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Gamifying Corporate Culture: Turning Boring Training into Playable Stories w AJ Leece
42 Plays10 days ago
Summary:
In this episode, Greg chats with AJ Leece, the founder of Brekade, a studio transforming security training into engaging, story-driven video games. From his roots in ethical hacking to building games like “Fishing Expedition” and “SecOps Chaos,” AJ shares how he's gamifying the most dreaded parts of corporate training—and why that's the future of workplace education.
Key Takeaways:
- Gamifying corporate training turns passive learners into active participants.
- Boring topics (like InfoSec) come to life when wrapped in story and play.
- You don’t need to be a full-stack developer to build great games—just curiosity and courage.
- Player feedback = gold. AJ evolved his product based on student reactions.
- “Productive laziness” is a feature, not a bug—automate the boring to unleash creativity.
Top Moments:
- 04:52 — The D20 That Started It All: How AJ turned a dull compliance class into a D&D-inspired tabletop game.
- 13:44 — Goombas and Burnout: A sneak peek at “SecOps Chaos,” AJ’s synthwave burnout simulator for security pros.
- 19:40 — Cheap Wings, Big Ideas: AJ’s midweek pub sessions and the notebook that fuels his creativity.
- 25:34 — Changing Perception, One Game at a Time: Why mid-sized companies are the sweet spot for gamified training.
- 42:26 — Turning Weakness into a System: AJ shares how he built an app to capture ideas on the fly—his secret weapon against creative blockers.
Guest Links:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to AJ Lease and Brickade
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Player Driven Podcast. Here is what you are about to listen to on today's episode. Today we're talking with AJ Lease. He is the founder of Brickade. What they're doing is they're taking work training, things like InfoSec training, and gamifying it, making it more exciting and more engaging to employees of companies.
00:00:17
Speaker
We talk about how perception shift is the real battle here and getting people to understand that gaming can educate in these manners. and how productive laziness is a superpower, how you can supercharge your day-to-day work by automating some of the simple things that you do.
00:00:32
Speaker
It's a really cool episode. aj is a great, great podcast guest and has lots of great stories to tell. And if you haven't been following PlayerDriven, be sure to check us out on LinkedIn Spotify or YouTube or wherever you are. We're on all the social channels.
00:00:46
Speaker
And if you have anything you'd like to learn more of us, let us know it. And I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
00:00:56
Speaker
Good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to Player Driven. Greg here. Today we have a fun episode where we are going to talk about gaming in the workplace and how we get more people involved in what's going on in the workplace, get them excited about and as well as making it educational, which is something we love to do here at PlayerDriven.
00:01:14
Speaker
Our guest today is AJ Lease. He is the founder of Bracade, and they are making games for companies to help do training internally. And I think it's such a cool idea. We've seen education come from Minecraft and other games for kids online, but why not expand that to the audience that's playing games, the 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds that want to get involved as well. So I'm excited to really dig down this path, learn more about it. AJ, thank you so much for joining me today. Is there anything you'd like to share about yourself?
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me, Greg. I really appreciate it. I have been an avid gamer pretty well since I was a small boy. My parents bought me my first Super Nintendo as a Christmas present.
00:01:57
Speaker
And it was it was definitely one of those things where I played it, but I didn't quite piece together sort of ah what the heck it was. I just had a good time. um You know, fast forward many years and and everything else, I have spent a ah good considerable portion of my career in information security. I've been in the information security space for a little over 10 years. so And I've seen it from the the operation side of things, incident response, ethical hacking, compliance and and risk assessments.
From Security to Educational Games
00:02:25
Speaker
ah But teaching was where I really started to see a lot of how I could contribute kind of the the value that I have, the knowledge that I had just baked inside this head of mine. So um yeah, it became a really ah interesting journey for me to put all this together. But I really enjoy ah businesses life in general when you kind of get a little weird and wonderful with it.
00:02:47
Speaker
um You know, you you only get one spin that we know of. So you might as well make it interesting that that keeps things interesting. So, yeah, I just I like to spend my time, yeah you know, learning, growing, developing, ah coming up with the weird and wonderful things to spend my time with.
00:03:01
Speaker
And yeah, just enjoying my work as much as I can. I love that so much. And I'm excited to talk about some of the games and concepts you've been thinking through because we've all worked, well not everyone, but we've worked for companies where we have to go through InfoSec training. We have to learn not to leave our laptops open. We have to learn to clean our desks. We have to learn to do all that stuff. and you know even Even through the training videos over the past 20 years of my career, right?
00:03:27
Speaker
They've gone from really boring, just mundane, and lately they're getting a little spicy. They're exciting. They seem to be putting some production value into it, and they're seeing that from the video side of things. Yeah.
00:03:39
Speaker
Why not make it more engaging with games, right? People would be more involved. People would get, they they would actually be doing stuff in there and interacting with the game. So you can get a better idea of how well your employees are actually taking this and keeping them in the loop. And I think that's genius.
00:03:55
Speaker
And I'm curious on how, kind of what is your background? You came from information security, but then you're just like, yo, we're going make games with this stuff. where you I mean, you grew up with games. You said, but like, were you a developer? Were you engineer? Did you teach yourself this stuff? How did that happen?
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. Like, where did all this come from? What a pivot, right? From information security to to this. um You're all gamers, right? You're all gamers. That's it, right? Everybody likes to, I think, you know, there's very few people who don't like to play something.
00:04:22
Speaker
um There's maybe a handful who go, no, I played something once and it was terrible. And it's like, okay, that's cool. But everyone, like in board games, card games, you know, large field games, video games, like games are games. There's there's room for everyone.
00:04:35
Speaker
um But where I came up with this idea, I was teaching at a local trade school here in Calgary in their information systems security diploma program. And I had a ah class that was teaching payment card compliance and encryption.
00:04:48
Speaker
And for anybody not in the information security space, that's basically very abstract paperwork that's ah very limited in your your career. it It opens up a lot of doors, but you're never really going to see that paperwork unless you start doing the work. So it was very abstract paperwork and very, very difficult, very complicated math.
00:05:06
Speaker
ah To add insult to injury, that class time slot was from 4 to 6 p.m. January to March on Fridays in a basement with poor cell reception next to a welding and mechanics school.
00:05:19
Speaker
So I think the scheduler and I maybe had beef in a past life or something. Maybe I kicked over their fence, overwatered the house plants, and now here we are. um And to to kind of make matters worse, I had about a month's worth of material and I had about three months of time to get through it.
00:05:32
Speaker
And there's really only so much I can sit there and read compliance requirements off to my students before they ah you know start asking for their money back or something. So um I needed something to do.
00:05:43
Speaker
I needed a way to to fill some of the time. And a bunch of my students were asking about cybersecurity incident response. And that's one of those things where you can teach a lot of it. And part of the security program requires ah digging into that test, testing your incident response plan is is how we refer to it.
00:05:59
Speaker
um through something called the tabletop exercise. And those are historically ah like group based therapy in a boardroom that nobody wanted to attend. I like to refer to them also as root canals in a boardroom. They're, they're truly terrible because they're very slow. They're very deliberate, but they're also very painful.
00:06:16
Speaker
and they lack a lot of the engagement. So some of my students wanted to have one of these for some reason. And I said, okay, fine, I'll walk you through it, but we're going to do it in a rest, and we're going to have a little fun with it. And one of my students is an avid D&D player and was happy to give a bag of D20 dice.
00:06:30
Speaker
And I split all the students into the different business units that would be represented in an incident response plan. You had your executives, IT t support, security, all these different components. And these students now work together in a simulated tabletop exercise, which was basically just the six main steps of incident response I wanted to cover and a whole lot of improvisational comedy.
00:06:52
Speaker
But what really got it home was some of my C students were asking questions I would expect from the C suite. Like, how much did this cost? And what did this like? How did this happen? What's the impact of the business?
00:07:03
Speaker
And those are students who are typically really disengaged with the material that we're now suddenly very engaged with the process. um And I mean, hey, no shade to C students. I'm ah ah very well and truly, I'm very firmly among that group.
00:07:16
Speaker
C's get degrees. That's what my college ah professors told me. hundred percent 100%. But when I realized that I was getting engagement and insight and really curious questions from students across the board at a really difficult time slot, I knew it was on to something.
00:07:30
Speaker
ah So that was in 2020 and I needed an automated tool to to basically keep track of all the stuff that I wanted to keep track of so I could answer those questions. And the the idea for the game development was born ah because it was OK, well, I have to start putting something together.
00:07:48
Speaker
And I'm what I refer to as full stack ish in the tech space. There isn't a whole lot of tech stack. I can't speak, um but I'm not super fluent in all of them. So I do have to go and do a lot of research and fumble through a whole bunch of it. But yeah, by the time I had, you know, from the ideas inception to now,
00:08:06
Speaker
um I had all the fundamentals of development, but I was never a developer by trade. I'd never built an an ounce of software in my life, um mostly just scripting and automating pieces. But I took all those different skills, combined them together into a semi-autonomous business that would allow me to offload the back office stuff that takes a lot of our time and our energy onto the robots.
00:08:26
Speaker
and free me up for all the creativity and stuff that I wanted to do um with regards
Learning and Development in Game Creation
00:08:31
Speaker
to learning a game engine, understanding the mechanics of putting it together, and and just gluing it into a way that I wanted to bring my art, my business, everything into the next the next iteration.
00:08:44
Speaker
That was a lot, and I love it. There's three specific things I want to touch on that you were talking about, and more so how they align with what we we talk a lot about on on our podcast here. The first one is, well, before all that, that awesome, man. The fact that you're sitting with these students, you're just kind of, they want to do something boring. You got to figure how to stretch out the time. Make a game of it. Have fun with it. Everything is more fun when you make it a game. It was great, man.
00:09:07
Speaker
We talk about feedback a lot on PlayerDriven and your students' response was a feedback to what you created. They were engaged in material that is typically something boring that C-suites don't even want to look at, but they need to look at. And I think it's fascinating that you built something that got them so engaged and so involved in it. And you basically took that feedback and said, I want to build on this. You you figured this out. And I think that's awesome. And that's genius. And then ah we also talked about, you know, we talked with a lot of indies, right? And they want to get started, but they don't know how to get started. You just started using these tools, man, and said, you know what, I'm going to figure this out. I mean, ChatGPT is great if you don't know how to code and you want to learn how to get started. Is it going to create the best game for you?
00:09:49
Speaker
No, but if you start giving it the parameters you want, it will start to create something and you can learn to run from there. Right. Again, you need a seed to get started. And this was it. And then it's kind of on the same point. It's just doing it.
00:09:59
Speaker
Right. I mean, just got take that jump. You got to close your eyes. You got say, this is it. This is what I'm passionate about. And you're doing it. so You encapsulate all that. And I think that's so cool, especially not that it's boring, the whole idea of InfoSec. I think it's fascinating the types of things that you need to be able to do to protect your data, your customer's data, right?
00:10:18
Speaker
But how do you turn it into a ah something that Gen Z, Gen Alpha, even millennials will get more engaged with, right? It's no longer just reading a book or watching a video online. And I think this is all great stuff. And I'm wondering, you know, you got this feedback, you started doing it.
00:10:34
Speaker
You were the founder of a company, right? Whether, and we talked about this before we jumped on, like, you know, are you a managing director? You want to see bigger? Like, how did you know now
Brickade's Transformation and Client Engagement
00:10:43
Speaker
was the time? What was it? What was there a gut instinct other than kind of that feedback?
00:10:47
Speaker
Well, so I actually this whole thing got started in 2020. So this, believe it or not, this company has been about four years old. um It's only recently that it kind of went through what I call the renaissance of the business. So it originally started as an information security company.
00:11:02
Speaker
I was running it um and like as an evenings and weekends thing outside of my normal day job. And the video games were the the service. But the way that I had built it, I wanted it to be service based delivery initially so I could be very close to the feedback for for all of my customers, because I knew that what I was doing was pretty novel in the approach.
00:11:22
Speaker
And the plan was to migrate it into some kind of product design so that I could now you know scale it up a little more reliably. You can't really do that with services, but it was a way for me to stay close and kind of get paid for kind product research in a manner of speaking.
00:11:35
Speaker
um So the business that you see now, the the everything that you see of it, it seems new because it is. It went through its its renaissance kind of November 2024. I finished a rebrand where I went from the security company now to Brickade.
00:11:49
Speaker
um And, you know, I had a lot of these things in the abstract over the years, but this has been an ongoing thing since 2021 when I had my first paying clients. ah first video game idea, even just the very bare bones concept of it was launched in November 2020 at a local conference here b besides Calgary, which we put virtually.
00:12:08
Speaker
And by 2021, I had my first clients and they still continue to be my best clients. So this business has been around for a little while. It's just now in a way where it's like, okay, now and now I can inject the fun piece to it because I figured out all the business aspect of it.
00:12:21
Speaker
So now we're just having fun. i just have fun Can we talk about some of the games that ah have been born from this idea? right so So for our listeners who I'm sure most people know what InfoSec is in the video game world, but for those that don't, what what are a couple of the title names that that might kind of ring some bells?
00:12:39
Speaker
Of the video games or the titles that they might have seen in their business of the people who might manage their security program? Of the video games. yeah Which answer would relate more? Yeah, I guess so ah incidents and accidents is the one that started it all. So that was the the whiteboard one with the D20 dice, um where that one is a bit of an event driven story heavy kind of incident response preparation game.
00:13:04
Speaker
um So that one is now ah a full fledged video game. It is a there is a free to play demo on the internet as well. That's just a way to showcase um the the how it works. um And so that one is definitely, you know, it's it's a little slower. It's a little bite-sized teaching. you You push your buttons through it and resolve an incident for a fictional adhesives company.
00:13:24
Speaker
Another one that I offer, that one is, this one's primarily as a service because part of it is the the engaging facilitator's fishing expedition. ah My tagline for it is you're cordially invited to commit cybercrime.
00:13:36
Speaker
and That's one where we all sit in a room together, virtually or otherwise. And we all work together as a fictional organized crime group targeting fictionalized companies ah using real attacker tradecraft. So that one teaches you the nuances of phishing and how this actually works, how attackers put this together and that the c click, the you know, when you hand over the email or your credentials, when you hand over that information, when you run that piece of malware, that isn't the only thing that happens. There's a lot else that happens kind of behind the scenes and that you may not necessarily be aware of. So it showcases the fundamentals of this problem in a way that people now have some stake in it because there's money associated with it. You have to make decisions on how to spend your resources, where to spend them, where to target.
00:14:21
Speaker
um And then hopefully you get out by stealing something. And then the game that I use to teach myself, the the video game engine Unity is SecOps Chaos. And that one's a bit of a love letter to the security industry while also kind of throwing a little shade at work.
00:14:35
Speaker
um So that one you navigate an exhausted security professional security analyst through a synthwave style office environment with email and chat Goombas that sap your mental capacity.
00:14:46
Speaker
um So it's a little bit crude, but it really works. There's three levels and hopefully you get to secure your ah weekend because something may or may not happen around Friday at 2.30 in the third level.
00:14:57
Speaker
So it is one of those. It's like it's to showcase kind of a day in the life of the security analyst to some degree. Most of it is just dodging noise. um And then, yeah, all of a sudden when it's really inconvenient, things kind of get real. So the fishing game.
00:15:11
Speaker
Sounds awesome. I mean, they all sound awesome, right? But Phishing Games sounds like, it almost sounds like it could become like its own online. Yeah, that's why I'm going take it. Like, hey, and I think you talked about this in our pre-call, but there used to be this game, I don't remember the name of it. It was like, you to travel different cities and just sell drugs, right? It was just a text-based game, right? And it's just like,
00:15:32
Speaker
It seems like it could be something along the lines of that, where you just start kind of competing with other people online, like trying to steal their information, sending employees over. I don't know. It rich it seems like such a fun ah novel idea that yeah maybe it's been done, but like who is it all...
00:15:48
Speaker
your ideas? Is it from talking with others in the industry where you start thinking, hey, or when maybe a potential customer says, hey, I need something about fishing. What can we do? ah Believe it or not, most of this actually comes out of not thinking about work.
00:16:02
Speaker
ah So one of the biggest, dare I say, creative outlets I have is taking my dogs for a walk and tending to the garden literally in the yard in the summertime. um yeah the The reality is the creative stuff comes just kind of out of left field for me.
00:16:17
Speaker
um And a lot of it is under the the auspices of storytelling more than anything. What this really is about is knowledge-based storytelling in a medium that people respond with, where they have some level of interaction and maybe even ah some you know some kind of value associated with it. Right. So there's characters you can kind of project yourself into a bit.
00:16:37
Speaker
You can immerse yourself in this situation a little. So um the the actual information that's in there is
Inspiration and Game Design Process
00:16:44
Speaker
nothing new. It's stuff that's been around forever. It's just we're putting it in a way that now people have a little more urgency in the matter, but in a way that doesn't feel like we're forcing you to feel like it's it's an urgent problem.
00:16:56
Speaker
um And yeah, as far as the ideas go, they're my own weird, crazy, wonderful ideas of that would be hilarious. And how, you know, wrapping the performance art piece, the standup comedy piece to it.
00:17:07
Speaker
And again, just the absurdity that comes with it, right? One of the things I really love is ah is workplace absurd comedy, um where it just totally is, yeah listen, we know this thing kind of sucks. Work is a terrible invention. What the hell are we doing?
00:17:20
Speaker
ah let's Let's just go ahead and make fun of it, right? So it's... in those same veins, right? dude The absurd is coming right out of real life. Some of the stuff that happens that is truly absurd in the video games, I've seen it.
00:17:32
Speaker
So it's, you know, there's some reality in the observation there, which is is kind of interesting. I think kind of a healthy break from work, walking away, like you said, doing the garden. I love gardening. right it's my It's my summer thing, right? I think that is where the best ideas are born. You can sit in front of your computer for hours and days, right? But you need to just basically turn your brain off, yep let your brain rest, and it'll do its best thinking when you do that, or it'll just keep you up for nights in a row.
00:17:58
Speaker
Exactly right. It'll wear you down. And you're that lucky person. But that's why we have coffee. let's What's wrong? Exactly. As an InfoSec background, right, there's a certain part of gaming or game creation that could be more difficult than others.
00:18:12
Speaker
I guess and maybe we can walk us through what your process is when you're kind of thinking through a game. Is it note taking followed by coding? is it How do you kind of go from vision to reality?
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, so this is one of these weird problems, weird things where I start with the problem first. What is the problem that I'm trying to solve with the video game? um So in the information security and business resiliency space, those problems are numerous.
00:18:36
Speaker
One of the ones you're going to hear quite a bit is we we lack the skills internally. We lack the desire to do any of the work. um There is a very difficult ah road ahead of us to get buy in from any level of the business.
00:18:47
Speaker
Right. So those are pretty common threads across most organizations. So I always start with what's the problem I'm trying to solve? um And it isn't always about necessarily a problem inside the ecosystem. It could also be a problem inside my own business.
00:19:01
Speaker
So the very first game that I designed, SecOps Chaos, the first like real video game that that was designed in an engine, that one was originally, its true intent was a marketing vehicle more than anything. It was just a weird and wonderful marketing idea I had where people could play something and then it would direct them to my website and it would start getting the conversation rolling.
00:19:20
Speaker
That one was to solve a problem in my own business. um But incidents and accidents and fishing expedition were very much problems that exist in in the rest of the business. And the the the process that I follow is a little bit, again, weird and wonderful.
00:19:33
Speaker
I have a ah physical journal, an actual notebook that I have. I call it my book of business. And I take purposeful trips in the middle of the day, ah usually to one of my local neighborhood pubs, typically on a Wednesday for cheap wings.
00:19:47
Speaker
And it becomes a getting out the door and just letting some of this stuff kind of flow as as ah an offsite almost. um So I'm in the midst of designing a new game now that is going to be useful for helping businesses have the conversations they need to even get some of this ah stuff rolling.
00:20:04
Speaker
So business resilience, disaster recovery, incident response, there's a lot of prep work that has to go into it. I'm currently designing a game that's going to make that piece a lot more fun and interesting. And again, the problem was, how do we make people go find the information they need and have the conversations that need to happen?
00:20:20
Speaker
you know, handful of cheap beer and wings later, and an idea was born. And that's a piece of it. I just sit, I write it down. I kind of get a little nerdy with it and figure out what I want to do with it. And then it starts to become real.
00:20:31
Speaker
So I start building nerdy with it. You're an infosec guy creating video games now about training. it Yeah. I love it. Yeah. I love it. Um, I got questions on this, but want to our fireball round where I'm going to ask you questions here just off the cuff.
00:20:44
Speaker
Okay. Get answers. And I didn't plan to do it now, but- I'm going to finish my coffee here. That's coffee? I thought you were taking shots after you chanted. I was so excited. That's after. Come on. I would have brought my vodka or something. That's later. First question is, what flavor wing do you get?
00:21:00
Speaker
ah Honey garlic. Honey garlic. That's good. It's my favorite. that Just with what? Like a most nice or what's the, uh, what usually whatever beer's on sale, like whatever's on tap and on sale. You're on sale in Canada. What is this? Once in a while, every so often.
00:21:16
Speaker
It's time to go to Canada. Forget the tariffs. Right. You got much better beer sales there. Beer sales once in a while. I'm in Calgary. I have to become a flames fan. like guess. Although I think you said you weren't a flames fan.
00:21:26
Speaker
Oh no, I am. You got a root for the home team, but they haven't won anything since I was ah small child. So it's fine. aval fan I'm okay with that. That's cool too. hu Second question is you travel, but what is your dream vacation?
00:21:40
Speaker
Oh, it would be to go back to French Polynesia. i think I left a piece of me there when we went that, that the whole, every piece, who everywhere we went was just unbelievable. What game was the game that made you go, I want to do this?
00:21:54
Speaker
It wasn't one game. It was actually a series of games. Uh, I really value the real estate that you get from, ah adventure style games, especially if they're in a historic setting. So the Assassin's Creed franchise, some of the very early ones were like immediately caught my attention.
00:22:10
Speaker
Uh, Mass Effect, the whole franchise was simply beautiful. Uh, There's so much storytelling that can happen in games. And when I when i combined um parts of the Assassin's Creed franchise with having been to Italy and seen parts of Rome and went, oh, yeah, like these were real buildings. We all remember this. But you know combining an interesting narrative, it was like, oh, that's really neat, too.
00:22:32
Speaker
um Just further reinforced that this is the right decision. Awesome. That's a great answer. And I appreciate that. You are also, I assume a board game player. What is your go-to board game?
00:22:45
Speaker
It depends on how much time we have, I guess, how much time we're willing to play. um For what it's worth, I always lose at Scrabble. I've never won a game of Scrabble in my entire life. um But I love Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne. Another one we have here, Small World is really a hoot.
00:23:01
Speaker
ah Pandemic was actually kind of a fun one to play during the pandemic. It you know, is a little bit of gallows humor, I guess. um We have another one, Colt Express, where it's a turn-based train robbing one that's quite fun.
00:23:13
Speaker
And Camel Up is another fan favorite around here. where we It's like um camel racing on a board game where you make bets and they can stack up. So the whole thing can change pretty quickly. So that one's a good time too.
00:23:24
Speaker
I have Camelot and I have Small World, but I haven't played them yet because I just don't have the time. But Pandemic is ah changed my whole view of board games forever. yeah I played co-op with my wife. The fact that you're working together yeah i think an amazing, and amazing experience. That was actually the one that gave me kind of that, you know, because we had been playing it for few years before I started the business.
00:23:46
Speaker
And that was one of those like you can actually work together against sort of a mysterious force you can't control, ah which is is how my games are are built. is It's a collaborative effort.
00:23:58
Speaker
you know, like everybody works together for the same outcome. I thought that was just really beautiful to see in a board game, really innovative. I think we're going to see more of that in the gaming world, right? I think we've seen Light create now Split Fiction, right?
00:24:11
Speaker
It's almost the return of Couch Co-op, which I truly appreciate because there's a, you know, there's back in the days we played N64, we'd play GoldenEye next to our friends, we'd play Halo next to our friends, right? yeah And then online came out which is a great invention but all of a sudden couch co-op died yep and i think games like this where you can work together with your partner whether it be a board game or ah a digital game right or video game right i think it's a fantastic thing to help enable a broader audience to play a game that may have not played a game before agreed yeah very much so last question because we're getting off topic here anyway is last movie or tv show you watched
00:24:45
Speaker
Well, i just finished Severance, ah which was spectacular. um We're just about... What's that? It aligns perfectly with what you're doing. Oh, yeah. Right. Like the banality of work. I think that, again, is just so, so beautiful.
00:24:59
Speaker
um White Lotus is fabulous. We thoroughly enjoy that. We've actually been to some of the locations there. So that's been pretty cool. um And then, yeah, those those are about the only two. Oh, Paradise, which is actually pretty neat.
00:25:12
Speaker
I won't get into anything with it because it it's a slow burn. But that's an interesting show, too. That was quite, quite neat. All right. You're off the hot seat. I appreciate your answers. still technically in the hot seat.
00:25:24
Speaker
No. I don't like tagging anyone else to come sit here and interview. No, you're cooled down. your ah All the questions are easy from here on out. That's fair. So you have about three games now. Fourth concept, right? Mm-hmm.
00:25:39
Speaker
How do you, i guess, do you, how do you expect, right, let me think through this question, of how to ask it so i can edit it properly. um How do you foresee yourself growing from here? I guess, do you want to create more games for the business? Are you looking to eventually get to a more, don't know what you call it, player base, right? and A game that you play outside the business.
00:26:00
Speaker
How would you like to see the company continue to grow? Yeah, the short answer is ah both of those directions are on the table. um I do have some business to consumer games kind of just in design as an idea that's going to be at the intersection of where the money and the time allows um because I'm in no rush for those. But ah in the the short term, definitely the three to five years, ah more B2B gaming for sure, you know solving more of these business related problems with video games.
00:26:24
Speaker
And the biggest piece is changing the perception. The one thing I've really come across as a problem
Changing Business Perceptions of Gaming
00:26:30
Speaker
for for the business overall is when people are told that they can play something in their organization and it delivers something you would expect from consulting and it can make their business better and it can do all these things.
00:26:44
Speaker
you know, so a similar response becomes very cool. That sounds too good to be true. So there's a perception shift that is really at the heart of what I'm focused on right now, ah which is demonstrating that there is a better way to approach this if a business is willing to, you know, look into something that might actually be a lot more appealing than the standard.
00:27:03
Speaker
um So that's the the very short term goals, changing perception, getting a product out there that'll help with that. And then, yeah, in the the longer term, putting together more games that solve more business problems that people are asking for and just growing it that way.
00:27:18
Speaker
Perception change is an interesting one because indie gaming is also going through that right now, where, again, with the help of AI tools, it's easier to create games on a cheaper budget. And when you look at VCs or publishers who are expecting to kind of work with these games, they say, no, you can't make a game for It's going to cost you at least this much. And like, no, there's tools out here that can enable you to do it later. And I think there's just this perception on creating a game is difficult and expensive. it And yes, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. ah And I think people need to start understanding that there's different ways to kind of get into that and start doing that type of stuff.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yep. Yep, exactly right. And it's one of those things where, um you know, thanks to AI tools, thanks to and enormous libraries of very freely available knowledge in some cases, um the way that you learn is your own imagination. That's up to you to decide.
00:28:09
Speaker
And basically, if you have an idea, whether it's good or it's bad, it doesn't really matter. um If you get into it thinking, okay, this is going to be the thing that replaces my my mortgage, that this is the thing that's going to get me my salary.
00:28:22
Speaker
um Yeah, it's going to be a bit of an uphill battle for sure. But to get into it and start experimenting with it really doesn't cost you very much. And all told, each of my video games, because I don't keep track of my time financially because I'm the founder, i have to spend the money anyway.
00:28:37
Speaker
um So I'm the last one to get paid in the whole company. So don't really keep tabs on that number amount. But each of my games have been well under $1,000 to put together um because it's just been ah a series of using tools that were available. And from a simple management standpoint, it actually makes your life easier if stuff that's commonly available, things that are quote unquote off the shelf um are easier to get support for. There's better communities for it. So we're we're at this interesting inflection point where I think we're going to be seeing a lot of really cool indie games out there um that might give a lot of these AAA studios a run for their money because people want compelling story, interesting narrative, um you know sympathetic characters as much as they want cool graphics and neat sound and cool features. And I'm no stranger to the the aaa stuff. I play an awful lot of it, but I also really enjoy indie games and I really like the the variety that's out there now.
00:29:31
Speaker
I think... along with perception change, and I'm going to make an assumption here, so feel free to just smack it down when I'm wrong, right? I think perception change also comes in time. And what I mean by that is that I don't know who you're selling to, and that would be my question is, but millennials like ourselves, right, or others start entering a workplace and become higher in the workplace, they become the decision makers.
00:29:55
Speaker
And I think younger, and I say younger, like, again, i'm almost 40 here, so I like to think it's young, but- sure ah Right. Like I would be all about it, bringing a video game to my workplace. But if you go to someone like my father and say, hey, going bring in a video game to help train people, he's going poo poo on the idea. Right. So I think with the younger generations coming in, perception will start to change because they understand what the power of video games can be.
00:30:17
Speaker
ah With all that sort of being a question, it also comes into who are you selling to and what's that process like? Yeah, ah the businesses that I say do the best with what I have to offer, I like to say it's technically open to anyone.
00:30:30
Speaker
But the reality is you can't run a business like that. You have to have an ideal customer profile. So, um yeah, the ones who really understand what it is that doing and who get the best value from it are what we would call the medium sized businesses, anywhere from 500 people 2000, just under employees.
00:30:48
Speaker
um where they have enough systems in place, enough teams, enough of the the footprint that's a problem, um but not so much that they can ah you know fix it all kind of by themselves.
00:30:59
Speaker
Or they're not in a situation like a startup or a smaller business where they can just pave over it and start fresh. So um the ones who really do the best with this are the ones who have some of this in place where they need to work with what they already have. A lot of money has been spent in the pursuit of standing up these systems, these plans, these procedures, the the teams and the technology.
00:31:17
Speaker
um And they obviously don't want to lose any of that investment. So they want to find a way to make good with what they have and even just validate where they're at. So they're the ones who tend to get it the best. um But again, it's the the way of the business is, it's evolving. And like you said, there's a ah perception shift that's already happening because more people in our age groups are now sitting in the decision seats and we're going listen this stuff is kinda boring let's look for something more interesting and the which is got me building some more self-serve products because right now everything is a facilitated service which people really appreciate but again doesn't scale and can be a bit of an expensive ask especially if your middle manager so and there is a you know some self-directed products coming out there a little bit more self-assessment based DIY
00:32:00
Speaker
that are the same things you could do with your own spreadsheets, with your own consultants, everything like that. it's It's all the same stuff, but it's more interesting, more engaging. Your team wants to be a part of it. It's more creative um and it it's it delivers the same outcomes, if not better, because you actually give more input to it in your process. So ah that's that's a big piece of it. Understanding what the market's looking for, understanding who's making the decisions,
00:32:25
Speaker
And then giving them something that it's like, okay, I can't justify the full service, but I can justify this one little thing. So let's go ahead and start there. Yeah, it kind of gives you an in, right? Like, hey, you got everything set up, but let me connect all the dots here. Let me make it make sense. And lack of better words, you'll you'll take some of the boring stuff on and make it exciting so so people are excited to engage with it.
00:32:45
Speaker
Exactly right. And it kind of makes life easier because it is all the same stuff your average consultant in that space is going to ask you anyway. And it is cheaper than a day of consulting and it delivers the same thing that you'd get from a week.
00:32:55
Speaker
um But the other piece of it is it's all the fundamentals you're going to need so that what I have to offer you actually has the value that it brings. Because you can bring me on any time and you're going to get something from it. But where you get the most values when you have some of this business resilience planning, business continuity planning, incident response, all of that already in place.
00:33:14
Speaker
And now you want to see whether it works for your business or not. So that's where the real value is. So the early stage one is nice and cheap and and easy for you to do by yourself. And it sets you up nicely so that you get better value from the everything else down the line.
00:33:27
Speaker
For companies that don't have any of these ah disaster recovery plans or any sort of continuity plans, is it stuff you do help with or you kind of point them in other directions? Oh, yeah. I mean, we can absolutely help put it together. It's not a service we technically advertise, but yeah, the consulting hours are available if they want some added help.
00:33:43
Speaker
um The offering is available as a subscription as well. So that does include some of the hours where we can help build the plans, work with you. um You get the workshops that you need to have the conversations to free up the calendar space to make it kind of a part of your operations. So um and then that defrays the cost across the whole year instead of just all at once.
00:34:02
Speaker
So that can make it a lot more appealing for for organizations. Plus, you get to play both games, fishing expedition and incidents and accidents. ah So we start with fishing expedition where you break a company and then we do incidents and accidents where you see the incident response that has to go alongside it.
00:34:17
Speaker
All the pieces of a program that glue together to put the business back together. And then the workshops and the consulting hours go into it afterwards to help you put that into place for your own business. It tells a whole
Automation and Creative Efficiency
00:34:28
Speaker
story. I love it. It's going to be a quadilogy. I don't know what four is. quad Yeah. Franchise. This is a franchise we're building, all right Greg.
00:34:37
Speaker
but Right? I love it. I think it really is genius. And I know we talked about this little on the pre-call-up, but it's more so have you considered, I mean, I think what you're doing is unique. I think there's value there.
00:34:49
Speaker
Have you considered talking to a Deloitte or ah company like that to say, hey, I have these cool tools. You have these customers. Why don't you take my tools? I'll help create custom stuff for companies you want.
00:35:00
Speaker
And you just push it. You sell it You do all that heavy work. Yeah, a piece of it when you're doing kind of the weird and wonderful is the brand itself. um And parts of what we're doing are, you know, they they kind of run antithetical to some of the traditional consulting methods.
00:35:15
Speaker
um Because we're the the way that it currently happens, we sit in a boardroom, everybody's on their best behavior, we're having the, you know, this very back and forth conversation, it isn't really ah in the pursuit of finding the organic problem.
00:35:29
Speaker
um So some of what they do and some what I do definitely clash some of their clients or my clients. And it is one of those things where if it was to in the pursuit of a client base, that's certainly one option.
00:35:41
Speaker
um But one thing I have learned about big anchor clients is you tend to steer the business towards what they want. And the real reason I started this was mostly as an experiment in growing the business the way that I wanted. I wanted it to be a business where um it was a people first business from the staff to the clients to everybody in between.
00:35:59
Speaker
um where it is heavily automated so we get free time to spend it any way we want, where we can customize and standardize in the same vein. um So a lot of traditional business ecosystems aren't really set up like that either.
00:36:12
Speaker
And when I have these conversations with people going, yeah, I mean, as the founder of the business, this is how much time I spend and here's how much work I can get done. The first response is, that sounds amazing. And I go, I can help build it for you. And they go,
00:36:24
Speaker
No, it couldn't happen here. We can't make it happen here. So again, in this in the seats of perception shift, we have this this two sided front. um So yeah, it's one of those if if ah one of these large companies was willing to kind of take me on as a vendor of of offering, um that's certainly something I would entertain. But yeah, the idea is I want a little more creative control over what we're doing. And that can be hard to do when you're in somebody's vendor wheelhouse.
00:36:46
Speaker
Every company thinks what they do is so special. right Maybe it is. Maybe it is. Come guys. No one's so unique that you can't have your problems solved. Yes, your data might be a little different, but it's not like it's totally different. Sorry to pop anyone's bubble.
00:36:59
Speaker
If you are super unique, feel free to come and let us know that you are super unique. But come on. Any company... It's a process, right? And processes need to scale. That's the whole important part of it. And no one's data is so unique where it's like, oh, we can't help you. That means you can't even train your own employees are coming on board. So come on. Yep.
00:37:16
Speaker
Yep. That's exactly right. And the way that i built this was with that in mind. This isn't special. Anybody can do this. um The reality is you have to be capable enough to put it all together in a way that you can manage and sustain.
00:37:30
Speaker
And that's kind of the secret sauce there of of building a business, um you know weird and wonderful standard or otherwise. It's it's managing and sustaining your own growth. um And so measuring correctly what matters, ah doing it in a way that you can replicate it so that if I'm not sitting in this seat, because one day I won't be saddling up and building all the games. I won't be doing all the sessions that's going to be elsewhere. But I have built it up to a certain point where I want to be able to hand that over to people. So the documentation exists now, even though it's just me doing all the work.
00:38:01
Speaker
The data is where it's supposed to be. The processes are automated. So now I can bring people in and go, here's the six buttons you need to push to do the things you're supposed to do. Here's all the free time you have for the creativity that I've paid you for. I want your brain. I want your intelligence. I want your problem solving.
00:38:17
Speaker
the rest of this part of the business can be solved with those things in in combination. um And you're right. There is no single business that's too special, that can't be automated, streamlined, improved, made more resilient. Not a single one of them exists. If anybody wants to pop in and say that's them, yeah, I got a bridge to sell you. It's price to move located in some prime real estate in New York um because literally every business can benefit from any of this.
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah. And what you just say? I wanted to... as i think it was on the the processes and stuff because processes and systems are so important no matter what, no matter the size.
00:38:54
Speaker
It's okay. we can It'll come back to me and I'll find a way to kind of clip it all together. At like two the morning, right? Yeah. ah Yeah, that's what will happen at night. Oh, that was it. um But you sound like, oh, sorry, it was about the framework.
00:39:09
Speaker
I love that you built the framework to scale. I think studios, companies, anyone, like solo person, you don't want to be doing this one thing forever. So when it's time for you to start hiring people, you want to make sure that when you hire them, they're in a position where it's already ready to set to scale. And I love that you talked about that, that, hey, the data is already in a place where we're ready to scale. Like,
00:39:33
Speaker
You're thinking about that ahead of time. And I think that's so smart. I think everyone needs to be able to take a look at like, hey, in a year, this is where I'm going to be. This is what needs to happen, right? It's easier to do it now than back into it in year in the future, right Because at that point, then it's a giant headache. and You're just like, oh, crap, what do I do from here? It's very expensive.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah. yeah and and Yeah. Extremely expensive. Absolutely. But you also mentioned your day, right? You you are doing a lot. Can you give us an idea of what is your day-to-day like?
00:39:59
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. ah So the short answer is kind of whatever the heck I feel like. um But that doesn't really get a lot of work done. So I do have to hold myself accountable to some kind of routine. The calendar decides kind of how the day is going to go. So if I have client calls, interviews, whatever's going on, ah those get top priority, right? Anytime there's anything that's client related, ah that's top priority. Anytime that's like publicity outreach, kind of that's also top priority.
00:40:24
Speaker
um The other piece is whatever's broken. I have a lot of robots and they report to me if they aren't working correctly. So broken robots get second priority. um And then from there, it's ah open creative work if if need
Daily Routine and Smart Automation
00:40:37
Speaker
be. So, um you know, if a video game is in progress, ah features that have to get added to video games because some of the other ones need some changes, unraveling of the spaghetti for any of the software developers in the room. There were plenty of spaghetti incidents in everything that I built.
00:40:51
Speaker
um So unraveling that, adding some of the features, quality of life improvements, you know, the game development. um And then other parts of it, the the day might be, you know, for like, if we're thinking about it from a schedule perspective, I get up, I have a long leisurely coffee sitting with my dog, ah you know, usually shitpost on LinkedIn for a bit.
00:41:08
Speaker
um And then it's, ah yeah, okay, this is this is what the day is going to look like. And, you know, I tend to wrap it up around the afternoon, And then depending on how the day is going, or if I get kind of a a creative mood, or if I'm mentally debugging while I'm cooking dinner, and I wanted, oh, that's that the solution to that problem, then I'll pull out the laptop and and poke away at it um for the the rest of the evening as time permits, or as I i feel the the capacity is there.
00:41:33
Speaker
um I don't really have a specific day of the week that i prefer to work. I tend to try. I used to like to keep bankers hours and then I realized that I was making myself crazy doing that. um So, yeah, if I have a really good idea and I want to work on it Saturday afternoon, I'll take Saturday afternoon and do that and then just enjoy a Monday off if I want to.
00:41:49
Speaker
I love it. I will meet you at the pub at 1201. Wing Wednesdays are the greatest. wing yeah We used to have a place in college that would do 25-cent wings, but really take as many as you want. what and that' awesome We weren't legally allowed to drink, but we made it happen. that's great Laws are only a thing if they're enforced. let's what um What is your least favorite part of what you do?
00:42:13
Speaker
Ugh. Least favored part. You know, that's a really good question. And in a weird way, my least favorite part is the most important part of the business. So this is where it gets really bizarre.
00:42:24
Speaker
um So ah incidents and accidents is an event driven game as is ah fishing expedition. So I have to put these little snippets of a scenario together and they have to be delivered in such a way that they're technically feasible, relevant to the the discussion topics.
00:42:40
Speaker
at the intersection of applicable to the business itself and funny or interesting those four pillars rarely ever intersect whenever you need to so sitting and writing these events uh is one of the things i enjoy the least um and the way that i overcame that problem i still kind of dislike it if i have to write events i you know i wind up doing it i have a lot of them now so i have a really excellent library which helps But whenever I'm writing anything new or putting it together, um one of the biggest superpowers I gave myself was the ability to capitalize when those four pillars would intersect.
00:43:16
Speaker
So much to the same of the Wing Wednesdays and everything else, I built an app that I put on my phone that specifically talks to my business. We're now in the the moment that I'm waiting and ah you know if I'm at the waiting room for an oil change or I'm on the train or I'm just kind of hanging around with a bit of time, it's hey, that's a great idea. I can immediately capitalize on that and then add that event to the catalog.
00:43:38
Speaker
um And so now it took something that used to be a very tedious slog that I had to sit in and work my way through. It would take hours and hours and hours and it was always such a headache to now something that I can just go, okay, well, if I got to do it,
00:43:50
Speaker
I can fit it in wherever I need to, however I need to, whenever the the mood strikes. And that has taken something I dislike the most, which I'm still not super into, um and made it a lot easier for me to to do it more reliably, more effectively.
00:44:04
Speaker
And that has been a huge game changer. I love it. It's like a weakness to strength story. It's like, oh, it's what's your greatest weakness in this job? And it's like, yeah, it's one of those weird interview questions. But yeah, that's it. that's my That's the thing i like I dislike the most, but that's how I turn it into something I got to do and and make it work for the business.
00:44:21
Speaker
You know, I always like to say I'm lazy. I want to automate anything I don't like to do because I am lazy. And then I realized, no, that's genius, man. Why do I want to sit here? and like i start I'll show you my notes here I've been taking during our podcast. Yeah.
00:44:35
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. crap notes, like it's chicken scratch. sure But what I've learned I can start doing is I can take a picture as it picture of it with ChatGPT directly afterwards and say, make sense of these notes. yeah And if I have other things I'm taking pictures of, make sense of all these notes and put them all together.
00:44:49
Speaker
And it creates such an amazing outline of everything, something that my brain couldn't comprehend. Not only was I lazy and I just wrote down whatever crap I was writing down, right? But it then fed it to an engine that made it so much smarter, so much more impactful. And it's just like...
00:45:04
Speaker
Thank goodness these things are about it. And perfect time. You're sitting at the pub sharing a beer with someone. And I'm like, oh, great idea. Let me capture it real quick. It's done, right? Then at the end of the day or tomorrow, you say, I'm going formulate all this together. It's almost like writing down your dreams. I know people sometimes write down their dreams. I don't do that, but it's amazing.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's a way to keep and it it's a way to just work with where you're at. Right. I think the the work ecosystem overall could benefit from this kind of mentality. And again, part of why i started the business and run it the way that I do.
00:45:34
Speaker
It's this notion that, you OK, if we're going to be always connected, then it means the work can technically be done anywhere. So then the work that can be done anywhere, let's give the people the tools they need so that they can do it as it comes up. Right. Like if I'm waiting for something to happen, sitting in a waiting room somewhere for 45 minutes, I can either read magazines from the 1980s or I can knock off a couple of the tasks that i have to do.
00:45:57
Speaker
And I mean, that might sound a little bit weird, maybe a little even, you know dystopian. But then the other side of it, especially in the Brickade business model is you know, we're outcome based. So if you have to get all this done, and it has to be done by next Friday, and you finish it by Monday, fabulous. I mean, enjoy the free time that you have, that's the give back to it is it it's designed to free up the time, because again, we're we're results and outcome driven. So it's this notion of the tooling should benefit us, you know, work should support our lives that we shouldn't work for it kind of thing.
00:46:27
Speaker
um Yeah, all of that is just the the whole point. And that really comes from just using the tools and the technology in a way that Makes sense. Like, let's let's let the computers do the computer work. And it's not lazy. In fact, I call it productive laziness.
00:46:42
Speaker
And in the demo of incidents and accidents, that is one of the abilities you play. And it is meant to highlight that all good system administrators are lazy and they will find an absolutely foolproof way to shortcut something that is super simple, but they have to do all the time.
00:46:57
Speaker
And again, just highlighting that that that in and of itself is a skill. Embrace it. Don't run away from it because it makes things so much easier for your business. You can't say it's not lazy and then throw throughou out a name there that has lazy in it as well. Productive laziness. Productive laziness. and I love it. I agree. it yeah Take back your time. yeah that's it leave know as I'm newer newish to kind of doing what I'm doing here, but like take back your life. right like yeah Time is one one commodity we can't control. right so like Enjoy it. Go crazy. like Yes, work and do what you need to do, but and if you don't have to work nine to five, don't work nine to five. right If you're a night owl, be a night owl. Do what you need to do.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah, but it's important for workplaces to understand there are different types of people and building the workplace in such a way that allows that to be a thing. It allows you to fish from an enormous talent pool.
00:47:47
Speaker
Right now, I don't have to find people who it' I just got to schedule a stand up for when all three of you are awake. OK, no problem. That's that's OK. We can make that happen. And then the rest of it is is results driven asynchronously.
00:47:59
Speaker
um And then just wrapping enough guardrails around it. So if something starts to slip, you catch it ahead of time. Understanding what's sacred and what isn't and leaning into that as part of your business model. All right, AJ, I got one last non-related question to everything you've been doing this whole time.
00:48:14
Speaker
for For people that are just listening, behind AJ, he's got this cool Bowser statue. He's got bottles of wine. He's been sipping on this coffee. And I ah like to think I'm a coffee aficionado. I make myself an espresso.
00:48:25
Speaker
I would love to know what type of coffee are you drinking in your little ah your little... It was a shot of espresso, but the cup doesn't actually cool down fast enough. It winds up being really hot. I do like to just...
00:48:35
Speaker
shoot it on its own but the yeah all the other ones were dirty so do you have a nespresso machine what do you have a machine yeah i'm i'm that kind of lazy i'm familiar with that that's okay it's productive lazy right i'm productive lazy but our morning coffee uh we're really big on this chemex pour over um which if you've ever had it it's basically just a slower version of your standard drip coffee i'm sure my wife would kill me for that but uh yeah it does taste better it gets more of the coffee flavor ah into your veins more effectively. But yeah, eating and drinking in our house is something of a team sport.
00:49:10
Speaker
ah She is the one who likes to cook. One Sunday woke up and just yeeted macarons into existence for the first time ever, which was hilarious. And I'm the bartender. I like to make craft cocktails of all kinds, including the molecular gastronomy. So ah yeah, eating and drinking is kind of a big thing.
00:49:25
Speaker
And the Bowser over my shoulder is he's my boss because I don't have a boss. But I think at some point you still have to keep yourself accountable. So I figure, hey, why not the biggest boss in gaming? Uh, so yeah, he he lives over my shoulder and we'll be moving to my studio space when I get it stood up.
00:49:40
Speaker
I love it. I am jealous that you're a cocktail maker because I am a cook and I just always want a good cocktail. Yeah. That stuff. It's like, baking you got to measure, you got do all this. yeah But it is that's one where you can blend art and science. It's not as rigorous. Yeah. You can get a little weird and wonderful with that too.
00:49:58
Speaker
Well, AJ, I think what you're creating is so cool. I think if someone has been through a lot of these trainings at the job, there's better ways to do it and you have identified them. I think getting companies on board would be a great thing, obviously, for for your business, but I mean, just to get people engaged, I think.
Concluding Thoughts on Employee Engagement
00:50:15
Speaker
You're solving problems that do exist in the workplace. You're educating people, at which I think are going to be people, cause people to be even sticky in the workplace. And you're going to get them this morning work there because it's more fun. I think it's super cool. And I think I wish you nothing but the best of luck and one day to be able to share a drink with you. yeah Before we do go today, let us know where we can find you or learn more about Brocade.
00:50:34
Speaker
Yeah, so our website's up and running, brocade.com. Two of our games, SecOps Chaos and Incidents and Accidents are free to play online. INA.marcade, M-A-R-K-A-D-E.ca gets you to Incidents and Accidents and SecOps.marcade.ca gets you to SecOps.
00:50:55
Speaker
Free to play, computer browsers only so far, not yet mobile friendly. We're working on it, I promise. um But yeah, for now, any any garden variety computer browser should be able to play that. And in fact, because it does have work and stuff involved, like it does give you tips to make things better at work. It does technically count as work. So go play it at work.
00:51:12
Speaker
um because That'd be a rip snorting good time. Yeah. And I'm on LinkedIn. You know, feel free to reach out to me under Anthony Lease. And then Bricket also has a LinkedIn page as well. So.
00:51:24
Speaker
Awesome. AJ, again, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll have links to Brickade as well as the the games that he mentioned on our Play Driven blog. I love it, man.
00:51:35
Speaker
yeah Keep making great games. Keep coming up with ideas at the bar. That's the best place to come up with ideas. And i yeah, stay in touch. I appreciate your time today, man. but Thanks for having me, Greg. Great to see you.