found in the newspaper. It's an archaic thing. There's no such thing anymore. But there used to be a physical newspaper you'd get.
00:02:03
Speaker
And it had jobs in it And I saw an ad in there that get paid to play games. Oh, that sounds like my kind of gig. And of course, it's you know a QA position, which means you get paid to play the same broken game over and over and over.
00:02:14
Speaker
And then you write about how broken it is. And luckily, I was actually really good at this. Not only was I good at analyzing the bugs and understanding the bugs and writing them up, but I'm also, you know having been a lifelong gamer and a avid consumer of games, I was really good at games as well.
00:02:28
Speaker
And ironically enough, that's one of the requirements in QA for you to kind of excel and you know move up the scale and so on. So over a few years, I went through some interesting challenges and journeys and learned a lot and eventually worked my way up to the point where I got embedded in Game Development Studio.
00:02:43
Speaker
And that game development studio, it was really fortuitous. It was Grey Matter Interactive in Los Angeles. And I got to work with an amazing team of just absolutely stellar game developers on a game called Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
00:02:54
Speaker
I have the backpack for it right up here, actually. um And this was kind of my first foray into being an embedded tester of looking at the scripting and the code and the level design and offering my input directly to the developers on a daily basis.
00:03:07
Speaker
And while I was there, I also got a chance to showcase some of the things I did in my spare time. I loved games already. I was already taking apart files and editing them just because that's the kind of guy I am. And so I was able to show off some of my mods and so on. I said, hey, do you want a job?
00:03:19
Speaker
I said, oh, really? ah Yes, of course. And so I became a game designer then.
Career Highlights: Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Call of Duty
00:03:25
Speaker
And it turned out to be a really good career move. We you know we shipped the Return of Castle Wolfenstein. It was a fun, really great fun game.
00:03:33
Speaker
Then we went to work on a a new title, new shooter, which unfortunately got canceled partway through. you see This is a common theme throughout my gaming career. But then I got really lucky. I got to work on the first expansion pack to the very first Call of Duty.
00:03:46
Speaker
And the first level that I made was a B-17 bomber mission where you flew over Europe in a ah r RAF, you know, lend-lease B-17 bomber. And I scripted the gameplay with the airplanes flying and the physics and the turrets and all this stuff. And It was it was received well enough by the team and by the testers and so on that i actually got to showcase in the E3 that year.
00:04:06
Speaker
And going to E3 and showing off your level for the press and the public, I'd never experienced anything like that. And I was hooked for life. I was like, OK, this is what I want to So that's kind of how I got my start. You know, I don't think it's very common for people to move up through the ranks of QA and get jobs. But every time I can, when I find somebody who's really promising who works inside of QA, I love to help them climb the ranks and become designers as well. Because a lot of times the QA people are there because they have that passion and they have that perseverance and that grit to push through all the hardships that are going to be required when you're at actual game.
00:04:38
Speaker
So I think i personally love that path because you get an insight into how game development works. You understand how bugs are made, how bugs are fixed, how to communicate with your team and so on. And so
The QA-to-Design Pathway and Lifelong Learning
00:04:47
Speaker
for me, it's a really great path for developers. But I think there are many other paths that are probably more common, more frequent these days.
00:04:53
Speaker
You know, it's funny to hear you talk through a QA like that because I liken that same thing to community management these days. But community management was not really a thing back then as much as it is today. Today, it's the community managers that are hearing my game is broken or this is happening or this is happening, right? And you're hearing all different sides. and And that is your front lines and you're learning from it. And you did that same thing ah for QA.
00:05:17
Speaker
gray matter, right? and And you're able to learn that information there. And when you're exposed to it, you can truly find what you love to do, right? Some people will love game design, some people will love art, some people will love sound, it and which path do you want to lead them? But it's that exposure to everything that can really help you learn which path I want to go.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, I love that perspective, Greg, and I will say i also had no idea that things like my love of World War II airplanes would lead to me creating a level for Call of Duty, right? This is something from my childhood that I was passionate about. So I would say always be learning, always be taking in everything you can because you never know what's going to help you, right? You may be like, I'll never need math. And then you're doing some some vector calculations within your 3D game. like, I do need math, actually. i never thought about it, but i this would be very useful if I'd studied harder amounts. So I would say, you know, as as a game designer, it's important that you you're kind of a sponge.
00:06:09
Speaker
And not just about game design, but about the world. You could draw inspiration from history, as I did, or the arts, or, you know, the world, the the environment. There's all kinds of things to be inspired by, and especially other people.
00:06:20
Speaker
So I think as a game designer, it's important that you have, you know, not a mind that's so open that everything falls out, but be willing to take everything in and filter it through your experience, through your perception, what creates value for you. And if you do that, you're going to find a lot of people do that same thing, have that same sense of value for this thing.
00:06:36
Speaker
And then you can start to find your core audience, your core players, and and deliver these same experiences.
Passion for Shooter Games and Community Aspects
00:06:41
Speaker
That's the way I think about it. So looking at kind of your resume, Thad, of the games you've worked we have Hardline, we have Rivals, we have card, right?
00:06:52
Speaker
ah You seem to be locked into FPSs. Is that a ah choice? Did you realize that, hey, this is just what I'm good at and I'm going with it? you know, Greg, I've been fascinated by shooters ever since I played the original Doom.
00:07:05
Speaker
ah The first time I saw the original Doom running on a PC, I had i had never seen anything like it. It was at a friend's house. It was at a party and somebody was so somebody's nerding out in the corner. And it was the host's brother. He was a younger brother.
00:07:18
Speaker
And I was like, I just spent the rest of the party playing that game with him. And that's the first time I was ever exposed to shooters. And from there, you know i went in and I got ah a voodoo card and I got you know Duke Nukem and I became a master of Quake on the 1200 baud modem. Oh my God, those were the days.
00:07:34
Speaker
ah You know, you had to run through an external network. it was crazy. it was It was way back in the early days of gaming, and I just got absolutely hooked by the competitive aspect and and then how friendly the players were. There was a real sense of community back in the day when you played a shooter. People were like, oh, that was a really good game. You did really well.
00:07:51
Speaker
And you'd be like, I can't believe you sat in that corner and got me. Good job, or whatever. You know, and I think early on there was a spirit of fun and adventure. ah Yeah, sure. There's some toxicity here and there. Maybe sometimes that was part of it too. You can remember the early, you know, competitive culture, but in in general, people were just excited to be experimenting with this new thing and having fun with it.
00:08:10
Speaker
And this is when I started to do things like and I was studying for a technical degree about Microsoft networking. And in my spare time in between the labs, I would edit levels. I learned one of the very early ah called Virtus Deathmatchmaker. It was an old, old piece of software. And I learned how to make levels. And that started my technical journey on on the side of game development.
00:08:31
Speaker
Amazing. All right. let Let's kick into the meat of today's discussion.
Challenges in Scaling and Building Games for Large Audiences
00:08:36
Speaker
and We're going to bring this up into a few topics for our listeners. We're going talk about building for scale. We're going to talk about innovation versus expectation. We're talk about team and leadership, player perception, and the next chapter.
00:08:48
Speaker
Will we hit all those? I don't know. um But let's try it out. So let's start with building for scale. You know, we're in this world where you have games that are getting bigger. You have forever games, you have more players playing games.
00:09:00
Speaker
And I think the definition of a gamer has changed. From some that's worked on some of the biggest first person shooters and games period out there, what's the biggest lesson you learned about building something for something that's going to take over 100 million players?
00:09:14
Speaker
oh So I'm going to give away some of my secret sauce here actually with this. So what we're here for, I think that when you look at these franchises, it's tempting to think they've always been that way. They've always been this giant colossal franchise with all this momentum, all this power, all this financial weight.
00:09:30
Speaker
And the truth is they all started off unknown, right? Go look at the beginning of Battlefield. 1942 came out. It was great. It was a new experience. Man, I got so addicted to that game and And what did sell? Like two two and a half million, I think.
00:09:43
Speaker
And then every version of that game from then on sold about double. And so when I think about scaling and creating for scale, I think that when you look at something like a Call of Duty, it's three or four games in one, single player, multiplayer, you know, zombies, war zone. There's like so many different offerings in there.
00:10:01
Speaker
It creates immense value for the players. And that's something that's really hard to approach as somebody who's got a new product that doesn't have the layers these layers of depth. That's let alone the 20 years of experience of all the user feedback of all the individual tweaks and tunings of all the really, really smart people putting in hard work to make this thing performant and scalable and robust and secure.
00:10:24
Speaker
And you can't neglect any of that. That's all super important. So kind of thinking that you're going to rally a 300 person team that's never done this before, put them together, throw millions and millions and millions of dollars at them like, we're going to kill Call of Duty.
00:10:37
Speaker
James Forrest, me to be a bit of a fool's there that seems to be the wrong way to approach James Forrest, Norcal PTACON, would approach it is I would build a franchise a new much like the franchises of history have been built start off with knowing who you're targeting.
00:10:47
Speaker
Forrest, Norcal build that core offering test and learn iterate through it work with the audience find the fun and keep chasing that and be true to your vision and true to your product and true to your audience, and I think that we've seen those strategies succeed, many times.
00:11:02
Speaker
You know, it's when you break down Call Duty like that, it's fascinating. Zombies is the one that kind of stands out in my mind because at first it came every few years and people got excited by it. But I think there's a learning lesson that you're taking there, right? You're trying to determine, hey, what do players like about zombies? We don't want to keep tacking it on year after year. We want to make sure we build something that will continue to get people excited because if you put it year after year, people will start to get sick of it, right? People do eventually kind of get burnt out of something like that. like that. So it's interesting how you break it down into, I mean, clearly it is four different categories, but how do you nurture each one of those and grow each one of those?
00:11:36
Speaker
And then what's really interesting is that players too, as you kind of hinted at, that change over their experience with a game, right? I may start off as a single player guy. And then after a while, i'm like, okay, I've played a lot of single player. i kind of get it. They're kind of similar. and Maybe i should try multiplayer.
00:11:49
Speaker
And now because I've played single player, I already know how to aim and shoot, throw grenades and climb and do all this stuff. Maybe it's a little bit less intimidating at this point. And so maybe over the course of my lifetime as a player, I start to change. And I think we all change as we get older.
00:12:01
Speaker
It's kind of an obvious sentiment in a way, but it also applies to how you game. And you may find yourself enjoying different things than you did when you were younger. I think it's pretty natural. You know, it's funny, as you're talking, I'm thinking about your progression, right? Call of Duty, you built ah the DLC where you're flying a bomber. It's probably pretty much on rails.
00:12:19
Speaker
yeah Hardline becomes more so off rails, but you're also juggling this, say hey, we're taking the Battlefield universe too into the streets of ah LA or or wherever it was, right? And then you had Rivals, which was kind of just a big open world there. And i guess, is there ah How do you continue to grow and expand
Career Moves for Industry Innovation and Community Integration
00:12:39
Speaker
that kind of knowledge for yourself?
00:12:41
Speaker
and this is This is something ive great it's something that I've shaped my career around, honestly. It's why I've worked for so many of the major major publishers. I've worked for Activision, EA, Amazon, Ubisoft, yeah a bunch of of the the top players. And this was intentional. I want to know how they work. I want to know how they think. I want to know how they differ between the different studios.
00:12:58
Speaker
And I've learned a lot between all these different studios. And my goal is always to try to figure out how to help gaming get better. I think if you're not learning, if you're not growing, if you're not taking risks, if you're not innovating, you're not doing it right.
00:13:11
Speaker
And i I like taking smart, calculated risks. You know, I like taking risks that you get indicators. These risks are the right risks to take. These are the right best place. Now, of course, not every risk is going to pan off.
00:13:22
Speaker
But being able to identify that earlier, this is unlikely to work versus this one's likely to work, allows you to focus your vision, allows you to find the right things to create that experience for the audience. Does that get at your question?
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah. ah So two two questions here, and one it's a special two for one sale. What is the most underrated design that keeps a competitive shooter alive for that long?
00:13:46
Speaker
And then what is the biggest unseen factor that can kill a game? Oh, those are two very interesting, very different questions. So let's talk about underrated features that sustain.
00:13:57
Speaker
I think um a lot of games underplay how important community is, how important it is to be able to have a positive experience in the game where you feel supported, where you you feel that that relatedness with the other players in there. you know these These motivations for social connections are an intrinsic motivator for humans. It's one of the reasons we do anything is we seek out these connections, right along with mastery and and the ah the ability to make choices, autonomy.
00:14:22
Speaker
this This relatedness, the ability to feel connected to other people, to help other people, to be helped by other people is a core intrinsic motivator for humans. And I think a lot of times this is a little bit underplayed, especially in you know some competitive shooters where they have the basics in there. You can you know match, make, and find friends and so on. But I think games at this point should be cognizant of how important this is.
00:14:41
Speaker
And they should be embracing communities in games. Now, some games do a brilliant job of this, right? But I think shooters in particular could do a better job of creating communities, embracing them, and allowing players to find their own play styles.
00:14:52
Speaker
and then helping players find those play styles so they can experiment with them. think this is how I like to play. This is how I like to play. I'll give you an extreme example. on On the one hand, you've got the ground yards, the people who like milsim, ah who are hardcore, want to do after action reports. lot i've I've done that, I have to admit.
00:15:09
Speaker
I love that stuff too. But then on the other end are the AK players who want to jump in and get a 15 minute session after work and and relax, right? So those are two diametrically opposed experiences, but they can both exist in the same kind of game.
00:15:21
Speaker
And I think it's important if you have that kind of experience to not fragment your audience and make them choose, but let them find how they want to play and how they can find other players that want to play that way. I love that answer. I will tell you why. if I was talking with someone yesterday. It was just on LinkedIn and we were talking.
00:15:38
Speaker
He put a post that that rivals has lost 80% its player That's right. Yeah, and I said, you know, at the end of the day, if you look at these forever games, they have a community aspect in it, right? Fortnite, before the bus leaves, you can all hang out. Roblox, Minecraft have just open worlds you can play in it. And I was playing Fortnite with my son the other day and I make him play on the Switch. He wants to play in the Xbox.
00:15:59
Speaker
That's where I play though. ah So he he hates it because by the time the Switch loads, he misses that time before the bus leaves. And he loves to be able to run around and dance. And I was just like,
00:16:11
Speaker
they're doing it right. like They just need a mode where it's an open community like this. Rivals is going to be fine, but it's always going to have a lower base number because you just have the hardcore team-based FPS. like There's no community aspect to it, whereas you see these other games that live on forever. They just embrace community. They make it fun for people. That isn't just shooters. It's also this other aspect of it as well. and I think it's often overlooked. People want to break down...
00:16:37
Speaker
Oh, well, what's the value? Blah, blah, blah. No, it stop thinking so much about it. It's just about fun, right? Like, that's all it is. You can't measure that. And I think it's those intangibles that people don't think about.
00:16:49
Speaker
I love that. you You can't measure it, but yet at the same time, you can tell if it's present or not. Yeah. So, and i don't want to say it's digital like that, because it's not going to be universally present for everybody. But, you know, like how much more fun? That's always a tricky question for a designer, because what does fun mean exactly?
00:17:05
Speaker
You know, and there's all kinds of different philosophies and approaches to to how to to measure fun or how to think about fun. Right, if they reopen the game, that's your that's the perfect indicator. Hey, they they came back. Did come back?
00:17:16
Speaker
It was fun. yeah Exactly, right? Or they're addicted. I don't know which one, but one of the two. um What about kind of the killer factor? What what kills a game?
00:17:28
Speaker
I think you know that's that's ah ah really fascinating question.
Game Design Pitfalls and Indie Game Success
00:17:32
Speaker
I'm not going to pretend like I know all the answers here. um but I think one of the important factors is that you need to have identified who's going to play this game. And then that audience has to be big enough to sustain your investment and your risk you're taking.
00:17:44
Speaker
And I think there have been a couple of notable games. We won't mention any of them, but there have been a couple of notable games that didn't have a clearly identified target audience. And when the game came out, people were like, is this for me? I don't think it is. It's not. what What's happening here?
00:17:58
Speaker
And this caused some some shooters some some kind of catastrophic failures in a way. you know Part of identifying that key audience too is making sure that you've got a hook, something unique, something of unique value that brings the players in.
00:18:10
Speaker
What's the innovation here? Why is this different than what I already have? What's going to break me away from what I'm currently playing? And this ties into an aspect I like to call, ironically, friendship hostage. Imagine all my friends are playing a certain online multiplayer game.
00:18:24
Speaker
I'm going to go play that with them. Even if I don't particularly like that game, I like my friends. So I'm going to go play with them, right? And it's going to it's going to cost more to now move me out of that social situation to try something else. I'm going to need to be motivated.
00:18:36
Speaker
How am I going to be motivated? Oh, that sounds cool. Do you guys want to check this out? Oh, that does sound cool. Let's go. You know, so I think having having identified your audience, getting that message to them with your your brand and, your your you know, all of the kinds of things you're promising to the player, the value you're promising, that's really, really important that you identify those people and get them the message.
00:18:56
Speaker
That, that, the, the hostage, the friendship hostage. I know it's a terrible term. I love it though. going through it right now. Like I had Battlefield 6 and I had to convince my three friends that I play with the, yo, just download this game. It's so much more fun as a squad. They're like, no, we're just going keep playing Fortnite. We're having fun with it. Like we've been playing that for a year, guys. Like one of my friends gets it for free because I bought it. So he has it. He just doesn't want to install it. Like, dude, like come on, man. There's new cool things coming up. Maybe we'll hate the game and that's fine. But like,
00:19:25
Speaker
If you don't try these new experiences, you're doing a big disfavor to the people in the industry that spent time to build this as well, right? Like it's a huge game. And if you can't take your eyes off Fortnite, there's other games that are going to suffer because of that.
00:19:40
Speaker
You know, I'm not ever one to criticize people for what they like to play. I think everybody has kind of their different perspective, their different fun. and And, you know, if if that's your jam and like, I don't need anything else, I'm like more power to you. That's so cool. You found something I grew up on.
00:19:54
Speaker
certain games and I spent all my time in them too. So I totally get that aspect. I might be reluctant to go try this thing. Okay. I wasn't cause I'm a, I'm a, you know, kind of ah explorer and an inventor and so on, but a lot of people would be, and I can understand that. So, so I empathize with that. And I also agree with your point. it It'd be nice.
00:20:11
Speaker
Um, If more developers could get you know more mind share from various games, but that's kind of on the developers. They have to offer a big enough value proposition to switch these people out of these forever games. And I think indie jobs indie games are doing a great job of this right now.
00:20:24
Speaker
They're offering unique new experiences quickly that the audiences can come in and help contribute to and form those communities and and really collaborate on it and help invigorate. And I think that's a really interesting path forward.
00:20:35
Speaker
Back in the day when you had this thing you called a newspaper and you were looking for your jobs and you found that QA job. What were the games you were playing at that time? Like what what what were the games that got you so like hooked onto that gaming industry that you said, I need to be honest. I was hooked on tribes. I don't know if youre know what tribes is. It's kind of a game from history, but yeah it was a game where you had two bases.
00:20:55
Speaker
ah You had soldiers with different classes. You had vehicles. It was like an early battlefield, but sci-fi, right? And it had jet packs and had the most amazing bug that turned into emerging gameplay. I know the story of in this game.
00:21:10
Speaker
um You could press the space bar and you would jump a little bit right now. Pretty common. Now, this game also had big mountains and big valleys. And what happens is if you press the space bar, you remove your friction.
00:21:20
Speaker
So as you went down a hill, you would jump the whole way. pressing your space bar and you would ski and you would gain velocity and then you hit the other side and you go up at tap tap tap tap and you'd sail up into the sky and it felt so good and so powerful and the game became this almost like physics ballet this there the main weapon was called a spin fuser it's a slow moving rocket and so people started to get good at being like you ran out of jet juice i know your arc bam i'm going to shoot where you're going to be and so these things called mid-airs became like the pinnacle of skill in this game And this game was just so much fun to discover as a new gamer. I'd never seen anything quite like this.
00:21:54
Speaker
I'd been playing the superheroes mod on Quake before, so I'd experienced flying at rockets. It wasn't as expansive and cool as this. This had really thought about the physics. And so that was the game I was playing. And it's one of the things I showed off my mod for this to the Grey Matter folks. It's one of the things that helped me get my first job.
00:22:10
Speaker
So I just got super invested in this. Now I tend to get invested in anything I obsess over. I got invested in civilization before this and made mods and so on. So it's kind of in my DNA to tinker and take things apart.
00:22:21
Speaker
Even electronics, I've done that my whole life. So I'm just kind of a tinkerer and a taker or parter, I guess. But ah in this case, it really lined up and helped me. Did you, Tribes just like got re-released or Tribes 4 came out? I don't know what it was. Did you give that a shot? and Tribes, i there were a bunch of different attempts, yes.
00:22:37
Speaker
I heard it it didn't quite hit the market as much as the other ones did. You know, I think there is a certain time and in um gaming history when things work best, right? I think that, you know, and there may be cycles where they come back around, but, you know, 2D platformers weren't always the height of popularity, um you know, and so I think there's always kinds of,
00:22:59
Speaker
A kind of a give and take to the popularity or the ability for any given game to occupy a large chunk of mind share in the current demographic. And when I talk about knowing your market, knowing your audience, this is what
Reviving Classic Games and Balancing Innovation
00:23:10
Speaker
I'm talking about. Understanding where people are currently at, not where they were at 10 years ago, 20 years ago. They might have come back. You might be right. You might be onto something by doing this retro game.
00:23:18
Speaker
Holy cow, have been some great retro game systems. Shock, anybody? you know But at the same time, like what can you do that's new that moves it forward might be more interesting than revisiting something players have already experienced for dozens of hours. And that core fan base has dwindled, and now the new players aren't looking for that kind of experience.
00:23:34
Speaker
That's so well said. The the amount of people I talk to that want to go back to play Goldeneye, and I'm thinking to myself, Goldeneye is going to be a lot clunkier and ugly than you remember. And people didn't love Perfect Dark at the time. Perfect Dark innovated on Goldeneye in such a great way.
00:23:49
Speaker
I agree with you. you know You have this time in history, everything worked. You you were playing Tribes. I was playing Unreal Tournament. And it's funny, the first thing I think about is the physics, man. They had the one of the guns that like could bounce off the walls and like you can see all that stuff. And physics makes such a big difference in the game when you see it and you can play it. It just feels great.
00:24:11
Speaker
you know That's something i always I tend to put my bio is I'm fascinated by physics. ah Flying, driving, shooting, throwing, running, biking, swimming, boating, whatever it might be, there's a really interesting interaction in in my brain between the world and how these things go together.
00:24:27
Speaker
and you know Solving for physics problems is, I think, one of the very early things humans start to do. How do we build a building? and How do we make sure something stands up when the wind blows? How do we keep the rain out? and so For me, it's ah it's kind of a foundational aspect of how I think about things. and When I see games that do this really well, I get excited because like, here's a deep, complicated system that I know kind of how it works.
00:24:45
Speaker
And I want to go push on it, see how, if it works, how I expect it to. I love experimenting. I love finding things other players haven't found. You if you you you could think of some emerg some other emergent gameplay, we talked about skiing. You remember back in the day when you used to be able to see for the jeeps of Friendly Fire off on Battlefield 1942.
00:25:00
Speaker
And if you got it just right, you could actually land them on the capture point with your friends in them. You know, so like things like that are just so much fun for me to play around with and have fun. It used to be able to stand on the wings of the B-17 as it flew and it would roll and dump it all off for the capture point.
00:25:13
Speaker
I mean, stuff like that. It's goofy, right? And you can you can decide if that fits the vision of your game, but it's also really fun. And playing with physics in that way is just fascinating It's funny. Completely unrelated. But one of my most memorable Nintendo 64 moments was playing Wave Race 64.
00:25:29
Speaker
And sometimes you'd start Wave Race and it was like a stormy day in the game and the waves were just huge. And you're just like, wow, like this I'm taking this jet ski up this wave. And it was just... It felt so good. And since then, to your point, traversal and game has become such a cool thing on how do you travel. I didn't get to play the new Spider-Man, but I heard the quick the yeah the quick travel is just so well done. And I'm just like, the better and quicker we can get around maps, the cooler ways we can do it, that's technology advancing because you can move quicker. You don't have to wait for those load screens that take some time to go there. And I think it's just super cool.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, we can hide them better now at least. All right. So the second part of this, innovation versus expectation. It's one of these things I always find interesting. And clearly Call of Duty is not out yet, but this is one of those Call of Duties where they have running on the wall and that always gets the people...
00:26:21
Speaker
angry or or excited. And you know you have this balance of innovation with the risk of alienating a massive player base. How do you think you would tackle kind of an innovative change or how do you balance that innovation to not alienate your player base?
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, this is a really tricky challenge. right And I think a lot of it, again, comes down to understanding what the core promise of the game is. you know is And this is going to be different to different players too. and This is where it gets really tricky. right but What is the largest segment of your player base going to be the happiest with?
00:26:55
Speaker
but This is probably going to be the core that you've designed it for. And if not, maybe you should be designing for that larger core. And if you're going to make them happy, that's the most important part. right It's also important not to to generate a negative narrative around how you message it or how you handle and so on. but In general, if you're making decisions in alignment with the vision for your game, the audience understands this.
00:27:16
Speaker
Now, maybe sometimes they'll have quibbles about this, that, the other thing. They'll want this changed. They'll want this removed or tweaked or reduced or whatever it might be. That's great. That's great feedback. That's the kind of thing you need as you iterate through a game to make it awesome. But again, I think identifying those core values or the pillars of the vision and making sure that this appeals to them is important. So let's say that one of the pillars is tactical, tactical movement.
00:27:38
Speaker
And you go, while running is not tactical, this is going to alienate people. Oh, that's not a good choice. Or maybe you go arcade and you go, oh, arcade, wall running is very arcade and very cool. We like this a lot. It fits this kind of vision.
00:27:50
Speaker
So I think, again, it comes back to kind of the direction of the game you're making and how the vision helps you inform these chases. now each Each one of these also you should be testing, right? You should be failing fast.
00:28:01
Speaker
You should absolutely be testing and learning. Take this new wall running prototype and go take it to your most experienced testers. Get their opinion. That'll be one opinion. Take it to developers. That'll be another opinion. Take it to some the players. That'll be 100 new opinions, right?
00:28:13
Speaker
And see if there's a consistent message in this. Oh, I like it because of this. Oh, I don't like it because it doesn't do that. Or this part's really cool, but I don't like it even though it does that. That's maybe some of the most useful things.
00:28:24
Speaker
So I think you start looking at the data and you're not data driven. You're not using the data to make the decision. You're informed by it. It's giving you a better context of how this fits your vision and how it fits the product and how it suits the audience or not.
00:28:38
Speaker
And that's tricky and that requires experience. And it also requires the other thing I talked about, which is iteration. This is one of the big keys to making anything awesome. First time you make anything, it kind of sucks. Almost always. I've had one case in my life where the first time I made something, it shipped that way.
00:28:52
Speaker
Every other time, it has to go through multiple turns on the lathe. You're going to cut pieces off. ah There's a famous quote, variously attributed ah to different sculptors and artists, but attributed to Michelangelo. says he Somebody asked him, how do you carve an elephant out of block of marble?
00:29:06
Speaker
He says, well, start with a block of marble. I just carve away i think it doesn't look like the elephant. And by iterating over time, this is kind of what you're doing. You're trying to to find that core shape of the vision that suits the audience underneath this big block of here are all the possibilities.
00:29:18
Speaker
Do you find that sometimes player feedback shapes a vision too much, or is there no such thing? I think one of the tendencies is to listen to the loudest, angriest voices in the room.
00:29:30
Speaker
And the thing you've got to remember is is that the happiest players aren't saying anything because they're busy playing your game. So it's important not to over-index on the negative narratives or the anger. you know I think everybody's going to have opinions, and not everything can be for everybody. There are very often diametrically opposed choices, Milsim versus Arcade.
00:29:47
Speaker
Those two audiences can't really play the same game and have the same time. It's not the same experience. and you probably shouldn't try you should probably have different experiences and figure out which one you're creating for who and then give them some clear markers so they can go in with those expectations you have that kind of player contract here's your unique value come on in you know i first met thad at gamescom two years ago and he kind of broke down this qualitative and quantitative feedback to me ah and it's words i heard before but it really put into kind of process them and since then even what you're talking about now all
00:30:21
Speaker
whoops into that bucket right yes to your point the loudest voices aren't always the right voices they're just the loudest probably the people are enjoying your game the most are sitting there playing your game but it's important to say hey this guy came and just told me my game sucks it's not fortnite well not designing my game to be fortnite right like that that's i don't care like thank you for that feedback that's great feedback or Or maybe I care, but I go, that doesn't fit the vision, and it's not something we're going to do, right? I don't want to say I don't care. I appreciate the feedback. Even if I'm not going to react on the feedback, I still want to hear it.
00:30:53
Speaker
no I still want to hear your opinion is still valid, you know i mean? And as a game designer, this is important that the audience understands it. I don't ever want to be like, oh, man, your opinion's dumb. Maybe my opinion's dumb. like ahho i'm Just because I'm a game developer doesn't mean I get to judge your opinion like that.
00:31:06
Speaker
I would say I'd use my judgment on does this fit the vision, right? Now, this is interesting because so let's talk about the difference between taste and judgment. right My taste is I like this thing because I like it.
00:31:17
Speaker
My judgment is you're going to like this thing because it fits the vision. It fits these pillars and you like these pillars. And therefore, i can deduce that you will like this thing. And so it's more important I use my judgment than my taste.
00:31:28
Speaker
And for me to react and say, no, no, your opinion is dumb. I don't agree. that's That's more my taste. That's my emotional reaction as opposed to my logical. Like, oh, it doesn't fit the vision. That's good feedback. And maybe we need to fix our messaging around what this game is because you didn't know that.
00:31:41
Speaker
You know mean? So I would look at it more that way. And not to chastise you right now. No, no, no. Trust me. I try to be a nice person on the outside. um But what i love that you said there is, you know I was a video game judge in the GDWC, the Game Development World Championships, a couple of years in a row. and you're forced to play games in genres that I don't play. And it's not going to be like, I hate this game. it's This is a really well-polished game. It's not my style and it's not my thing, but I can feel how fluid this feels or this mechanic feels really good.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I bet you that's even more powerful to the people who are creating that game because, hey, I'm not a fan of your game, but I love this mechanic and I want to keep playing this mechanic. Then they can say, hey, he found the fun in this mechanic and we want to build upon that.
00:32:26
Speaker
That's a very powerful signal, I agree. If you can you know cross all the other things you don't like to find something you do like in that, that is that is a great sign. that is That means that some of your features are crossing over.
00:32:36
Speaker
you know And ideally you would have have more of this and then you would have ways to configure the game and all of this gets more risky because it takes more time, it takes more money. And then you have to find a larger audience, right? So I think one of the things that the game industry is thinking about right now is how do how do we get our validation faster and earlier and cheaper? How do we make sure that we're making the right thing for the players, right?
00:32:56
Speaker
How do we make sure this innovation is going to be sticky, that players are going to love it? And that's something I'm thinking about a lot these days. And that's a perfect segue to section three, team and leadership, right?
00:33:07
Speaker
How do you, in this industry where we are moving quick and there's a lot of turmoil in the industry and everything's happening, how do you structure a team when you want to look at a team and decide, hey, this is how we're going to iterate to keep up with the market?
Leadership Insights: Empathy and Team Success
00:33:21
Speaker
This is something I found to be true over the years, but the best predictor of future performance is past performance or future behavior is past behavior, right? So if you've worked somebody before and they are awesome, It's highly likely you're going to work awesome together again.
00:33:34
Speaker
so and that's that's it's a little frustrating because you want to give everybody who's new a chance. Right. But to your point, it's it's risky sometimes. Are they going to be able to work in a professional environment? There's that's the very basic one. Right.
00:33:45
Speaker
Are they a senior enough designer? They can kill their darlings, you know, to let go of their ideas just because they're theirs. yeah Designer's job is to have the best idea. It's to recognize the best. you know And so you need to understand them at a very deep level to make sure that they can work. And then they have to actually socially integrate with the team as well. This magic doesn't happen when people are isolated, not talking. and It works when they collaborate, when they want to support each other.
00:34:09
Speaker
When this designer is struggling with this thing and the engineer wants to stay late because they thought of a tool that could help them. Or the other designer created a spline tool to place objects in a measured distances because the people were on the map were struggling.
00:34:20
Speaker
The people who go out of their way to to help the other people, the synergy is what you need. And that can be something that's, oh, I haven't found a reliable way to screen for this in an hour long interview. If you know of one, I would love to hear it. And maybe there are some hiring experts out there that could tell us this kind of thing. But my experience is it can be difficult to tell.
00:34:38
Speaker
There's interviewing skills and then there's on the job. And they're slightly different in some ways. You can train to be in interview skilled at interviews and you can train to be skilled on the job. But being skilled at one doesn't necessarily translate to being skilled at the other. I've seen people are great at their jobs who are terrible at interviewing, vice versa.
00:34:52
Speaker
So. Yeah, it's the difference between book smart and street smart, right? And I think the same thing goes in the workplace. I could be a great interviewer. I could be a great salesman. and You don't even know that. But when push comes to shove, you know, it's got to be experience and you got to see how experience works. and And that's, again, I remember being younger, or always wanting...
00:35:09
Speaker
high level titles and they're like, no, you don't have the experience for I'm like, no, it's bullshit, man. I'm smart enough. I know this stuff. And then you start seeing the shit people have to go through. Like, oh, like you just learned that from being on the job and you learned that by going through it. There's no really easy way to do it other than I've worked with this person for five years. I know what he's capable of and I don't know what he's capable of.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yeah. To me personally, one of the hardest things is delegation. i think so especially when you're you're building something of your own, you kind of sit here thinking, well, I know what I want it to be and I know what I want it to be. And to your point, you said, you know what? You need to let other people make it their own as well. That's what makes it special. But with that being said, how would you rate your delegation skills?
00:35:50
Speaker
It's a challenge, right? i you know As a designer and as a leader, I always want things to go perfect. I am a little bit obsessive compulsive secret here. you know And I'm a bit of a perfectionist.
00:36:01
Speaker
It's how I am. And so I'll tend to really noodle on the details and to pay attention to a lot of them It's one of the things that makes me a good game designer. A lot of times I want to get in there. I want to fix it myself because I think, oh, I can just do it. It's easier.
00:36:12
Speaker
And that's a trap because I do that and it is easier and it goes great. And the person doesn't learn anything. They didn't learn how to solve it themselves. They learned that I didn't trust them to solve it. And now they're not going to try next time they're going to bring me the problem.
00:36:24
Speaker
And if I do this to 10 people, guess what? I'm now doing 10 people's jobs. I very quickly learned how to delegate because of that. You cannot do everything or else you burn yourself out very quickly. So um understanding what's important to delegate is where the skill really starts to become relevant, I think.
00:36:40
Speaker
Understanding that these people are more than capable of handling this. This part is the part that only I know. Or this part is the most important thing that I need to focus my time on. I'm going to let the rest go and other people will have to take care of them. I'll delegate those tasks.
00:36:55
Speaker
So it's tricky and it requires a conscious effort of thinking about it. um And it definitely, it definitely, you know, changes perspective when you're working on small teams versus large teams. On a small team, there may not be enough people to delegate to. You may have to wear multiple hats.
00:37:10
Speaker
And then you're trying to figure out, wait, somebody else could do this. Either one of us could do this. What's the best use of each of our times? Then you'll have to go have a conversation about this. And hopefully you've got a production staff that can, or a person that can help you, you know assess this and talk about this and so on.
00:37:24
Speaker
That's I love producers who who really understand where the team is at, where the project is at, where the the tasks are at and and the status of things. So you can start to figure out, was talking about this this morning with somebody where that red line is at. The red line is you're not getting any features underneath this, right?
00:37:38
Speaker
And by effective delegation, you can help increase the number of features that go above that red line. And that's kind of your goal is you want to provide more game, more fun to the players as much as you can. It's at your job as a leader to do this.
00:37:50
Speaker
The first thing i said that you said that I really loved was that if you just end up solving someone's problem for them or fixing their mistake, you're going to create a tremendous amount of work for yourself. To your point, it's a very dangerous snowball going down the hill where it's just going to pile up more and more.
00:38:04
Speaker
I think your employees, your coworkers will enjoy working with you more if you help enable them to understand where they went wrong, how they can get back on the right track, what can be different rather than just doing it for them. That shows trust.
00:38:17
Speaker
That shows career development, which I love. And I think that that's the most important thing that people can learn is don't just do it for people because you're going to screw yourself over by doing that. There is, but I think there's also an element of empathy there that I rely on.
00:38:29
Speaker
I empathize a lot with other people. I've been through those experiences. I've had poor leaders. I've had good leaders, and I've learned from each of them. And I've remembered how miserable I was made. I would go home from one job and almost cry because I was so miserable working for that leader.
00:38:42
Speaker
And so once you've been through these experiences, you go oh, how I react isn't just for the business. It has an impact on people's lives. And i I care about that. As a leader, I care about that. I care about the people. I want them to do well.
00:38:55
Speaker
So you know I think it's also important to think about not just this um prevents me from getting overwhelmed. But to your point, this enables them and this lets them grow. Now, if this person goes and fails to solve the problem, okay, what did you learn from it?
00:39:09
Speaker
How do we make sure the next time you go to all this kind of problem, you don't fail the same way? That's awesome. Now, if the failing the same way over and over, you're doing crap job as a leader, right? You need to be helping them grow. And as these people grow, you're going to work with them five, 10 years. They're going to grow into positions that may exceed yours. They may go to another company and have an amazing, much higher level job on a new game that you would want to work on.
00:39:30
Speaker
And I think that all of us kind of empowering each other, supporting each other is the right way to move kind of game development forward in the West. I think we have a very powerful game development community. And I think a lot of times it's under leveraged by the developers inside it. you know A lot of times we kind of think of it as as cutthroat and competitive, but I don't think it needs to be that way. I think that we can lift each other up.
00:39:49
Speaker
For you, Thad, what do you think that next chapter is? well What do you have going on? Well, who knows what the next step is? you know it's ah It's a really tricky time in the market.
Future Projects and Market Challenges in Shooter Games
00:39:59
Speaker
I'll tell you, I have a pretty cool idea for a game.
00:40:02
Speaker
I've been talking about it on LinkedIn. I've got some volunteer army assembled to help me with I've got a full prototype, and we're trying to polish it up into an experience. so I'd love to be able to show this off at some point to the players and and talk about what I'm working on. The time's not right yet.
00:40:16
Speaker
But, you know, I think I would really like just to be able to create awesome, fun stuff for players that with people I like to work with. That's my real goal. I like working with awesome people. I love working on multiplayer, especially on a live title, because you can you can make changes to see the results immediately and get that instant feedback. That's amazing for a game designer.
00:40:34
Speaker
So that's really what the future holds for me. What is the exact shape of that? I don't know. we'll We'll find out. But I have a lot of interesting options and i have a lot of interesting conversations going on. So we'll see what happens in the future. But I will tell you this, I'm not going to quit making games. Even if nobody wants to pay me, I'm still going to make them.
00:40:52
Speaker
well I just do in my spare time. Yeah, right? I mean, why not? And if you can, more power to you. But when you look at the current like lineup of games that we have in 2025, we have the new Battlefield, new Call of Duty, have some Fortnite, we have, right? are there Are there evolutions that you like that you've seen in these games? so Some that you dislike, some that you would look at differently?
00:41:14
Speaker
Well, you know, I think when it comes to like and dislike, we're talking about taste and I don't know how relevant that is to to most people. um I'll talk a little bit more about my judgment. And I think the the shooter market is particularly crowded, right?
00:41:27
Speaker
ah especially in terms of like the action, the fast-paced Twitch stuff. right there was ah know You've got Call of Duty. You've got Apex Legends. You've got Warzone. You've got Counter-Strike 2, which I play every day.
00:41:38
Speaker
You've got all these great games that are are smaller session times, shorter matches, much more about the physical mechanics and and being relatively easy to get into and master and learn. And and you stick around because the social community or or whatever whatever your motivations might be.
00:41:54
Speaker
Now, when I think about that, I think, That's that's if you're going to make a shooter, it's going to be really hard to get into that space and get any sort of signal, right? You there have a couple notable games lately that have tried tried to do this. And it's tough unless you have an innovation that's really, really good, that really, really changes the core experience.
00:42:10
Speaker
We can talk about two amazing innovations that have done this over the course of shooters, the the first of which is the integration of RPG mechanics into shooters in Modern Warfare. Holy cow, that opened my mind and I was like, this is brilliant.
00:42:24
Speaker
How come I didn't think of this? I kind of did, but I didn't think of it this way. And this is much better than what I thought of. And it changed the way shooters work. Now, every shooter's got this kind of RPG style progression. 30 kills to unlock this thing. You're going to do this and get this weapon. You're going to go over here and do these challenges and get this XP to get this thing to get this weapon or or the skin or whatever, right?
00:42:42
Speaker
So these progression mechanics kind of fundamentally changed how shooters work. And then along comes BR. And BR is just kind of a game mode on top of an existing shooter, right? And so a lot of games can kind of take this innovation and and use it and leverage it.
00:42:55
Speaker
But this also changes how shooters work. So I think being able to find something that has that mass appeal, that resonates with players, that gets them excited, that takes something familiar and add something they didn't know they wanted, that's what you want, right?
00:43:07
Speaker
So we talk about things like wall running. Well, we already know what that is. Is that an innovation? No, that's an improvement. And to go back to your point, like, how do you think about the feature set?
00:43:18
Speaker
And how do you kind of ah ah decide what goes in the game? Well, you got to think what are the table stakes for this game based on the vision based on the competition, right? What are we improving in terms of that table stakes experience? And then what are our innovations?
00:43:31
Speaker
And this is really, really important to understand about your game and how you go about making it. And you need to make sure you're focusing on not only the innovations, but making sure those table stakes are quality.
00:43:43
Speaker
that I always love to hear what you're working on, what you're doing, what you've built, and just your industry, ah the experience that you've had. When we saw each other at GDC last year, I met bunch of your crew that you've worked with before, and they were all just so...
00:43:56
Speaker
cool and so easy to talk to we've talked to jack a number of times on the podcast and they're just lovers of game like you are and i think no matter what you choose to do next you're going to have that audience that follows you just because of your love of the game so i can't thank you enough for again coming to share your wisdom and your knowledge with us at at player joe here and i will always stalk you no matter what so thank you for that but uh before we do go is there anything else you just want to talk about or share or shout out um Yeah, I want to um want to make a a quick shout out to all the amazing developers.
00:44:30
Speaker
um You know, it is a hard time in the game industry and it's very uncertain. And you've got the grit, you've got the passion, you've got the skills to execute. You know, I think that ah the only thing stopping you is, you know, you have to make money to make a living.
00:44:45
Speaker
And that's that's kind of where we're at these days. And if you're lucky enough to be able to, oh God, this is shit. I love it, man. You're lucky enough to to have a job and to be making a living doing what you love. You are very, very fortunate.
00:45:00
Speaker
And maybe that can help power your grit and help you get through this time of uncertainty. I do believe that things will get better. you know There's always dramatic downturns in any industry, and these things happen periodically, almost cyclically.
00:45:14
Speaker
You know i was talking to somebody the other day about and they were mentioned the transition from 2D to 3D and how was traumatic for the artist. I vaguely remember that. That was right as I got my career started. And I remember that. And people had to go upscale and get new tools. And some people chose to and some people didn't.
00:45:28
Speaker
And that's why I say always be learning, always be looking forward, always be thinking about what does the future hold? Where is it going and how do I be ready for it when it gets here? Or how do I beat it there? I love it.
00:45:39
Speaker
And I'd also just add on to that is learn from the past. that we We've got spoke different people who've been in the industry for many years and they all share their wisdom and the future will be different. There's UEFM, there's Roblox, there's tools you're building games from within it and that's different than the past, but the history and the lessons you've learned translate to today and you can always be building upon that. Just remember, there's always been a layer below you so you can keep building on top of that.
00:46:05
Speaker
I love that, Greg. I always say I got to stand on the shoulders of giants. The first game franchise I worked on was Call of Duty. Come on. you know You know, so you're right. You're absolutely right. And if you neglect those layers of knowledge, you're doing yourself and your players a disservice. So you're absolutely right.
00:46:20
Speaker
Awesome. Well, Thad, thank you again. We'll have yeah URLs to everything that Thad has talked about. We'll have his LinkedIn there. um Again, Thad, thank you for joining us today. And I wish you the best of luck with everything. And then we'll keep a close eye on you.