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Scaling for Success: Ryan Burnett on Building and Leading Respawn Madison
79 Plays23 days ago
In this episode, Greg sits down with Ryan Burnett, the Studio Director at Respawn Madison, to talk about his journey in building a new studio from scratch, his leadership philosophy, and the growing game development hub in the Midwest. Ryan shares insights on how Respawn handles LiveOps for Apex Legends, the challenges of recruiting talent, and maintaining a healthy work culture. They also dive into the importance of consistent work in live-service models and the evolving role of player feedback in game development.
Key Timestamps:
- Building Respawn Madison (01:03 - 03:23)Ryan discusses how he was tasked with building a studio in Madison, explaining the importance of assembling a leadership team and building culture from the ground up. He highlights how there’s no guidebook for building a studio, and much of the journey involves figuring things out as you go.
- Midwest Game Development Hub (03:23 - 04:47)Ryan touches on how the Midwest, specifically Madison, is becoming a hotbed for game development. He notes that within a 15-mile radius, games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, PUBG, and Apex Legends are being developed—making the Midwest a hidden gem for game development.
- Preventing Burnout and Managing LiveOps (09:18 - 10:58)Ryan emphasizes that preventing burnout in a LiveOps environment is about more than just managing work hours. It's about effective decision-making, good communication, and maintaining consistent workloads without overwhelming peaks. The importance of predictability in LiveOps is key to maintaining a healthy team.
- The Role of Player Feedback (16:43 - 18:31) Apex Legends is constantly evolving based on feedback from the player community. Ryan explains how Respawn uses multiple channels—like analytics, social media, and community forums—to gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback, which directly influences their content roadmap.
- Leadership and Culture in Game Development (32:10 - 35:15)Ryan speaks about his leadership philosophy, focusing on building a team-oriented culture where good ideas can come from anyone. He also shares his journey from being a tech programmer to taking on leadership roles, recognizing that his strength lay in working with people and solving challenges collaboratively.
Conclusion:
This episode provides a unique look into the journey of building a new game studio and leading in the fast-paced world of LiveOps. Ryan Burnett’s emphasis on leadership, player feedback, and work-life balance offers valuable lessons for industry professionals looking to grow their teams and deliver sustainable results in live-service games.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Ryan Burnett and Respawn Madison
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey everybody, Greg here from the Play Your Engage podcast. Today we have a really cool episode and I wanna let you know what you're about to listen to. Today we are sitting down with
Building a Studio and Midwest Gaming Culture
00:00:09
Speaker
Ryan Burnett. He is the studio director at Respawn Madison. We talk about a whole bunch of cool different things that a studio director will do, including A, building a studio from the ground up in Madison, which is an awesome conversation we have and how you go about doing that. The Midwest itself as a gaming development hub and the growth of the number of studios,
00:00:30
Speaker
preventing burnout and managing live ops, the role of player feedback, and leadership in culture when you're running a studio as well as in game development. It's a really cool and fun podcast. It is the third episode of our M dev series, which is coming at you in about a week and a half. And it's good stuff. So I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:56
Speaker
Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Player Engaged podcast. Greg here. Today, we're thrilled to have Ryan Burnett with us. Ryan is the Studio Director at Respawn Madison, where he's at the helm of development of Apex Legends.
00:01:12
Speaker
With over 17 years in the gaming industry, Ryan has a deep background in project management, creative execution, and leading high-caliber teams, from guiding the Unreal Engine 5 project at Epic to expanding Respawn's Madison Studio into a thriving development hub. Ryan's passion for development and creating unforgettable player experiences shines through in everything he does. Let's jump in and learn more about Ryan. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us
Leadership and Midwest Talent
00:01:37
Speaker
today. Anything I missed about yourself,
00:01:39
Speaker
No, thank you for having me here. I'm super excited to talk about ah gaming. you know I love talk and shop, so but I'm super excited for this. Yeah, me too. And I'm really excited to talk to you on on multiple fronts, because you've basically built a studio in Madison. And I think that's so awesome, so epic. And I just think to myself, how does that begin? And we have a lot of things I can talk to you about. But let's just kind of start with this big question. It's just, how do you actually start building a studio? Like, what's your goal when you kind of get this OK to kind of build this out? You're are the third response studio, I believe, that's out there. like How do you go about this journey?
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, you know what's interesting about starting a studio is there's no book. there There's no guide to it, right? So you kind of, um just to be frank, you really make it up as you go, right? um You know, it's one of those things where um when when I got the call to think about this and and started thinking about what it takes and all that sort of stuff.
00:02:36
Speaker
um The first thing I went to was like, okay, who's my who's my core group that I want to bring with me, right? I i ah use that kind of euphemism of, um okay, who's coming on the lifeboat with me, right? so like So as soon as this started to become reality, I started calling some of my closest ah friends and colleagues um that I've worked with in the past that that I felt could really help me build this.
00:03:03
Speaker
um i I thought it was really important to really start with the leadership. Can you build that foundation that is going to be of like mind, help build a culture, help build a process? um Because it's one of those things, you can't do this on your own and you have to surround yourself by really, really strong people. um And I think that was key to kind of giving yourself the growth.
00:03:24
Speaker
I love the idea, and we've heard about it a few times, is surround yourself with people who are are good leaders, good talent, people who know more than you in different aspects of it. and And I like that you're kind of using that network. Was Madison always the landing ground for this studio? Was was that kind of the thought that Respawn was thinking when when going this route?
00:03:44
Speaker
ah It was. um you know It was a little serendipitous. um you know i I was born and raised in Wisconsin. um It's something where I've worked out of Madison and I've worked ah worked on the biggest titles in the world, out of Madison. And it's one of those things where when I got the phone call, it was it was really, we talked a lot about how Madison is a development hub. It's not um it's on a massive development hub like like Seattle or Vancouver, Los Angeles, but there is talent around here.
00:04:14
Speaker
um You know, Call of Duty is literally out my back door here over at Raven Software. PUBG is downtown. um So there's a lot of development talent in studios around here. So we we felt really confident we could we could bring in folks and we could bring talent in.
00:04:29
Speaker
um at a cost-effective level. um So it's one of those things where, I remember I was talking to Ben Cavalla, and i this might be the only place in the world where Call of Duty, Fortnite, PUBG, and Apex Legends are all developed within a 15-mile radius, right? So that that if you just think about that that, that's really incredible, if you ask me. I think that's, I mean, who would have guessed that, like, the Midwest is first-person shooter central, where all this stuff is going. And I just imagine it's like,
00:04:57
Speaker
Instead of game night at the bar, you guys all bring a copy of your game, and you take turns saying, hey, we're going to have a battle royale here. We're going to play PUBG one night. We're going to play Apex one night and just go through all of them. I know Ben is working on building this community out, but was there a community when you started building this, or do you see with Ben's work to unite everyone that is a growing community?
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a growing community. I think the community has been around for a while. um And I think what would Ben has done really well and in what we're trying to do with MDev and what what I try and do all the time is really build the awareness of it. I think the awareness in the game industry is relatively small, that the Midwest is is a development hub and it's it's a viable option ah to build talent around and build studios and build product.
00:05:40
Speaker
um So really, I think i think what what both of our missions are just really really build awareness and and shine a spotlight on this this thriving, growing community. What are some of the challenges with the Midwest,
Recruiting and Lifestyle in the Midwest
00:05:52
Speaker
right? is that I know that you have a good abundance of talent there, right? And I've spoken to a couple of other studios that say there's a lot of talent in the area, but what type of challenges do you face as being kind of landlocked in the middle of the country?
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, i I think the challenges are, um you know, there's there's a good amount of talent here. ah There's not enough talent to build ah a really large, large studio or a large development at this point. So we do have to recruit people to the Midwest. So it's a lot of selling people on on the Midwest and on Wisconsin specifically. um So when we do a recruiting, it does take a bit longer.
00:06:28
Speaker
um the The pool of talent to pull from is not as large as, again, I'll compare it to Los Angeles. um So you do have to be more patient. um And you have to find the right talent that's willing to move. And when you move here, um it's a life change. It's a life change for a lot of people. So what we find is ah we look for people who have Midwest roots, so people who have gone to university here or have grown up around here and then moved out west and and and have done that.
00:06:57
Speaker
what we find often are people, okay, I've done the i've done the Los Angeles thing, I'm growing up, I'm getting older, I'm doing all the like, the the mature things of like setting down roots and getting a family and thinking about school systems, so that you all those things that that that that you have to start doing as an adult. um those Those are things that like,
00:07:16
Speaker
um We find that that's a very, very common story, or it's a story where um cost of living. People want to have a house in the yard and stuff like that. And and that's something that that you can do in the Midwest if you work in games, um where where you necessarily can't do in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle. Something I find fascinating, and you're talking through it right now without really meeting you up, is that you're the fifth person I'm talking to really from the Midwest about studios, games in general. and Everyone mentions family values. And I was talking to my marketing team yesterday. I'm just like, it sounds weird that I have to keep saying this, but like, I feel like most places have family values. But when I'm talking to the people from the Midwest, like it's very apparent. And they said, no, they don't actually think family values is top of mind when you go most places in the world. But but he's talking to you, I talked to Josh from Pyramid Lake Games. I talked to Patrick from Alchemy Lab. like
00:08:08
Speaker
Everyone's helping their kids learn. Everyone has family involved. And I love that. I have a four year old and a six year old and I love including them in this. And hearing people talk about this is just so exciting to me because, you know, this is the future of gaming and we are helping enable the future of gaming. it And you guys have that value. And I just I don't even know how to ask a question here. It's just so cool to hear this because it's a parent. Yeah, you know, um Something that that that I think is really important to me as we've been building this studio, and this is kind of one of those really soft things, but like as we've been building the studio, I want people's families to come to the studio. I want i want i want my kids my kids come here all the time and they see the games and they get excited about it.
00:08:49
Speaker
um And I think what that does is that it helps build the culture. It but it builds a culture, like um I'm not a fan of ah saying the workplace is a family, ah but I am a fan of like building close bonds and relationships, right? And understanding that we are more than game developers, we are people, we're fathers, we're mothers, um and all that sort of stuff. So I do think um there is some value in in having that kind of that aspect, if you will, and and just just considering that, like, we're in a world right
Preventing Burnout in Gaming
00:09:21
Speaker
now where you blend your personal life and your work life is very common where, you know, two decades ago, that wasn't as common. um But, you know, general generations have changed. um And we work all the time right now. You work off your phone, you work, you know, you work different hours, all those sorts of things. so I think it's important that you really have a good blend of of your personal values with your work values.
00:09:44
Speaker
And I've read that you've talked about this quite a bit, right? You want to maintain both a positive work work culture as well as help prevent burnout. And we hear about that a lot in different studios when it comes time to crunch. And you are working in live ops, which I want to have a conversation about because I feel like there's there is pressure to get new content out there, to keep things up to date. But what are some strategies you kind of implement to help prevent burnout, to help provide that kind of balance to work life experience?
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah, burnout burnout is a really tricky word. um I saw an image on LinkedIn once and it it it kind of equated it to an iceberg, right? Burnout, most of the time when people talk about it, they talk about hours worked. um I find that's actually the least important thing to to look at. What's more important is effective decision-making, um ah good trade-off discussions, prioritization,
00:10:36
Speaker
reducing kind of wasted work or quick pivots, stuff like that, providing contacts, good communication. Those are the things that I think really, really help prevent burnout. We work in what I call a passion industry. You know, I go to my kid's school, every kid there wants to make video games, right? You know, very few kids say they want to make actuarial software, you know what I mean? So this is something where you get in this industry because you love games. So working extra hours, it happens, right? And what we do is creative, so it's very hard to predict. But what we try and do is really focus on the communication, the decision-making, and prioritization, and trade-off conversations. And we find that that helps quite a bit. The other thing that I think is really important in a LiveOps service is two things.
00:11:30
Speaker
Number one is you're always gonna be busy. So when you work on a box product, you generally are at, and you can have times where you're at 40% kind of capacity, if you will, of your your kind of your working energy, if you will, um for a good year or two. And then when you get to the end, you go to like 200% because you're cramming everything and getting everything done. In a LiveOps service, you're always shipping, you're always closing. So you always try and stay at a high level, but you never try and go too high, if you will, from a what I call work energy point of view, right? And whether that's time or effort of stress and all those sorts of things, um you always try and you try and stay consistent rather than having large peaks and valleys in your work. So it sounds like kind of like keeping it in cruise control, right? You want to make sure that you have that consistent level of output, not
00:12:18
Speaker
overwork it or or underwork it. Consistency is king here. Yup, yup. Predictability is really important too, as much as you can. ah We all have personal lives. If you're, ah you know, if you're working on something and you know you got to ship it and and for whatever reason you've fallen behind, it's much, much easier to digest if you can plan it ahead of time. And it's not a surprise.
00:12:39
Speaker
Is there a busy season for a live ops studio? Like for example, Halloween's coming up and then we got Christmas coming up, right? And and obviously that's going to be probably big content type of holidays, but you also can plan for this, right? So is there like a busy season to it or it's really kind of planned out well where it's just kind of like.
00:12:56
Speaker
No, you you do your best to plan out
Setting Up Teams for Success
00:12:58
Speaker
the year. um I think every game is a little different. um When I was working on Call of Duty, we always had you know the the holiday season was always busy. right we are In that game, um they always tried to make a big push for the holiday to kind of grab as many sales as possible. And Apex Legends, our big seasons are in February. right So we generally hit kind of right after the New Year's, our busy season. and On Fortnite, it kind of varied based off of whatever was kind of going on, whether it was the engine or or Fortnite. So i wouldn't I wouldn't say there's a busy season, um and I think it's different for every product. It's fascinating. I mean, you've been part of Raven, you've been a part of Epic, you've been a part of Respawn now, and you touched each one of these games, and that's fascinating. But without digging into that, let's talk about the role of a studio director, right?
00:13:45
Speaker
ah What is the role of a studio director? What's your day to day? What's the skill set that you've learned that you kind of tap into most throughout your day? Yep. Yeah. In in general, my mission is just to set the team up for success. um i ah yeah I want my team, I want to remove as many Roblox as possible so they can do their best work. um My day to day is a lot of coordinating with my leadership team, with the developers, understanding kind of what challenges they have, helping them work through the challenges, letting them know um and trying to provide some visibility to the future of where things are going so they can make more educated decisions kind of on on a micro level ah of where to go with the product. um The other thing, I think the key skill for a studio director is you need to have range. You need to be able to understand every aspect of game development. I think one of my superpowers, if you will,
00:14:42
Speaker
is I can sit in a room with an artist or an engineer or a designer or or a product person or even a finance person, and and I can contribute to the conversation. I'm not an expert in any one of those fields, but I have enough knowledge and enough knowledge of the surrounding systems where I can go in there and I can be effective in and I can can understand what they're saying, digest that, and then try and translate that back either to them or to someone else in a different department.
00:15:10
Speaker
So kind of ah
Ryan's Journey and Passion for Games
00:15:11
Speaker
a jack of all trades, but a master of none, for lack of better words. Exactly. When you were younger, right? When you, Ryan, were in elementary school, were you sitting there daydreaming of making actuary software one day, or did you want to be a ah video game developer? How did this all come to be? um I think I always wanted to make games.
00:15:31
Speaker
i was always I remember when I was a kid, ah we had a Tandy 1000 in my living room and playing games constantly. Some of my most fond memories are with my best friend Phil. We would literally stay up until four in the morning playing Paperboy and Rampage and on on like that Tandy 1000. And i just i just I wanted to create that. i you know my My mission is to create entertainment.
00:15:56
Speaker
I think the world's a really hard place. i want to I want to make it a little bit brighter, a little bit easier for people. um and And I just really come back to those moments as a kid, like just bonding with my best friend Phil over video games. It just was special and we still talk today. He's been my friend since I was five and we still talk today.
00:16:14
Speaker
It's amazing. I love that. I remember those same years growing up. Actually, just recently, I got a switch and I downloaded Paperboy because you could get it on the ah Nintendo Store. and It is a hard game going back to it and now. I'm just like, oh my God, how did I ever get past the first level in this game? yeah um When you kind of take a look at LiveOps, can you kind of give me in your own words, what is LiveOps?
LiveOps and Player Feedback
00:16:38
Speaker
How does a studio approach something? How do you how do you plan?
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, LiveOps is really interesting. I think the the easiest way I can put it, it's flying it's building a plane as you're flying, right? It's one of those things where um in today's market and how games have evolved over the last decade, the players and the consumers, they expect more content. Like you literally cannot provide enough content to the users. um they will They will gobble up whatever you serve in front of them.
00:17:09
Speaker
So really what it is, it's trying to predict what content is going to be most impactful, which ones your players want the most. um And it's really it's a really interesting development because it's not highly predictable. You have plans, but you have to be agile to adjust based off of what what your players are telling you. We might put out a piece of content, um and it might be a glowing success. So we might pivot that development to do more of that sort of content.
00:17:37
Speaker
we have sometimes where we think hey we have a hit on our hands we have this new content that's really awesome and it's a complete dud and all that ah not only the qualitative but also the quantitative side is telling us that so that we might have to change plans a few seasons down the road so it's one of those things of like you have to lay down tracks you have to put plans down because you'll you'll never be able to kind of you'll never be able to move fast enough to keep up with it. But you also have always have to have this mentality of like, hey, we have to react to the market, right? So it's something where you have to be very, very agile.
00:18:10
Speaker
You mentioned kind of getting that feedback from your player base, and I think that's fantastic. We've seen some bigger studios now actually much more do or do a much better job at connecting with their community. And I think that's kind of what LiveOps has to do is connect with your community. Listen, are there any strategies you implement to kind of hear from the community? Is it built into the game? Do you reach out? like how is How are you listening to the community?
00:18:32
Speaker
but um It's literally probably dozens of different ways. We do things. of We have analytics data on the back end. So we we know when our players log in, when they log out, how many players are in the game, what they're playing, all that sort of stuff. So so we have that hard quantitative data. We also look through things. We look at Reddit. We look at Twitter. We look at um threats. We look at social media to see what people are saying about it.
00:18:58
Speaker
ah We also we put out media, right? So we have community channels on apex where we look at the comments We look at how people are reacting to that content um We also don't forget we're part of EA which is a major fortune 500 company and There are organizations within EA that do consumer insights and consumer research for us. So we do surveys, we do um ah we do focus groups, all that sort of stuff. So really, we try and cover kind of every type of feedback and triangulate it together to see where we're seeing commonalities. And then we make our best guesses kind of kind of how to move forward with that data.
00:19:38
Speaker
That's awesome to hear. Again, you know all these players are probably online, complaining in Reddit. And it's always nice to hear that you know there are people watching, which you would assume that's the case, right but like hearing it from people. um when When you take a look at your past, you've been a part of a lot of the big studios in Madison. right You've helped build a lot of these shooting first-person shooter games. um You are now the studio head. But when you look at your past, is there a specific point of time where everything just kind of said, this is what I want? like Studio head is the job I want. like how did you Learn that. Yeah, um I have a degree in computer science, so I actually started in the game industry as a tech programmer. I was working on Unreal 3, doing some stuff. I think it was PlayStation 3 at that time. um And I remember being really bored because I was working by myself.
00:20:25
Speaker
you know I was kind of like, I would have a day where I'd be in the office and I wouldn't talk to anyone because I would just have my head down coding. um And I hated that. um I knew working with people, communicating people was my my skill. And I saw an opportunity for the team that I was on to really provide that. So I remember going to my boss at that time and saying, I want to be a producer. um And I got a really funny look.
00:20:50
Speaker
um And he's like, wait, why would you want to do that job? And that was, I think really that was the beginning journey. um I also remember like, I i was an okay programmer. i could do i could I was successful, but I knew I was never going to be great. I would talk to some of my peers and I could just tell right away, right over my head, like, whoa, I'm never going to get to that level. I'm never going to be uber successful.
00:21:14
Speaker
um But I remember when I would do things where I would have opportunities to lead teams or coordinate groups or coordinate developers together, I was the best in the room, right? you know And it was kind of one of those things I was just fortunate fortunate enough to recognize, and I really leaned into it.
00:21:29
Speaker
ah Here's a funny story. My parents who thankfully paid for my education, it took them good four or five years until they're like, are you still programming? Are you still using that degree? I said, no, trust me, guys. This is it. This is my skill set. this is And then now they finally get it.
00:21:45
Speaker
That's awesome. you know I think, first of all, that's a lot of people who who go through college, right? is You just need that degree. And then with that degree, you learn what your passion is afterwards, right? You go into the workplace. And I find that fascinating that you started as engineering, basically, and then Maybe the stigma is that engineers aren't as social. right It's hard to kind of get them to communicate, but then you say, hey, I want to be a producer. When you look at yourself growing up in in elementary school and high school, right were you a social, outgoing person? Were you more, call it that the the computer nerve that's playing games and and doing stuff in class? like
00:22:22
Speaker
I'm just curious. what yeah like ah Yeah, I'll use some stereotypes here. I was generally the social outgoing person. um I was kind of part of the the jocks or the athlete group to get super stereotypical on you. I was the nerd within my friend group, right? um You know, I was the one that liked Star Wars, liked playing video games. me Me and my friend Phil were kind of the like the little bit of like the auxiliary of our of our friend group when i when I was a child.
00:22:48
Speaker
Um, and then, and then I went to college and I was like, Oh, this is again, I'm being stereotypical, but this is the group that like, Oh yeah, you guys are the true, like hardcore. Like you guys really are, are, are really getting into star Wars, star Trek and all that. And I was like, Oh, those are my people. Right. You know what I mean? Like, like that, that that was really an eye opening moment in college. So then not counting the EA titles, cause you can't be biased here. What is the best star Wars game that was released?
00:23:17
Speaker
Oh, that's a really good question. Maybe Star Wars Battlefront II. The original Battlefront II. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to go Rogue Squadron. I had such a love for Rogue Squadron. Now I heard people are saying if they remake, it would be terrible because it's all clunky. But I think there's something special about that game. And maybe it was just having the N64 at the time and just like yeah hit the spot.
00:23:40
Speaker
ah my My comrades on the Jedi survivor team who will be remissed if I don't mention in them. But i think I think those are great games. i think They are fantastic. um you those Those action adventure games are fun. You can sit down with a bag of Cheetos and just just play that game for hours. I agree. I had a blast with it with all the Jedi Survivor games. Tell me a little bit about MDev. MDev has been growing year after year, and it's going to be in about two weeks, I think, at this point, which is nuts. What is MDev and why is it important to the community?
MDev's Role in Midwest Networking
00:24:12
Speaker
Yeah, I you know i kind of describe MDev as the GDC of the Midwest. um It's an opportunity for game developers in this region to get together and network and socialize and chat and share learnings and all that sort of stuff.
00:24:26
Speaker
um You know, I i think it's it's mostly about building connections and and having conversations, um talking shop, talking trials and tribulations. What have you learned? What have I learned? All that sort of stuff. I always look forward to it because, you know, I get to meet up with a bunch of my peers I don't see on a regular basis.
00:24:44
Speaker
um And then we talk about how things are going. and yeah I always learn something new um that talks always great too. um It's great to just see developers either that I've worked with in the past or or or other people that that I'm not familiar with and just just learn something new about the game industry. Awesome. And you'll be a speaker this year, right? Are there any I think a lot of people at NDev kind of look towards people like you. There's some other high-level studio people there. Are there any specific messages you try and get across, or is that too vague of a thing to ask? You know, I i try and um ah try and relate to the audience as much as possible. I think it's one of those things where
00:25:29
Speaker
um ah You know, I have a being a studio director, I have a different perspective than most of the people in that room. So I either want to provide an inspiration for like if people have ambitions of how to get to studio director. So I try and try and provide a path there or or some lessons learned that I've learned along the way. So I try and share some of that knowledge.
00:25:50
Speaker
um The other thing that I try and do too, the the audience there um is generally I think earlier in their career. So what I try and do is just provide some words of wisdom of like just because you're not the the studio director and you're at the top of the pyramid doesn't mean you can't influence, doesn't mean you can't lead, right? So so like try to provide some of those tips and tricks and some of those things that I've learned through my career.
00:26:11
Speaker
um either through success or failure ah of of, hey, these are some things you can do and you can apply to your job. So try and give those general messages. um I don't focus too much on the hard skills. It's more of the soft skills. how do you How do you work in the game industry? How do you be successful in this industry? If you had an opportunity to go back to college and choose a different path, would you choose a different path and and what path would that be?
00:26:36
Speaker
um I think right now I would get into AI, um but I would still say in technology. um I think one of the things that I'm really grateful of is my computer computer science degree helps me be a better development ah excuse me helps me be a better developer. More specifically, it helps me be a better thinker. Because what you do in computer science, you take really, really large, complex problems and you break them down in into individual pieces and sequential pieces.
00:27:04
Speaker
right So just as we're developing a new character in the game or a new level, you have to do the exact same thing. right When you come to someone and you say, hey, create a new create a new legend, that's a big honking task. right And what we have to do as leaders and and what we have to do as developers is break that down into individual tasks.
00:27:22
Speaker
And I think that's something that like i really I value the training I had in computer science because it forces you to think of that very algorithmic or so procedural or step sort of mentality that I use i literally use it every day.
00:27:39
Speaker
As a studio director, and I'm naive here, I don't know, but you know I take a look at the different positions that exist in ah a studio, right and studio director seems like the top of the iceberg here, right but where does a studio director go from here? Is it the end? Is it is it just the beginning? right i mean sorry thanks There's never an end. um You know, and and i think I think it really depends on kind of where you're in just lie and where you want to go. um You know, I think i as I've seen studio directors progress, I think there's opportunities um either to grow what you're doing. Right now in Madison, we're a single project studio. We're focused on Apex Legends.
00:28:23
Speaker
Right, you know, maybe, maybe there's more projects right that that's something that a studio director can do I think studio directors can look to go to the publishing level or the EA level we're starting to do more corporate strategy and stuff like that.
00:28:38
Speaker
um You know, I think there's a lot of different directions to go. I don't know if I can give you ah a real concrete answer, but I think what I will say is, um you know, the skills you learn as a studio director are really about building and driving teams and having a good sense of where the game game industry is going and and how to manage product. um I think those skills are highly transferable based off of wherever you want to go.
00:29:03
Speaker
engage If you weren't a studio director, but you still worked in the games industry, what was the role you would want to be doing?
System Design and Communication Methods
00:29:12
Speaker
Oh, that's a really good question. um i I really get fascinated by, I think system design is really interesting. I love getting involved in the system design. So I think if I like, I don't know, maybe if I was younger and I chose a different path, that might be something I might get into. I think doing things of like designing leveling systems, progression systems, monetization systems, I think those are really fascinating. um I just, um you know, I love creating those loops that gets players coming back for more and more and more.
00:29:48
Speaker
That's fascinating. And I love that. I'm actually talking with ah another colleague here about doing a more in-depth. They want to talk about the economies and how you balance economies in game. And I think it's similar to what you're saying. And he recently sent me this Call of Duty white paper that was about 25 pages long about matchmaking and the math that goes into matchmaking. And it's fascinating. like You just think, hey, I'm matchmaking. I'm matchmaking. And then you have games like X to Find that comes out that gets rid of skills-based matchmaking. And you see what happens with that. and It's a whole nother career, basically, balancing these matchmaking things, seeing this type of data. And I assume LiveOps isn't that far because you're looking at player retention rates, you're playing, looking at engagement rates, and you're looking at in-game purchases, right? And like, that must be so much data to look at. So yeah I assume there's like a large data science or some sort of team there to help kind of build this stuff out, am I? Is that right?
00:30:38
Speaker
Yep, yep, there's definitely data scientists, and analysts, economists, all that sort of stuff that that really helps. What they do a terrific job at, they take all that really complex data in that, I'd be frank, some of the mathematics that that most people don't understand, and they distill it down to kind of things that that people can understand and in that we can make decisions against.
00:30:58
Speaker
um It's really fascinating. Matchmaking is one of those it's one of those topics, borderline religious debates. like there There is a million ways to do it. What worked for one game doesn't necessarily work for the other game. I think it's one of those things that like you have to look at your data. You have to test it. You have to use A-B testing over and over and over again to do it successfully. Yeah, it's it's a whole other world. i'm I'm excited to kind of go down because i'm I'm a data guy. I love numbers. And and it seems like, yeah, that's that's a whole bunch of things going on there.
00:31:28
Speaker
um When it comes to Respawn, you have multiple studios, which we discussed. How do you keep communication with the other offices? Is it something that's as urgent because you're working on different projects? You have tools that you use? Oh, we're actually, we' um Apex is distributed, right? So we we have a team in Madison, we have a team in Los Angeles, and we have a team in Vancouver.
00:31:49
Speaker
um so and And we have a whole host of people that are remote. So it's a highly distributed team. um So there's there's leadership spread across ah primarily North America, um but but we we do regular syncs. You know, every Tuesday we meet with the franchise leadership team. We do director meetings on a regular basis. It's really a lot of communication um via Zoom, a lot of communication via Slack and documenting in complex. It's primarily how we stay connected.
00:32:21
Speaker
I feel like that's most of the questions I have for you today, Ryan, and I love this conversation. It's fascinating, but is there anything I should be asking that I'm not asking? Yeah, i i think that I think the other thing that I really, I think is and important is building culture. I think that's one of those things where you get on these calls. um We work in an incredibly hard industry, right? Creating fun is not easy to do. um And I think what I find is creating a strong culture where you can have candid conversations, um you you can you can iterate quickly, people aren't afraid to give feedback.
00:32:55
Speaker
the notion that good ideas come from anywhere, I think that's really important to have within the studio. It's something that we really focus on here at Respawn. It's just really creating a culture of communication and candor and feedback that that I think is really, really important to kind of get something out. I think games today are so large. There are literally hundreds of people working on Apex Legends and Fortnite and Call of Duty. um You cannot do anything yourself so you have to come together as a group and having strong culture that allows you to come together as a group and and do things together I think is really critical and important.
00:33:33
Speaker
You know, I recently I spoke with the game director of Marvel Marvel Arrivals. His name is Thad Sasser. And he he started talking about finding the funding games, which is something I thought was a fascinating statement. And, you know, to people, it probably sounds so obvious. We'll just make something exciting and cool. And then like, no, it just doesn't work like that. But how how does like how does that process work? Do you guys literally sit in a room and you kind of just spitball ideas? Is it just communication? Like is it just throwing a bunch of crap against the wall and seeing what sticks? yep yeahp Yeah, i think it starts with what do we want to accomplish? What's our objective, right? Do we do we want the users to um play with more legends? Do we want the users to use a certain gun? Do we want the user do we feel our users are getting um you know ah bored with the same formula? Do we want to shake up the formula a little bit or the meta?
00:34:25
Speaker
So really it starts there with just what do we want to achieve? And and then we we do oftentimes we do get in a room and we just wipe off. You just brainstorm. You just throw out ideas and you start to kind of whittle through that. Once you have an idea, um it's really about flushing that idea and trying to think of every detail you can. and And we do our best to try and think of all the details on paper before we start coding.
00:34:50
Speaker
um But one thing you learn very quickly in the game industry, you cannot design anything on paper, right? You can get you can only get so far. So you kind of get to a point where where you kind of have a plan and everyone believes in it and you can kind of squint and they're like, okay, I think this is going to be successful, right? And then it's really about getting a prototype and getting your hands on the sticks, as we say, or hands on your controller and playing it, right? and And then you start to kind of like really fine tune it and give it to go.
00:35:17
Speaker
um one of the One of the indicators that I have for whether a feature or a product is going to be successful is how loud is the play test pit? Is the play test pit loud? Are people having fun? Are people staying longer than we've allocated for play testing?
00:35:33
Speaker
usually we play test for about an hour a day on average. Are people staying an hour and a half, two hours to play the game? If you have that, you're sitting on goal. um I remember when I was working on Warzone, I got a call from an executive and he just asked me, but hey, how's it coming? How's it going? And I said, well, I've never seen the play te play test pit louder.
00:35:52
Speaker
um And I said, i can we're we're on something. We're right we're on the right path. um And it's this really it's this you know it's kind of weird saying to an executive, our play test pit is loud. Trust me, it's great. um ah But i've it's been proven over and over again that you know if we love it, our fans are probably going to love it because we're all gamers too.
00:36:12
Speaker
With what you said earlier, right? Where you kind of take these tests and you, so you you have to look at it, right? Like, is there ever a ah risk of going through your head? Like you don't want to shake the boat too much for years. PUBG was king. Fortnite came in was king. And it didn't seem like anyone else can create a battle Royal game. Then Apex came in and put their foot down and made a statement. And then you have games that come out like Concord that just don't hit the mark.
00:36:36
Speaker
right at launch, right? like Is there ever a risk like we can't take too much risk here? Or do you think the player base now that it's stabilized, for lack of a better words, is willing to take a little bit of a chance?
00:36:48
Speaker
um
00:36:51
Speaker
I don't know. What I can tell you is you have to be fast, you always have to be evolving, right? How much risk you're willing to take, I think there's a lot of variables there. um you know As an independent, I would argue you need to take more risk because you need to stick out more. As a publicly traded company, um you know your risk is is valued against stock price and in in in revenue data and all that sort of stuff.
00:37:17
Speaker
So i think I think it's really, really variable, and I think it's very situational of how much risk you're willing to take on to shake up the formula. um But I will say the the industry moves so fast, you don't want to be left behind. So you always have to be looking. You have to have some amount of risk. You have to stick your neck out sometimes and try something new and something different.
00:37:39
Speaker
One of the beauties of LiveOps is you can always pull it back. You can change it. It's not like ah games 15 years ago where you put you print something on a disk and that's what it was and it's like, oh, shoot, we screwed up level four. While you screw up level four, well, you change it. You change it in LiveOps. Those are things you can do now. so I think that does mitigate some of the rest and it does allow us to kind of stretch a little bit further. um But in general, just always be moving, always be looking for how do you improve.
00:38:09
Speaker
What game are you playing right now? um What am I playing right now? um i'm I'm actually playing, ah I have small children, so my console gaming time is severely cut down. So I'm playing a lot of mobile games right now. I am a big fan of Supercell. I'm playing Squad Busters right now quite a bit, because I get these little like five minute increments between kind of hanging out with my children. um My kids are just getting in the gaming, so i' I'm doing and playing games like Fall Guys, which is super fun to play as a family. I play Fortnite with them. We love just doing silly things in those levels. And then also too, i like i've I've just recently got in the race sim, so I'm a big fan of Forza Motorsport.
00:38:49
Speaker
Awesome. All great games. I have been my six-year-old. We've been playing Lego Marvel Super Heroes. He's been loving that game. And I just did, again, with Josh from Pyramid Lake Games. They're making a game. The floor is what? And that looks like it could be a fun family game for everyone to kind of get together. It reminds me of a Fusion Frenzy, if you remember that, from yeah days past. Yep, definitely.
00:39:10
Speaker
There was a something that I or my audience wanted to read or learn and consume. Is there a piece of content that you've looked over time and said this was a very helpful thing to kind of help me get to where I am?
00:39:22
Speaker
but so That's a good question. I don't think it's anything game related. um I listen to a Prof G and Pivot podcast, which is really about economies um and in markets and all that sort of stuff. I try and really diversify what I look at. And when I read, I think Simon Sinek is a leadership genius. It just digests anything he puts out there.
00:39:46
Speaker
So try try and look for those things sorts of things. um i think I think my path has always been leadership, so I really have kind of gravitated to that. But the other thing that I'll say is like, expose yourself to how other industries are working,
Learning and Innovation from Other Industries
00:40:01
Speaker
right? I'm i'm super fascinated by AI right now and how the AI market is kind of growing. and and How do you product product ties is something like AI? I think there's lessons learned there. um When I look at what Netflix is doing with gaming, is there something we can learn there on the EA side or the console side? I think I think trying to like really broaden what you look at rather than kind of stay in your lane, because I think if you stay in your lane, you're going to get a lot of copy and repeat. I think it's important that that you kind of expand your vision. to other industries and other markets that that that you might be able to pull bits and pieces from it and add it to the to what you're working on. Yeah, we saw a video from EA, actually, not that a couple of weeks ago, I think, where I had a text to game concept that they were building out and they were kind of showing a live on the fly of kind of saying, build this, build that, give us these types of guns. And it was fascinating. And, you know, I always think the human element will be necessary in building a game. You need that.
00:40:59
Speaker
personal touch, right? But seeing how more people can start to kind of create their visions with an easier starting platform, I think is a fantastic concept. and And it'll be very interesting to see where AI can take the industry. And again, I'm a big proponent that humans will always need to be in the loop to build this stuff out. But I think it's a fascinating way for people like myself, we don't know how to code to like, say, Hey, I want to try this.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, i' I'm hopeful and optimistic. AI does two things. I think number one, hopefully allows us to create bigger games and better games. i think I think what EA did with college football and doing all the stadiums and all that sort of stuff and using AI to help build out those stadiums. I think that's a really good example and I think that's the tip of the iceberg. of how games can become bigger right um ah while keeping costs relatively effective. I think the other thing that I'm hoping to do is actually on the other scale, it allows really small teams to do really creative, really high-end things. I think when you see small-scale games right now, you can tell it's a small-scale game. And I think what AI will do is it'll help blur that edge, if you will, of like, oh, well, maybe it's a team of 12 people, but you're creating a full AAA title. Maybe the tools will get to that level.
00:42:08
Speaker
um I think when I look down the road, those are the things I'm really excited about.
AI's Impact on Game Creation
00:42:14
Speaker
I agree. And that's actually one of the main reasons I'm excited about MDiv. I think there's a lot of studios in the Midwest that are using Unreal and as well as a lot of the tools built into Unreal to help them build things quickly, scale quickly with a minimal team. And I think those are kind of that's the beauty of the industry and where we're going. right It's becoming easier for creators to create and allowing more people to build out bigger projects. yep Yeah, yeah ah just just relating it to other industries, look at movies, TV, and film. right you know The iPhone is amazing right now. You can literally shoot a movie on an iPhone right now. Just think about about how that kind of just it puts creation in so many people's hands that like ah you no longer need a 10,000-dollar red camera to create a film. that That's incredible to me. Just digest that for a second.
00:42:58
Speaker
It's going to be a fantastic future and I'm excited to see what comes. But Ryan, I'm going to let you continue here with your Friday. I appreciate everything you've spoken about. I think you have one of the coolest jobs in the world. You got to build a studio, which is awesome. ah You got to put your visions into into working reality, which is awesome. ah Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm excited to meet you at MDev and see you at MDev. But before we go, is there anything you want to talk about or share with the audience?
00:43:24
Speaker
No, just ah thank you for listening. It's been a pleasure being here. And go play some Apex Legends. so Go play some Apex Legends. We will have a we'll have some yeah URLs to respawn site, information about Ryan on our Player Engaged website. He will be a speaker at MDev on November 8, so check it out. And again, Ryan, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you have a great rest of your day. You too. Thanks a lot, Greg.