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Episode 46: Adam Saltsman (Finji)
280 Plays14 days ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Adam Saltsman, the co-founder of Finji and the developer of CORGISPACE. Topics include the development of CORGISPACE, game design, despair about the industry, and PICO-8.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakknack and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Saran from Drakknack and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Drakknack at Drakknack and Friends.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hi there. Thank you again for once again stepping up for a couple episodes while I was either out or sick. Today we're joined by Adam Saltzman, who you may know from his work at Finji, ah his work on Pico8 games, or going all the way back, his work on games like Cannabalt. How are you doing today?
00:00:53
Speaker
I'm
Adam Saltzman's Background and Experience
00:00:54
Speaker
doing great. Thanks for having me. Awesome. So outside of the mini intro I just gave you, can you introduce yourself? i Yeah, happily, yeah. I'm Adam Saltzman, and um I'm the ah co-founder of the boutique indie developer publisher, Finji. We've published games like Tunic and Night in the Woods and Wilmot Works It Out and most recently Corgi Space.
00:01:21
Speaker
And yeah, I've just ahve been making games in different ways for years. probably around 20-ish years now, and designed some pretty big games like Overland and also designed some extremely tiny games.
00:01:37
Speaker
And i think I think that's most of it. um Yeah,
Creating Diverse and Approachable Games
00:01:41
Speaker
let's do that. let's let's let's We'll say that's it. Yeah, and like obviously the Corgi Space Collection and the Pico-8 games involved is a big part of why I invited you on now. But there's there's so many things that you've worked on that are really interesting, a lot of them really, really thinky.
00:02:00
Speaker
like i don't I don't think we'll get much into Overland on this call. but like Oh, sure. I'm curious, like is there anything non-Corgi Space you want to like start out on that like feels like ah it would be a meaty,
00:02:14
Speaker
game or project to like dig into before we move on to Kogi Space stuff yeah I'm wondering about like that made me try to that made me try to think up like what what was like the first like puzzle game that I that I yeah boy I guess like forgetting forgetting puzzle games like do you see yourself as having like a through line through that 20-year career Hmm.
00:02:39
Speaker
like We went from like one meaty question to like a... Alan is... allen is on This is perfect. This is great. um I would say... I mean...
00:02:53
Speaker
And partly I'm asking because like, i think we this came up on a previous conversation like a while ago on the podcast. It's like, I don't, I feel like I, my career is like very much in phases.
00:03:03
Speaker
Like there's a bit of a three line, but like what I'm doing now is so different to what i was doing five years ago. It's so different to what I was doing five years before that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think like it's weird because like i I do think one of my through lines is I like to make lots of different kinds of things. like I'm super interested in all the different ways that games manifest.
00:03:27
Speaker
um like I love... and think my game of the year for this year was Clues by Sam, but the other game I've been playing a lot for the last month especially is Quake 1.
00:03:41
Speaker
And I feel like if I was putting games on some kind of spectrum, like Quake 1 would be on one very far end, and Clues by Sam would probably be on the other end. um But I think they're both really beautiful designs that actually have a lot in common. And like I guess ah one through line might be, i really like working on games that are a little bit different from games that I've worked on before.
00:04:05
Speaker
I think there's a bunch of like ah the, the Bellatro development diary document that was going around had a really good note that I felt like summarized and sort of an attitude that I've always had, which is, i'm going to paraphrase maybe poorly, but like reinventing the wheel is fun because you learn more about wheel making that way or something.
00:04:32
Speaker
And so yeah, I've made like sort of strategy games and arcade games and puzzle games. And, ah but on all of those, ah the other recurring interest is sort of like not accessibility as, as it would now be known, but like approachability.
00:04:50
Speaker
so you know, if I'm working on an action game, I'm really curious about like, can I boil this down in a way where it gets more approachable than it might be under other circumstances? Or if I'm working on a story game, can the content of that story be more relatable or more approachable than it might be in um than might be sort of standard in video games or something like that. And
Exploring Unique Game Designs
00:05:15
Speaker
so I think like liking to explore game making, making games in different genres, seeing how they work, trying to understand how they work, um understand like how what of designers that I admire in those spaces, like what have they been doing? Or like how do their brains work?
00:05:33
Speaker
i But then um a little bit wanting to like add something to those spaces that is has some kind of like, I guess, like accommodating or welcoming.
00:05:47
Speaker
element so that maybe people who maybe, maybe in addition to me, it's sort of, maybe they're like related, like it's a little bit like I want to go in and learn about how this kind of game works or what makes this kind of game fun.
00:06:00
Speaker
And then, but once I've learned that, or I have that experience, like I like the process of learning what's fun about this kind of game. And then I want that to be in the game. So I want i want somebody else to pick it up and like explore it with me.
00:06:17
Speaker
Right, and you you want as many people as possible to be able to go on that journey. Yeah, yeah, I think so. And like there's also, i i might be elevating something that's actually a little bit cheap, which is just like maybe like my parents were not super appreciative of video games when I was a kid, so I just want to like show that they're actually interesting, or um ay maybe it's just a normal, like I hope people like what I make.
00:06:45
Speaker
ah But i i and I think more to approachability than I hope people like this. Yeah. ah Like it's. ah And how do you balance approachability in concept versus approachability and execution?
00:07:03
Speaker
ah i I think they're super, super linked. And I i suspect there are. there's some kind of example of some way in which these things can be not true, but maybe that stuff is closer to like exceptions that prove rules. But I am kind of convinced that like approachability in implementation is very related to approachability from a player point of view.
00:07:31
Speaker
um And one reason that I've gotten very aggressive about trying to, program things in a overly simplistic way, maybe, or something like that, as I think that does affect, I think it's related to what players see and feel and hear or can be.
00:07:52
Speaker
I know that I'm sure there are examples of like, ah and yeah know including big games that I've worked on where it's like, oh, it's really, really tons. It was super huge mega work to make this feature or idea make sense to a stranger or something.
00:08:06
Speaker
But um I think maybe that's a that's not a great or always sensible approach. And I think there are these other approaches where like, simplicity or elegance in the way something is implemented and presented, that can be connected to like simplicity and elegance from a player point of view.
00:08:28
Speaker
um i'm very
Designing Puzzle Games: Challenges and Processes
00:08:31
Speaker
convinced that like playing games and designing games is not super different. from each other in some important ways.
00:08:40
Speaker
And that maybe like pretending that there's more distance there than there actually is is like not helping us make better games necessarily. Is that a weird answer? I don't know if that's a No, I mean, it's ah it's a very introspective answer, but I wouldn't call it a weird answer.
00:08:57
Speaker
Fair. So you you said that you you like making games that are different to each other. um And one one thing that made me think is like, should we be surprised that you've made so many puzzly Pico 8 games?
00:09:13
Speaker
um Maybe. um it's definitely been on my mind. And like I've tried. um the question you asked at the top that i started thinking about was like, um I think because I love puzzle games and I've really historically kind of struggled to figure out where I fit in on that. um So I made like an iPad game with some cool folks called Hundreds.
00:09:40
Speaker
um which is kind of like an arcade puzzle game, sort of. um And it took a while to figure out, like, oh, where do my sensibilities or the things that come naturally to me, like, suit this game design or or or over like have a good Venn diagram kind of overlap with this kind of game design? um And then I made another kind of puzzly game called Cubic Space, which was kind of riffing on another friend's base design.
00:10:09
Speaker
um But it just still like it never came super naturally, I think, or I didn't really understand how to do it So a little bit of PicoA is I think PicoA is reasonably well suited to this kind of thing. It's a little bit puzzle scripty in terms of its like affordances or what it, what's, what's super easy to do in PicoA is a little bit similar to what's, what puzzle script is designed to do.
00:10:36
Speaker
um and it's a little similar to what Bitsy is designed to do. um So I think a part of it is like, Oh, this stuff, this kind of thing is really easy to do in PicoA and really interesting and fun. um but a part of it feels like I got,
00:10:50
Speaker
um I feel like I got a hold of something in the puzzle space that, I felt like was a little bit underexplored and that was kind of like the hundred, like it's like well suited to me, which is like what I think of as like puzzle games where you're quote unquote allowed to quote unquote cheat.
00:11:11
Speaker
yeah So I think that's definitely a through lines for a lot of your Pico 8 stuff, like not everything, but ah ah but I think the games where you've explored that have been some of the games from this series that I've enjoyed with and clicked with the most.
00:11:26
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. they're They're fun. And it's a place where I feel like, and we've we've talked about this before, but where like, um you know, like when I look at like your work or Michael Brough's work or Zach Barth's work, there is like an intricacy or a, there's a quality there that I can't, I don't think it's a bad thing, but like, I just can't get there.
00:11:52
Speaker
I can't design things that way, but those are my favorite puzzle games. So there's been this funny thing of going like, I i admire these things so much. it would It seems like it would be so fun to do things like this to do.
00:12:08
Speaker
Cause in my mind, they're essentially level design games. Like you make these, you make these systems and the systems have little implications, but then you're mostly doing level design and you're exploring the systems and you're learning about the systems.
00:12:21
Speaker
um But there's the intricacy thing that's a little bit beyond me. And, and that I also like, I think as a, know, as a player versus as a designer, I'm thrilled by different things.
00:12:33
Speaker
And like, as a player, I'm thrilled by this intricacy. And as a designer, I mostly find it intimidating or not terribly thrilling for me to pursue So was like, what is a, what is the thing that I do find thrilling that maybe I could contribute or something? And, and I do think it to, it to some degree, it's this kind of like these, like these indulgent um I think of them as indulgent anyway, these sort of indulgent puzzle games where it's like, Ooh, in this one you get to cheat or in this one you get to break the rules or in this one, you know, you can be kind of sloppy you
00:13:09
Speaker
or experimental or something. yeah and And designing like that means that that you, less of the weight is on pre-designed puzzles, because even if there's like pre-designed puzzles for a short time at start, quickly you like end up in a space where you don't need pre-designed solutions. You can just like explore yes through a space.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always these little thresholds where it's like, I do want to be very generally quite particular across those first few level designs about like, just how much stuff is here? How much stuff is there to notice? Like, what is the player's brain potentially busy doing? And I'll be really, really careful about how many of those pieces i put in, or I'll try. ah i will try to be very careful about how many of those pieces I put in. um and and But eventually that'll reach a threshold where it's like, okay, now it feels like me, the designer and me, the player are exploring the systems at a very similar pace, kind of. like I'm genuinely, I'm thinking like, oh, what would what else what else would this imply? What else could you do with this? and
00:14:21
Speaker
The two more two more recent games, um Super Dust Settlers and Space Corgi 2, both had... um This was harder to do in both of those games than it's been in previous games.
00:14:33
Speaker
So I can't figure out, like, are they actually... Because they're ambitious in some ways, like Super Dust Settlers. What was harder about them? this going to sound sort of This may sound sort of silly, but more or less, um ah every every one of the puzzle games that I've been working on over the last year, year and a half, i sat down and designed essentially chronologically.
00:14:57
Speaker
like I just made level one, and then made level two, and then made level three, and then made level four, and so on and so forth until the game was done. And i mostly did not go, oh, this is a cool level, but it needs to be way later in the game.
00:15:10
Speaker
or um i've designed a level but it's really misleading to the player they were like these really straight shots uh and these last two felt more like um they were much trickier balances to strike for some reason and like you'd make you make them and then you go oh i need to add a level here or this level needs to go later Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I designed a level that I thought was fun and then just go like, oh, this needs to be like 10 levels later. I kind of wonder if part of that is like you've now made enough puzzle games that you are just getting better at a puzzle design and you can like see like, oh, yeah, this would obviously be a better game if I did this in a way that you weren't seeing for the earlier games.
00:15:53
Speaker
um Yeah, and they might be like they might be slightly more ambitious puzzles in some ways. like I feel like I was able, some of the not um not ambitious as in like better, but as in ah maybe a little more high concept where like ah maybe like a Sebastian's Quest or a Mole Mole or something are, I think, quite...
00:16:16
Speaker
um sort of like quite direct and have a lot of wiggle room in their designs for the most part. um By the time I got to like Space Corki 2, the concept started to be what if you could design puzzle levels that did not need undo at all? Can you design a whole puzzle game where you never do undo? You're putting constraints on the design that then make the puzzle design harder.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yes. and And so, and then, so like soft locks. I don't know if that aligns with the Corgi Space Manifesto. um It kind of doesn't. So the game I just
Corgi Space Principles and Prototyping
00:16:52
Speaker
finished, the game that I just made last weekend is a straight arcade game. There's no puzzles, no puzzle levels in it at all.
00:17:01
Speaker
I think partly as a sense of like, oh, I feel like I'm getting like Super Dust Settlers is the one, is the only game out of the 18 or 19 now, where by the end of working on it, I was like, I i don't want to work on it anymore. It's like too unwieldy.
00:17:18
Speaker
Like there's too many there's too many things going This is like a real there's like a real game where it would it needs like a bunch of QA or something. um and Yeah, I mean, i'm I'm really curious how much playtesting you do on these games.
00:17:32
Speaker
Generally, so little. um Usually, my 12-year-old will usually do a playthrough when I'm close to done. And I'll sometimes upload an early version to a couple of friends to check out.
00:17:45
Speaker
But mostly, mostly i just play them and play them and play them. um And it does create blind spots. both super So Super Dust Settlers shipped with a bunch of what my friend Rob has termed blue herrings.
00:17:58
Speaker
which is when you add something to your puzzle design that suggests the game might work a certain way, that it does not. And then the player like rolls that in as a foundational thought about how the game works, only to find out that they're just completely incorrect.
00:18:16
Speaker
I mean, it's i I love when games do that and intentionally pull the the rug on you on that. But it sounds like yeah you were doing it unintentionally. ah Yeah. and i And I think there's like we we were kind of breaking it up into these two separate ideas because there's one idea is like I have shown you i've I've introduced a system, but I've only shown you one side of it. So, for example, like.
00:18:41
Speaker
you know a system where if you push a crate, it'll slide in one direction, but actually on some surfaces it can change direction or something. So that's like, I've shown you one small piece, but then I've revealed all of this other stuff later um that like expands on that concept versus um like a super dust settlers s level design problem is in the tutorial levels that teach you play.
00:19:04
Speaker
um There were these... I essentially accidentally introduced prompts about... It's a game where you more or less you have to um plant trees to cover a level in trees.
00:19:16
Speaker
um But you can plant the trees wherever you want. And it's really important when you play the game that you can just kind of like shoot trees into the ground on any tile you choose. And the very first level, totally unbeknownst to me, had this kind of like strong psychological prompt to only place...
00:19:33
Speaker
new trees near trees that are already there, which completely undermined the way that you solve all the other tutorial puzzles that are intended to help you learn how this weird game works. i So it really got people off on the wrong foot, but in a way that wasn't fun. It was in a purely frustrating, baffling way. It's so early in the experience. You're kind of like...
00:19:59
Speaker
um breaking, like you ah you are making the tutorial not work for people, not teach things. Yes. Yeah. and in And in fact, teach the wrong things that then make the rest of the tutorial extra frustrating to do. Amazing. Yeah.
00:20:16
Speaker
Right? um So anyway, ah my friend Rob was calling those blue herrings just as like a way to talk about um stuff that we were seeing in a couple of other games that we were working on. and um But yeah, I think like accidentally making puzzles that are just like way too hard or letting these blue herrings in seems to be a little bit connected to like, oh, these games are either have more constraints or are genuinely are out on the edges of what Corgi space is supposed to accommodate.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, do you do you have the the one minute summary of the Corgi Space principles you are using to make these games? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So ah Corgi Space is my hopefully not yet obnoxious kind of ah manifesto or philosophy that ah it's it's worthwhile to make games that have short legs on purpose.
00:21:17
Speaker
um ah that there's a a format of game that I kind of came up on, which was like, like people might, I think people would recognize Corgi space games if I called them flash games. I'm just not making them in flash, you know, like you can make a game that has 20 levels you can play in like an hour or something. And it, but it's, it's not a demo or a tech demo or a jam game. It's like considered it's just short.
00:21:43
Speaker
but it's complete. Like you thought about all the pieces that are in it and you tried to make it fit good and and like, and it's thoughtful. And, you know, that, that comes from, you know, partly like my background as a pixel artist, where you would learn, like the thing you learn as a good pixel artist really early is like, well, you should make, make very small images with very few colors and just make sure that each pixel is set to the right color.
00:22:09
Speaker
That's really all you have to, that's all pixel art is about. You look at the grid, make sure every pixel is the is the right color. And each pixel, each color that each pixel is, is saying the thing that you mostly want it to say.
00:22:20
Speaker
And when i at least the the sort of mid 20th century ah writing teachers and like like sort of like the great great American writing teachers would you try to push people to do the same thing. They would say, if you want to be a great writer, write two or three pages, but every word is, is,
00:22:39
Speaker
considered and doing exactly what you want it to do um it's not kind of like close writing instead of close reading and um i think that flash game format or this corgi space space format is like really really good at that um it's a little bit like minimalism but the game itself doesn't have to come across as minimalist it's just it's just smaller overall And I really like the idea that you could, if you shrink it down like that, and either because you you have limited amount of free time or whatever, that it means you could think about things this way. So I try to think about the level design as if it's pixel art. Like this tile this tile is this or this tile is this.
00:23:22
Speaker
And that has a specific effect on the player. And I want to understand as good as I can, like if this, you know, if this crate is here instead of here, not just what does that do in terms of the mathematical solution to the puzzle, but what does that do aesthetically? How do you feel about that as a player? what is it?
00:23:41
Speaker
convince you might be possible or trick you into thinking you can't do, but in the good way, not the bad way. so I like that, but the, the, the working principles behind this, this whole enterprise are basically to do things that are easy and not obvious.
00:23:58
Speaker
Um, just cause that's fun. And um, i'm if i am feeling motivated enough to start a project just trying to learn to trust that that motivation or that idea is good but also assume that whatever my first attempt at prototyping it might be is probably going to have significant flaws um and just go in very eyes open about that and but go in knowing like the act of prototyping is going to inform or enlighten or expand on whatever that initial motivation was so like loving the prototypes i can't use because they teach me things and they're very communicative but also being very delighted to throw them in the garbage and replace them with something better um the arcade game that i just did last weekend was like i wanted to make a kind of a
00:24:52
Speaker
sort of ah ah like a Geometry Wars thing, but I didn't want to program any bullets. So I was like, how can you make a game like this without bullets? and And maybe it's like, oh, well, you're your life is constantly counting down. you have to dodge landmines or something and collect little HP pellets.
00:25:09
Speaker
and that's so it's kind of a And the obstacles might move around. So it's not really bullets. I don't have to code velocities or anything. um
Flexibility in Game Design Across Cultures
00:25:17
Speaker
But the the just the prototyping of that, the 15-minute version of that game, i sort of revealed the idea that, like oh, you don't need a health bar or a countdown. The level filling with obstacles gradually is a health bar and a countdown. That's not something I thought up. That's something that I observed in 15 minutes of badly written code.
00:25:37
Speaker
um And that's the spirit of Corgi Space stuff, I think, is both this weird mix of trying to be very technical and do this close reading and close writing, but also being a little bit loose and open to the things that i notice ah in the thing as it comes to life.
00:26:02
Speaker
um That was way over one minute, though. we won't We won't judge you on that. I'm curious, ah as you've been like identifying these principles and making games with these principles, have you started to also bring those to your larger projects that you're working on?
00:26:23
Speaker
ah Yes, but with varying degrees of success so far. the big The big one that we've been able to do something about right away, which is great, um but is is hard to do in various ways, is ah renewed appreciation for...
00:26:40
Speaker
like latency or turnaround time in development, which is like not a new idea, right? like It's like, oh, if it obviously, if you have an idea, but you can't see if it's good in the game or not for three months, that's a ah risk from a production standpoint or from a development standpoint or whatever. But I think this this work feels, to me, it feels like it's been it's very um it's it's made it kind of unavoidable or obvious that this is primarily a game design problem.
00:27:12
Speaker
Because if if the art of game design lives more in contributing something to something playable and then playing the thing and seeing how it works and responding to that, if that loop is where game design happens, then if your turnaround time is not good, then possibly in some very important ways, you're not doing game design anymore.
00:27:34
Speaker
you're sort of trying to do game design, but it's maybe it's not like a cosplaying game design, something. um There, there might be something like really big that's missing there. And I think the chief obstacle for that, I think is sort of like fidelity, audio fidelity, visual fidelity, physics system, complex animation systems, all of these things, all these fidelity things seem to be the chief ah remover of like ah the the thing that makes your turnaround times blow up, makes your latencies really expand. So where we're at on our bigger projects, some of that stuff isn't changeable at this point, really.
00:28:15
Speaker
um but And some of it is. So ah we're trying to go after the stuff that we can do something about to reintroduce game design into those parts of the game that we can get to and just kind of like making peace essentially with the parts of the game that we can't get to but also kind of thinking about like oh if if we are permitted to do another large project after this yeah can we approach it in a way where we could be more proactive or front-loaded or intelligent about ah taking this into account really early, like setting up these really weird, strong boundaries for the project that seem like production boundaries, but are about protecting the space to do game design on the project while you build it.
00:29:05
Speaker
Right, yeah, designing, like making games where structurally you still have room to make game design decisions throughout the entire thing, not just in the first six months.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly, exactly, um which I think is is hard to do. And I think i'm if i'm if I'm grossly generalizing and disregarding the many, many exceptions to this, I would say if I was looking at ah Western, especially American, alea big budget game production ah and comparing it to some of the standout Japanese AAA game production, um which again, this is a is a gross generalization, but essentially I think the way that you make a game like God of War versus the way that you make a game like Elden Ring, which both end up at the shelf at the same price and both look and are very expensive games, um I think one of them clearly...
00:29:59
Speaker
was helmed by a game design person who puts a certain amount of flexibility and adaptability and improvisation into the systems in the process. um Something like Elden Ring is clearly, if you have kit-based environment systems. You have you know props mashed into each other. You have these adaptive decal things.
00:30:25
Speaker
um And all of that presumably in service of i of this kind of game design. Build the space, plop some enemies into it, see what happens, move things around.
00:30:37
Speaker
um Where I think a ah God of War is much more fixed. ah and i i lacks the ability to sort of like do that kind of responsive capitalizing on game design opportunities throughout the production of the project.
00:30:58
Speaker
And I think they just end up having super different feel, you you know Yeah, but but even on these larger projects that have like a certain level of inflexibility built in,
00:31:09
Speaker
i like like when I reflect on the Corgi space ideas, it does feel like the idea of making decisions about what's what's easy and non-obvious feels feels like a concept that could work at a a large degree of scales.
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I think, um i again, like if I look at like stuff that FromSoft does or even like Death Stranding or something like that, I feel like on some level there's sort of doing that kind of design and then expensive things kind of get stapled onto it, but in a way that the the clusters of expensive stuff can be kind of moved around without um shattering the way the whole system is assembled. So they have that high level like creative direction or narrative direction choice that accommodates
00:32:08
Speaker
a certain amount of of flexibility. um And I think um my my assumption is that you have these you know project leads who come from a game design, game direction background, and they they've been getting to do this for 10 or 15, or in Kojima's case, like 30 years.
00:32:28
Speaker
um And they have come to really, really value the ability to do that. I'm projecting all of this onto them. I have no idea if any of this is actually true. um It just feels like a thing. and i i feel it But I feel like it does come from a little bit of a design nerd or a systems nerd background. And I think if you come from a writing background or an animation background, maybe this kind of thing ah you're used to addressing it in other ways. You address it in the storyboard phase or something like that. And you almost always end with a phase that is more locked in for a variety of reasons.
00:33:06
Speaker
um But I think it's cool that there are examples in our... commercial art of like maintaining this ability to improvise and react and respond to the things that you discover while you're making the thing. yeah And I guess think with this this, with this scale of game, there's also a degree of like,
00:33:27
Speaker
The person making those decisions needs to have the the clout to be able to say, like, no, we're we're making this decision and we don't know where it's going to go and it's a bit of a risk, but let's explore it without worrying that their boss is going to say, what? you You're doing that at this stage in the project? No, you've got to be just working towards shipping. or Or the people that work for them who expect a certain amount of clarity and simplicity and predictability in the kind of work they do, ah like a normal person would want, anticipate that that's going to be something that happens on the project.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, as a producer, I just cannot imagine working on AAA game with hundreds of millions of dollars and not sticking to the GDD at some point. like Basically, once you get, let's say, three months into full production out of pre-production, ah like i don't know. my My personal risk tolerance is like, you gotta go into a gray box real fast and prove that this is gonna...
00:34:33
Speaker
significantly improve the project. Yeah. Yeah. And like, so on on some level, like, I don't even know, like when I talk about these things, like I value these things or I think these things are important. I think it's just like, it's one of these things that just inevitably has to be kind of like distinct from, you know, and is practical to accomplish at all levels with no additional risk or something like that.
00:34:55
Speaker
Part of
Real Game Design: Playability and Evolution
00:34:56
Speaker
my, but one, I do think you can do more of this than it seems. Yeah. I think people are are, again, for understandable reasons, kind of like overly scared or overly risk averse about this kind of thing, because the payoff can be so big. As soon as you're allowed to do game design on a project that already has assets,
00:35:14
Speaker
Like that's the funnest, the, you know, the art is giving you ideas about things that you can do with the game design and that spontaneity or that, cause you're, you're, as soon as there's assets in there, as soon as you're, as soon as you're mid production, you're finally seeing the thing, the way players are going to see it.
00:35:33
Speaker
Like you're finally painting, you're finally writing like production. can respond to what the game is and what it it wants to be. Yeah. And so that's that is scary. like so sir I 1000% agree. It's scary to go like, oh, this makes it clear that if you know we do that if we make this change and this change, it'll be extra cool and fun. And these things were not apparent until it looked enough like a game to see that or understand that about it.
00:36:03
Speaker
Like that is terrifying, but that is also where many, many of the things that we understand to be great games or beautiful games emerge at that point.
00:36:14
Speaker
like Oh, I mean, 100% agree. And I yeah play a lot of AAA games developed across the board just because, I don't know, I've always felt like it's an understated part of my job to be able to think about and talk about like where the industry is like and like where things are going. And so...
00:36:36
Speaker
I will say a lot of the times when I see say in Western AAA things that you're like you're talking about are sequels in the same engine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So one example that I think of, and Alan laughs because these games show up on Steam as puzzle games because the Steam tagging is, let's call it, not optimized, is the Star Wars ah Jedi games, the Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor. Oh, right. ah So the first the the first game is like, and I want to be clear, I'm about to like dig on this a little bit. I really, really genuinely love both games. um
00:37:17
Speaker
And Respawn is one of the great Western studios. Shame about EA, but... Generally. So ah Jedi Fallen Order is a little bit of like Souls-perry combat mixed with a Metroid Prime foundation of like world design and level design in areas. And that's like really cool. And it became so clear playing that game that the actual coolest thing about this game ended up of being a lot of the cool player locomotion that you were able to do because um Star Wars game, Jedi, he can do...
00:37:53
Speaker
weird things like double jumps and wall runs because he's a video game character and a Jedi. And they're like, yeah, it's the force, whatever. yeah So Jedi Survivor has like some of the best content in that game. The sequel is there are these like quote unquote force vision challenge rooms where he'll just sit down and meditate and imagine like a void that is just a bunch of floating platforms and like really tight platforming challenges and like some like really tight puzzles. And those are by far the best things about the game because it just feels like three designers were able to play with all the locomotion systems and they were just told, go over there and just make really cool game experiences and we'll find somewhere to put them.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like yeah, I think Respawn stands out to me as one of these like kind of like exceptions that proves the rule also, because they did this with Titanfall 2 also. like That's a super creative, super kind of virtuoso AAA game that is obviously made by people who are playing the game and going like, oh, what if you could... Right, that's that's really present in it.
00:39:02
Speaker
um Which again, like I think um you know it's hard to do that on a Titanfall 1 and they have the space to do that on a Titanfall 2 and that game really shines for that. yeah But yeah, I think there is they're just yeah there's something about getting to do getting to do real game design when the game kind of looks and feels like a game already.
00:39:20
Speaker
um that
Balancing Design and Production Constraints
00:39:21
Speaker
is the most potent stuff and you know i have a predilection for this to be clear because like i came up in modding and that's all modding is it's like here's all the here's all the pieces what does it make you think of the the the shortcut to being in that place Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. um and And we get some really beautiful stuff. Like you get Dota and Counter-Strike because there was a bunch of stuff sitting around that was already made and it got people's brains kind of going.
00:39:49
Speaker
and And folk game creation and like normal historical game creation. So like, you know, soccer association football or whatever, or, you know even Go,
00:40:00
Speaker
are games that evolved and changed and were reactive after their basic building blocks were already down. So if your if your project is stop everybody from being terrified and reassure everyone that you have stable creative direction, I think that is a hard and risky thing to do. But if you are...
00:40:18
Speaker
trying, if you're, if you're really genuinely committed to the idea of like, I mean, true Scotsman crap here or whatever, but like if the, I think the historical trend for things that are, that are deeply, deeply beautiful tends to be,
00:40:35
Speaker
rooted in design decisions that happen after the game is done. And this is just a hard thing about the work that we do. But if you're making if you're making dinky little Flash games, you can do that if you want.
00:40:47
Speaker
You can make all the art for your game and then make the game and it's fine. Yeah, and I... I love that, but it's also like it's a hard thing to talk to players about because a lot of people on like, so God forbid, Steam forums, one of the worst places will just say like, well, why didn't they just do this? And it's like, yeah, congrats. You are they guaranteed had the same thought because you're looking at the finished product.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you've been looking at for five minutes. They definitely, the developers also looked at it for at least five minutes and probably thought that would be cool and then couldn't do it for some many, many reason. Yeah. um one One thing that, so ah my favorite franchise is a RPG franchise in Japan. It's the Legend of Heroes Trails series. So like Trails in the Sky, Trails of Cold Steel, et cetera. um Those games take longer to localize than develop.
00:41:44
Speaker
ah because that though they are writing-led. And by writing-led, I mean they write multiple novels and just have them as in-game collectibles. Wow. ah Like it's just writing, writing, writing, writing. writing And it's yeah like basically they just write directly into the game code.
00:42:00
Speaker
And I'm like, and also it's like an annualized franchise of like 50 to 60 hour long RPGs that are writing lead. And I look at this and I'm like more than almost any franchise. I just want to spend one day in their studio and just watch what their development flow is.
00:42:19
Speaker
Right. Like what how the hell do you manage this? um Well, it's funny because I like I I'm I'm coming around to the idea that actually like writing and writing is kind of similar to game design where it it it gets a lot of the same kind of like flourishes and benefits from kind of knowing knowing what the game already is or already looks like this can respond to those things can be really adaptive and.
00:42:48
Speaker
in this sound I don't know if this is... This is not intended to sound dismissive, but I think writing and game design compared to almost anything else that you can put in a game are just cheap. It's just like yeah writer li it yeah like a good writer and good game designer can write and design so much stuff.
00:43:08
Speaker
And i don't know that the short version of this whole thread is essentially, um i i think there's a non-zero chance that we do game production essentially backwards. And I think there should just be a phase of the game making where you make all of the items and like guys know,
00:43:25
Speaker
tiles and all of that stuff and then you turn all of that over to a game designer and a writer to play with hmm that's interesting i'm not sure i completely agree because in the games i've made i've definitely found that like the specific game design constraints of something affect how it needs to look hmm ah And like, if you just had like, oh, I've got this thing, but like I cannot affect anything about how it looks or sounds, then that would be kind of awkwardly constraining in other ways. um Yeah, it has it has drawbacks, definitely. Like, and its it is it is also a semi-absurd thing that I just made up just now. Right, I mean... But but yeah, like i don't i don't knows I have a thing like that in my head often because I think it's one way of sort of like trying to get at you know very real production questions that do affect these larger scale projects. Certainly the inverse, which is how a lot of games work, of you design it and then you start making the content look pretty and then you can't touch anything. That doesn't work, especially for public games. but like it's yeah it It can work, but like it it's so constraining that it...
00:44:39
Speaker
often
Alan Hazelden's Career Reflections
00:44:40
Speaker
negatively affects the quality of the game. Yeah. And I think the you know the reality is I think a bunch of us have landed in some kind of weird middle ground where we do some design and some art and then do some more design and then do some more art and then do a thing. And you end up maybe like segueing from a more design-led thing to something that ends a little bit more content-led, maybe on average, something like that.
00:45:04
Speaker
Well, From there, is there anything that you want to ask us? Yeah, actually, like, um Alan, you mentioned earlier that you think your career has been going in phases, and I was curious to hear more about that.
00:45:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, um i would say phases so far have been game jam phase, where I was just ah making making bad games, ah lots of them in Flash,
00:45:35
Speaker
turning from like a a baby game designer into somebody who's like capable of making things that are even vaguely interesting. um And then had a phase of making these small indie projects ah like Sockbond, A Good Snow is Hard to Build, Cosmic Express, games made with basically no budget, um games where it's just a few people and ah we're able to like work either part-time or full-time but like not really expecting a lot of ah return from it. Like was a lot of this time i was,
00:46:12
Speaker
I quit my job and i was like, well, I've left this job and I'm going to make games and eventually I will run out of money and I'll have to get another job. But for the meantime, I'm happy just making stuff. um And then we've got Monster Expedition, which was like a real game with a real budget and ah all of the additional production and interpersonal and biz devs.
00:46:42
Speaker
headaches that comes along with that. um But also came with like a ah level of ah success and reach that I hadn't hit before.
00:46:53
Speaker
But also burnt me out in such a way that I wasn't ready to make a bunch of games immediately after that. And so then I pivoted into the publishing and support phase where I was just like identifying other people's projects and figuring out how to help them make them better or bring them to more people.
00:47:13
Speaker
And then I was hoping that this new phase that we're currently in would be the phase of balancing publishing and ah development. And it's kind of, jury is still out on whether that's going to be the new phase or whether the new phase is going to be doubling down on publishing and like going really heavy. on um supporting other people and just like maximizing the number of um maximizing the impact, which I don't think by just doing a lot of internal development maximizes the number of people that we can help.
00:47:50
Speaker
Hmm. Right, right, right, right.
00:47:55
Speaker
So, yeah, I like right now, I feel like it is a kind of inflection point for what the next five years is going to be. And we haven't figured out what the next five years is going to look like yet. Hmm.
00:48:07
Speaker
I mean, but that this is actually something I was curious to chat with you about. um It's like you're actually in a very similar place to me in that you run a publisher.
00:48:21
Speaker
a company that also makes its own games and you're heavily involved with both the creative mentorship for the games that you publish and with the creative direction on the games you develop and you're making games on the side.
00:48:37
Speaker
And like, those are like, how how do you juggle that?
00:48:42
Speaker
Uh, some of it is easier than it sounds. Some of it is harder than it sounds, um, by a measure. um it's one of those things that I think like, so ah I would say like the, the little games for me is, are kind of important to set aside because those are kind of a pastime, like the same, the same part of my life that would go to like,
00:49:06
Speaker
um reading books watching movies i don't know ah doing uh crosswords or sudokus or something it's that that part is going into these games and it feels the same way like if i'm making a little game if i'm making a corgi space game it is solidly past time i'm amusing myself um ah And I'm using myself in a specific way that's a little bit, you know, introspective or something like, but, you know, I might as well be drawing or playing piano or I don't i don't know what. Like there, it's ah it's a way you know,
00:49:43
Speaker
ah spending some time doing something where maybe like I get a little better at an art form that I like, or I get to introspect about an art form that I like, or both or something ideally. um And then like
Balancing Development and Publishing Roles
00:49:58
Speaker
I put them up on a webpage somewhere. It's fine. um So that to me, those are kind of like,
00:50:04
Speaker
Those are separate, like, yeah except for the fact that, like, I'm introspecting about the art form that is also the thing that I do for my job, I guess. um But the balancing development and publishing, I think, is just one of those things that if if there are no storms ah brewing, then it's essentially kind of it's kind of fine. It's kind of manageable. Like, you do end up spending a lot of... You you you have your producer hat on a lot.
00:50:35
Speaker
good chunk of your week, you're functionally more of a producer than a game designer. That's just that's just what you do. that's your You're using your design brain to solve try to solve production problems. And i think the problem is if if there is a storm on either side, either you've got a development struggle or you have a publishing struggle, on some level, you just have to be honest and be like,
00:50:56
Speaker
This thing is not designed to allow me to be both a designer and a producer and be in crisis management. As soon as crisis management enters the picture, this like delicate balance does not exist anymore. Now
Industry Challenges and Future Directions
00:51:08
Speaker
I'm only a producer and design responsibilities are going to suffer and or the crisis management will also take over the producer responsibilities and those will suffer.
00:51:18
Speaker
So that's how it's felt to me over the last few years, at least. but um Have you gotten better at avoiding those crises or mitigating them? I'm going to say no.
00:51:30
Speaker
Damn it. was hoping you could just tell me the secret. ah Every... I mean... We mostly haven't had the same crisis twice, but I think the world has ah has a magnificent capacity to manifest sort of new crises you couldn't have previously imagined.
00:51:50
Speaker
And it's just not realistic to assume that you'll have the... ah the playbook for how to how to navigate that every time. think it's just tricky.
00:52:01
Speaker
ah You mentioned a thing earlier that is like reflective of how we make these decisions or decide to try to keep doing things a certain way, which is is kind of a utilitarian thing. perspective of where do we fit in as an entity that maybe does some good for people who, you know, make art or tell stories or whatever.
00:52:22
Speaker
And, you know, if we look at like our history and where we've been effective and what we've been able to help with, we can kind of go like, oh, well, You know, there's certain kind of like marketing and PR things where we can be helpful and we've done a lot of launch management. So maybe we can be helpful there.
00:52:37
Speaker
And a lot of that stuff kind of falls on the publishing side. But in the US, s especially, you know, being able to have full-time staff that can get access to, at least for now, ah ah the the real kinds of health insurance is ah is a big deal.
00:52:51
Speaker
um So a certain amount of like full-time staff, whether that's on the publishing side or on the development side, you know that That seems like a ah good way to be of of use, I guess. um And in a certain amount of spite-based ah motivation in terms of like there's a lot of conventional wisdom about how you can and can't run a business. And that you know if you want to really run a business, you that you have to be...
00:53:19
Speaker
essentially cutthroat and immoral in some way. And certainly, you know capitalism appears to reward that kind of behavior. um But like can you can you functionally exist and treat people well and make things that are good and get sleep still?
00:53:34
Speaker
um i think trying to do that and trying to find a way to do that is pretty interesting and worthwhile goal.
00:53:45
Speaker
Even if sometimes what I really want out of that is to say like to the people advocating for the alternative, you're wrong.
00:53:58
Speaker
Look. Yeah. That's America and capitalism and all of this. all All of pretty much all of the things. And it is, I will say like the other thing that's, that's tricky in the developing and publishing thing that's i've been on my mind a lot. um Both Becca and I talk about frequently and have for a couple of years now is, you know, if if you're a commercial game designer, to some degree, your fate is intertwined with the, you know, decisions made by these big online digital storefronts.
00:54:27
Speaker
And we've we've really we've had great partnership and experience with itch.io. It's just not, for most games, most of the time, that's not going to be a revenue source that sustains you as a commercial developer yet.
00:54:40
Speaker
um Kind of wish it was. Amazing amazing platform, wonderful storefront. um But otherwise, we're kind of a little bit at the mercy of these larger, more established commercial stores. And...
00:54:51
Speaker
you know we're in a For a while, we kind of felt really confident that there was there was a way to navigate that. It wasn't like we have leverage. you know like we're We're mice and they're elephants, but we know maybe like the treats that the elephants like and we know how to not get stepped on. So we can kind of like navigate and engage with this in a way that allows us to...
00:55:16
Speaker
um also thrive. Because we're just mice. We don't need that much. like We don't need elephant levels of food. We just need a little bit of thing. And maybe the and and you know elephant is useful and we're useful. There's like a sort of like a vaguely symbiotic relationship going on there. um And a lot of that had to do, I think, with the idea that there were kind of these prominent creative voices at some of these digital stores or publishing big distribution consoles, you know, storefronts, whatever.
00:55:46
Speaker
Um, because, ah it's, it's entertainment and the model for entertainment for a long time has been that you have sort of badly paid people with really good taste, making really good calls about the kinds of general is more or less making good calls about the kinds of things that,
00:56:03
Speaker
the storefront should throw their weight behind because they are interesting or pretty or, or whatever. um And i think across the board, at least in the U S you know, there's been this, this, this rapid um adoption of sort of um you know, algorithms and spreadsheets making all of those decisions.
00:56:24
Speaker
i And so our kind of, Our mouse bargain with the elephant people has always been something like, we will bring you some we will bring you these exceptional things. We will either find them or make them ourselves, and we will make sure that they are done and we'll make sure they work well. And then you can you know sort of This this thing being this this beautiful, exceptional thing that doesn't look like other things. And and it's win win. You get to look how cool that makes you look.
00:57:00
Speaker
And, you know, and we get to make another one, which is all that we're trying to do most of the time. um But it does seem like the what what that is or what what is being sort of like valued or looked for there is um that That step isn't there. It doesn't feel to us as as much like we can always just kind of you know walk in and say, like we have something really cool. You can count on it being done. And it's one of the coolest things that'll come out this year.
00:57:31
Speaker
there's gonna be a lot of enthusiasm and financial support to help complete that or help present that. um But I don't, we're not in an era where that's a a thing ah really in the way that it was, you know, for maybe the middle 10 years of my career or something.
00:57:48
Speaker
And that I think is, that is a hard sort of an industry reality to sit with when you're thinking about the good you do as a developer, the good you do as a publisher, I think.
00:58:01
Speaker
Yeah, it would be it would be nice if exceptional quality went further. yeah or Yeah, because like I don't think it's... um I mean, the the risk is it's going like, well, the games that I work on are extra good and everybody should be free. Yeah, I mean, how how many times have we been in ah meetings internally about like, so what sets Draktonik games apart from other puzzle games? And we're like, uh...
00:58:32
Speaker
Alan's really good at puzzle design. Yeah. Well, and like, cause there was, there, there kind of was, there was a, you know, there was, there was at least a decade where it was like, Oh, you know, this is the really good stuff and it's worth,
00:58:48
Speaker
you know, supporting or putting a spotlight on because players on the platform it's not like they're, but we're being picky or snobby about it. It's just like, this is great.
00:58:58
Speaker
This is a great game. We know this is a great game. People who know what they're talking about, you know, again, not like, you know, not being snobs, not being sommeliers about this stuff, but just like, this is a cool game and that's, that's, and this is a game store. yeah,
00:59:14
Speaker
those things go together really good. um but i think we're, you know, we're, and we're definitely, we've been in a different era for a while and it's definitely harder to navigate.
00:59:26
Speaker
Not when you're assuming, well, it's a good game and therefore it'll be easy to make money with it or something, or this is a good team. So it'll be easy to be profitable or something like that, but more just like that, that, um,
00:59:39
Speaker
The idea of the value, there is no value proposition to have anymore because the only value proposition is do you already have 100,000 players and a system for extracting money from them?
00:59:57
Speaker
Which isn't really a value proposition. That's just saying we want it to already be making money and then we also get the money. Yeah, I mean, i we'll We'll wrap up after this, but I just saw the most damning ah headline yesterday, which is that Fortnite is cracking down on user-generated content that sells spins of the gut of the prize wheel.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, that's where we're at, huh? That's where we're at. Yeah, and like and I also, like, I don't necessarily want to advocate for, you know, you know what would serve our art form the best is some kind of, like, gatekeeping clique of, like, ah cultural somethings that only work for giant corporations deciding what's good. We just need the perfect gatekeepers and then everything will be fine. That's that's all we need.
01:00:57
Speaker
go back to Steve Greenlight. No, um... Yeah. Yeah. So like, um i you know, and there's, there are some ways where it's like, well, if, you know, if the game is popular, the game is popular, that's as good of an indicator as anything. But I think there's a certain kind of game where like, where you want to take certain risks or you want to count on,
01:01:18
Speaker
you know, trading on you know, your track record or whatever in order to get something kind of extra special out there or something like that. I think that that was not a ludicrous plan. And I think there's something about the, the boutique indie studio specifically that is sort of like tied up in that. um But I don't think it's an industry that supports that right now. So it's an interesting time to be thinking about what you want to do next and why you want to do it, I think.
01:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. All right. Thank you very much for jumping on and chatting with us. We covered a lot of topics. Yeah.
01:01:58
Speaker
Yeah. I um maybe you ended up slightly afield from Corgi Space and Puzzle Games. Yeah, it's fine. it just ended up being an existential. ah cookie space with the the meat in the miscellaneous sandwich yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i think so too um this is going to be a really fun podcast episode description to write about where i usually name like the three topics that were discussed it's gonna be like uh game design despair about the industry and peak away yeah yeah yeah perfect uh so where can people find you online
01:02:31
Speaker
Oh, um I've got ah actually I have a personal website again for the first time in 10 billion years. I'm just at Adamatomic.com. And um that's got links to like my itch.io page where I've got a a whole host of little ah games playable, many of which are quite puzzly.
01:02:49
Speaker
improbably And i've got ah I guess I've got a Blue Sky account also on under Atom Atomic. They're all linked from the main page. yeah And then um for Finji stuff, you can just follow Finji on every platform that exists or check out the main website at finji.co.
01:03:06
Speaker
um And we've got a lovely um Discord with ah kind of a bump-in game dev channel. And... i And we just hosted a lovely Corgi space themed game jam and got like 30 beautiful, funny. played a few games from that and they were great. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I was, it was really fun. And I think a couple of messages from folks along the lines of like, this felt like I had permission to make something like really dumb and small and it got me to make a game again, again, something I haven't done in a long time. And I was like, that's what we're there for. That's what we're going for with this. This is perfect.
01:03:42
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thank you again. Thanks, of course, Alan, for joining us again. And thank you for listening to the Draconeck and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoisemusic.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak.
01:04:02
Speaker
Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
01:04:15
Speaker
you