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Episode 51: Tad Cordle (A Little Perspective, Sensorium)
284 Plays20 days ago
In this episode, Alan and Syrenne are joined by Tad Cordle, the creator of Sensorium and the recently released A Little Perspective. Topic include game development in Dreams, perspective in puzzle games, and designing puzzles around all five senses.
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakknecht and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren from Drakknecht and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Drakknecht at Drakknecht and Friends.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hey there.
Guest Introduction: Ted Kordal
00:00:35
Speaker
Today, we're joined by Ted Kordal, who you may know from their work on games like Sensorium and in development A Little Perspective. How are you doing today?
00:00:45
Speaker
Hi, I'm good. How are you? Good. ah So can you introduce yourself a little bit and talk about how you got into video games? Yeah, I mean, i i think like anyone else, when I was really young, I used to play a lot of games and I just found them really inspiring. And of course, you know, at some point I just had the idea of, you know, what if I made my own games and went to school for computer science and computer engineering type stuff, made games as a hobby for a while.
00:01:18
Speaker
um Went into professional software development for a bit, kept making things on the side.
Balancing Game Development and Personal Projects
00:01:23
Speaker
And I don't know, eventually I decided to take the leap and I i do full-time game development. I'm a gameplay programmer at Media Molecule, but I i still kind of do puzzle games on the side as like a hobbyist designer and stuff.
00:01:36
Speaker
So yeah, it's just been lot of game dev on the side for most of my life and relatively recently kind of doing it all the time. Yeah, I was going to say, how do you balance doing both full-time and part-time game dev?
00:01:53
Speaker
it's i don't I don't know. it stop I don't full I don't balance it I mean, that's the thing, though. Like, i I kind of just feel a compulsion to work on games all the time. It doesn't feel like a balance I need to make.
00:02:11
Speaker
it's It's just what I naturally want to do a lot of the time. But like, I don't know, that's probably not sustainable. I probably shouldn't be spending all of my time making games and stuff. I'm definitely feeling it like at the end of a little perspective at the end of this project. I definitely feel like I need a break, but i don't know. ah I just enjoy it so much. so Yeah. But like, have you been making time for other hobbies?
00:02:35
Speaker
I mean a little bit. like a I live in New York City, so i I go out from time to time and hang out with friends and stuff. I don't know. A lot of my hobbies right now are kind of like low effort brain rot kinds of things, which is not great. but Scrolling through TikTok and watching Toom Toom Toom Sahur, or like what kind of brain rot?
00:02:56
Speaker
No, yeah, like like doom scrolling and stuff. i I really try not to, but sometimes... Sometimes that doom isn't going to scroll itself. It's true.
00:03:07
Speaker
ah and But yeah, we're we're recording a couple of weeks before your game comes out, but this episode will be dropping ah just after it releases.
Inspiration and Unique Mechanics of A Little Perspective
00:03:18
Speaker
Does it look like a ah stressful last couple of weeks finishing it up, or are you mostly done?
00:03:26
Speaker
um I'm mostly done. i think most of the stress is just like um I'm doing outreach and stuff. But there's still stress. Like, I don't know how people are going to receive it. Like, it's a pretty weird game.
00:03:38
Speaker
ah a big thing is that, like, a lot of people see it and they immediately compare it to Monument Valley. But it's kind of like a very puzzly, more challenging, more systemic and emergent version of like Monument Valley's mechanics versus Monument Valley, which kind of uses it to service the vibes or something, if you know what I mean. Like Monument Valley is a very casual game.
00:04:00
Speaker
a little perspective tries to go a lot deeper. And so there's like this, this bit of me at the back of my head, who's like, oh all these people excited for something similar to Monument Valley. What if it's like, not what they, you know, what if it's like more than they expected and, and not actually their thing. So um I'm kind of just unsure how it's going to be received.
00:04:19
Speaker
Was the game directly inspired by Monument Valley or was there another source of inspiration for the sort of MC Escher-esque visual gameplay.
00:04:32
Speaker
It was inspired by a game called Echo Chrome, which came out on the PSP in like 2007 or 6 or something. yeah Yeah, I was wondering if you were going to name Echo Chrome. Yeah, I mean, i was I was just thinking like, oh yeah, Echo Chrome. And then the moment those words came out of your mouth, was like, wait, we're probably in an era where lots of people have never heard of that game.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's at this point, that's like an old game now. Yeah, that was that was an indie game on PSP and early PlayStation 3 PSN.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, i played it on PS3. It was just one of those things like... At that age, I didn't know how to program yet, but I remember playing it and being like... I mean, so at that age, I'd messed around with Game Maker and stuff, so I kind of knew a little bit of the concepts of programming and stuff.
00:05:22
Speaker
But playing Echochrome, I had no idea like how they did that. And that it just stuck in my mind for a really long time. Even... like It's not even like one of my favorite games or anything, but it's one of those things that has just been stuck in my brain. And I was always like, how did they do that?
00:05:38
Speaker
Like, what? But then around 2020, I was finally like, I think I know how they did that. And I started like messing around and you know trying to actually implement my own version of it.
00:05:49
Speaker
I did it incorrectly, so I immediately started seeing things that were like diverged, but instead of treating that as like bugs, I was like, you know, I'm just going to run with it and make it something different.
00:06:00
Speaker
um And then it turned into a little perspective. Yeah, I think, I mean, there's been a lot of these perspective-based games, both well-known and more niche. I think the defining aspect of Yoran is that something that you can't visually see is just treated as if it's not there at all.
00:06:21
Speaker
Did that come out of like early playing around and like what the systems had, or was it an intentional, oh, this could be interesting to explore? Yeah, it it was a little bit of both. like The way I had decided, like the the idea I had for how Echo Chrome worked was, like what if I just like throw a bunch of ray casts at the scene from the camera to like detect what you can see from the current point of view, and then just use that to determine how things should behave?
00:06:53
Speaker
But of course, if you do that, then anything that's blocked by a pillar or something is not going to get detected. And so like my very first implementation had that where, like oh i can't I can't step onto bits of floor that I can't see.
00:07:08
Speaker
And so there was like there was sort of a design fork in the road there where it was like, OK, either i treat I treat this as a bug and I do the thing that people would expect and I make it more like Echo Chrome, which like I was trying to reproduce a little bit anyway, or I like see where this goes. I see if there are any cool emergent properties of the fact that like if you can't see something, it doesn't exist.
00:07:29
Speaker
And I went with the latter. And yeah, i i think it I definitely think it led to some really interesting stuff. I'm hoping that the trade-off is worth it. you know like It is a little bit annoying when you're trying to walk behind a pillar or something and you can't do it because it it just messes with your expectations so much. But I think in the grand scheme of things, it's worth it.
00:07:51
Speaker
But yeah. So to to answer your question, it was a little bit of both. It was ah it was like ah emerged it emerged from the system, and and but it was also a thing that like I deliberately pursued after noticing it.
00:08:02
Speaker
So it's it's funny because while your previous game, Sensorium, was not necessarily as like, there's not a clear line of Echo Chrome inspired both of these games or anything.
00:08:17
Speaker
When I look at Sensorium and I think about, I mean, in general, Myst-like first-person puzzle games, there's already so much work with perspective that you have to do in world design and game design and puzzle design in keeping the player motivated and keeping them directed at where they need to go would you say that you were consciously inspired by just like generalized work on perspective or is it kind of just a coincidence that your two commercial releases on steam at least
The Journey and Mechanics of Sensorium
00:08:54
Speaker
are very focused or owe a lot to the concept of game design perspective
00:09:01
Speaker
and I think it it is probably a coincidence, if anything. I think like with all of my projects, I tried to do something a little different. I wasn't thinking specifically about like Echochrome when I was making Sensorium, for example.
00:09:17
Speaker
But like maybe there's something subconscious there where that's just like the kind of stuff I'm interested in. And so I was drawn to making those kinds of puzzles in Sensorium as well. I'm not really sure.
00:09:27
Speaker
it It definitely wasn't something I was like actively thinking about as as being a thing that ties the two games together or something. I mean, if we go back to this project start, I believe you you made a game like this in Dreams while you were finishing Sensorium. Is that timeline right?
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah. Which of those two halves do you want to talk about first? um I mean, like yeah. but what What was the... What was your mindset when you were making this? Was it like, oh, Sensorium is like this big project. I want like a tiny project in dreams to distract me from it.
00:10:02
Speaker
Probably a little bit. I think it was more that just like I was so interested in dreams and it had just come out that like that's how I wanted to spend my time. And yeah, like by the by the end of Sensorium's development, I really wasn't having fun with it. I like kind of had to force myself through them the final stretch.
00:10:20
Speaker
In retrospect, I'm really happy with how the game turned out. Like I'm really happy that over the years it's kind of grown on me again. And um' it's a project I'm proud of. But like at the end of development, I was like, man, i just I don't care anymore. I just want to get it out there.
00:10:35
Speaker
But yeah, dreams Dreams was a really exciting thing for me. So I was putting a lot more of my game dev energy into that at the time. At what point in your working with Dreams did you begin working with Media Molecule, the company that makes Dreams? Were you working on Dreams at your day job and then got into Dreams?
00:10:57
Speaker
Or were you really into Dreams and then started working with Media Molecule? Yeah, it was the latter. i um i was one of the people who got into their earliest like private beta.
00:11:09
Speaker
you had to like sign up for their newsletter or something, and then they sent keys to people to get into the beta. And I was playing like pretty obsessively in that. And then eventually it widened out to like an open beta. or Was it still open?
00:11:24
Speaker
I don't remember. I think they sent beta keys to more people, but then they opened it up to early access and then there was a full release. But I was playing and creating stuff all through that. And I think just by virtue of there not being so many people early on, it was easier to make stuff that would get noticed.
00:11:41
Speaker
And so Media Molecule kind of knew who I was through the stuff I was creating. And I think it probably helped as well that I, since I had a little bit of like game development experience, I was making relatively higher quality stuff in Dreams. And so the stuff I was making was just standing out in that way.
00:11:59
Speaker
i didn't apply to work for a Media Molecule until I think like 2021. So this would have been like two or three years after Dreams came out. or above two or three years after the beta, at least.
00:12:12
Speaker
And I think like that was a big thing that helped me get my foot in the door was the fact that I was so active in the community that they were willing to to like actually take my application seriously and stuff.
00:12:23
Speaker
um MM is known for like hiring people out of their community as well because they make so many like user-generated content style games. There are a lot of game designers who work there who were making stuff in LittleBigPlanet and stuff back in the day.
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm not i'm not surprised. that i mean For people who do not who are not very familiar with Media Molecule, maybe just because they don't follow the PlayStation ecosystem side of things, it's a weird studio made of weird creatives that put out weird creative things.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's a ah great way to put it. um Like, I love their work, but also it's sometimes hard for me to sit down and be like, ah, I'm done with my time working on video games, even though I'm not like necessarily opening up a game engine. What do I want to do most right now? I'm going to open up Dreams, which is an engine, a game engine.
00:13:20
Speaker
Um, but let me if for you. It's not I'm going to close unity and open dreams the different game engine. But yeah, like dreams is as powerful as unity.
00:13:31
Speaker
Like it's it's ridiculous what you can do with dreams. I know I've everything I've ever seen. Whenever I open up dreams looking at like the top rated, I'm like just blown away. I'm like, excuse me.
00:13:43
Speaker
Like I would I would play a random dreams game over random unity game. I agree with that, actually. Yeah, that sounds that sounds right. Which is crazy because Dreams released on a PlayStation. So you would think like the, you know, if if you're thinking about the general player base, like the average level of game design experience, you would think that'd be lower, like for a Dreams player versus someone who's like going out of their way to make something in Unity. But it's still like, I definitely play something that leans into the Dreams jank more than something that plays into the, or leans into the Unity jank.
00:14:19
Speaker
Does that make sense? Yes. No, for sure. So going back to sort of the other half of what Alan was talking about when he was talking about sensorium and dreams, what was the development process of sensorium like?
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I started it in college, like in my senior year. When I started it, I didn't really have an idea of what I was making. I just wanted to make like a small first person puzzle game to learn how to use Unreal Engine.
00:14:51
Speaker
And i sort of had this idea of like just there being a very small hub with like three little puzzle areas you go to. And each puzzle area would have like, I don't know, single digit number of puzzles in it, maybe.
00:15:05
Speaker
And there'd be like a really cheesy intro cutscene, a really cheesy ending cutscene, and it'd be this like very tiny project that you've finished playing in like under half an hour, and like that's it. And it would just be to like learn how Unreal Engine works or whatever.
00:15:20
Speaker
Sounds great. Yeah, definitely. I definitely didn't end up like having this project in the back of my mind for like four and a half years. But basically, like when I was thinking about what to do in those three puzzle areas, I had one idea, which was like something kind of tactile where you'd be like pushing stuff around or like clicking buttons or like I don't know.
00:15:43
Speaker
I had one idea that was very... like non-interactive, but mostly about observation. So was thinking maybe like, oh, you translate symbols or something. i don't know. And then I had one idea that would be based on like audio or something.
00:15:57
Speaker
And like, as I started working on those things and I was thinking about it, I was like, oh, one of these is like the sense of touch. One of these is like the sense of sight. And one of these is like the sense of hearing. And then, so at that point i was like, oh, what's what's two more areas? Like if I can figure out how to do taste and smell, that'd be cool. I can make the game about the... The easiest senses to translate to a video game. Yeah, so easy. um No, yeah, those this took me a little while to figure out what, you know, what I was going to do for that. But I figured it out eventually.
00:16:29
Speaker
But then when I figured that out, then I was like, OK, if there are five areas, I need like a more proper sort of tutorial intro area. i need a more proper ending area. oh now they're like a total of seven areas. And I should probably have some side content and secrets and stuff.
00:16:45
Speaker
Oh, now it's like way bigger than the original thing. Oops. um Yeah. And yeah, so for for people who aren't familiar, like the the concept of the game is it's a first person puzzle game with yeah these different puzzle mechanics themed around the different senses.
00:17:05
Speaker
I think for people who haven't played it, it might be fun to talk about those different senses, like particularly the ones that it's not obvious how you translate them into a a game. like what did What did touch end up like? What did ah taste, what did smell end up in the final game? Because I think for people who haven't played the game, like talking about the mechanics might make them like very interested.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I guess I'll say spoiler warning if you do want to play it and like discover it for yourself. but um because yeah i I put the game 75% off all the time, so you you could probably like get it for a couple bucks if you wanted to. but Yeah, like smell and taste were the weird ones.
00:17:47
Speaker
um My idea for smell was that like your sense of smell is tied very heavily in your brain to like your long-term memory. Like you know how youll occasionally you'll catch a whiff of something and it'll just bring you back. Like it might be some kind of food or something.
00:18:03
Speaker
And I just had that thought that like what if that's what the puzzle mechanic was? What if it was like a long-term memory thing? And so like that ended up being a thing where like...
00:18:14
Speaker
the clues for how you solve the puzzles aren't in the smell area. They're kind of around in the rest of the game. And you have to like recall these things you ran into as you were like playing the rest of the game. That's not how it works in practice. In practice, people take screenshots and stuff, which is fine, of course. I'm not expecting people to memorize every little thing. But like that's what the idea was.
00:18:37
Speaker
Taste was like, Taste I had a lot of trouble coming up with. And at first, my idea was like, what if it was like an environmental storytelling type of thing where you don't actually interact with the taste mechanic? You just kind of go through this pre-solved area.
00:18:52
Speaker
Like someone was here before you and they solved all the puzzles already. And then like you reach the end and you find the fate of this person. But it's like... You know, it it indicates that it's a taste area somehow and it's like, oh if it were in a video game, you'd be able to interact with this stuff. Or it's like, oh, if you had the ah the future vr ultra-sensory edition, you could solve these puzzles. But here, no way. Yeah, yeah. um But yeah, eventually I was like, no, that's a cop-out. I shouldn't do that.
00:19:22
Speaker
And I came up with an idea for something that was more about like mixing ingredients. Because I thought like that would be kind of a cool puzzle in real life, maybe, if you had to taste something and then determine what ingredients went into it that made it taste that way.
00:19:38
Speaker
And so I just made ah sort of an abstract video game version of that where you would like click on some food to eat it and then it would change the... ah the reticle image in the middle of the screen to indicate like what you had eaten.
00:19:50
Speaker
And so it would be about like combining, like pressing buttons to like combine ingredients to like create this shape. And then that would activate a thing and you get through the door and there a bunch of those in the area.
00:20:03
Speaker
Which I think, I don't know, that's like a little more abstract than I was trying to be, but I don't think you could be much less abstract ah for a taste mechanic. But yeah. And then touch.
00:20:14
Speaker
are Touch is also a little bit weird. Like it's still kind of leaned on that like tactile idea I had at the beginning where it's not so much about like the information you're receiving from the sense. It's more just like kind of using your hands to do stuff and like you're touching things to make things happen.
00:20:32
Speaker
which is maybe a little bit inverted and weird, but I still think it it works maybe. um And that's that's sort of like a 3D block pushing in first person sort of thing.
00:20:44
Speaker
And how long did it take you to get like that sense of like, okay, this is what these five senses are? Did you have that like fairly on or or that a we were there various versions of this that didn't have the complete lineup?
00:21:01
Speaker
I think some of them definitely changed. Like the touch one definitely changed. It used to be instead of like you directly pushing blocks around, it was a more, um it was like a different sort of block motion sort of mechanic where you'd press, you you would have like a grid of blocks and you press buttons and it would like,
00:21:21
Speaker
move all the blocks in one direction. um and some of the blocks would hit things and stop. The other blocks would keep moving. And you'd have to like, it's really hard to explain just talking about it. But the the bottom line was that I looked at it and I was like, this doesn't seem like the sense of touch even at all, like not even close.
00:21:39
Speaker
So that turned into one where you're like actually clicking the blocks. And I was like, OK, this is a bit more of an acceptable thing. I mentioned the early version of taste, like the environmental storytelling thing.
00:21:51
Speaker
I think smell was always the way it was. I think the the audio puzzles were also kind of always the way they were, where it's it's sort of a Simon Says kind of thing where you have to input what you hear.
00:22:05
Speaker
But it did take some time for me to like come up with the ways to evolve that concept. So it's not literally just like... reproducing tones they're kind of some interesting twists twists as you go through that area i think the site one the site one seems like it would be the easiest one but that one actually took me the longest to like figure out what i was doing i think because it was so broad i like had trouble thinking of constraints and so i was like i don't know like when it comes down to every video game puzzle is a site puzzle because you have to look at it so i'd I don't know. i I didn't have many ideas for a while for that area. And then it just turned into a thing where it's like, it just turned out to be a whole bunch of things where they're just a bunch of rooms with different concepts in them.
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah. i I don't remember what early versions of that there might've been. There were definitely like rooms that I cut that were, just kind of a little too janky, it didn't work the way I had hoped.
00:23:01
Speaker
But the high level of it was pretty consistent, I think, once I had the idea. Got it. And along similar lines, I'm really curious, I've not played the Dreams version of a little perspective.
00:23:13
Speaker
How different ah is the game you're releasing on PC to the that version in Dreams? ah Very.
00:23:25
Speaker
Well, first of all, the original version is much smaller. I think it was like 30, 35 levels or something. um The PC version has, I think, 160 something levels, but some of those levels have multiple puzzles in them. So it's like over 200 puzzles.
00:23:42
Speaker
The PC version also has an overworld that you can run around in. The Dreams version doesn't have that. It just has like a menu level select sort of thing. um The PC version has new mechanics like push blocks and stuff, which the Dreams version also didn't have.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, the the story is different. There's like a ah narration, which a lot of people may not know yet in a little perspective because the demo doesn't have any hint of there being a narration. But there's like a story that plays out bit by bit as you go from puzzle to puzzle.
00:24:17
Speaker
And um the Dreams version had that too, but it was a very different thing. It was a little bit more like ah an essay or a lecture or something than ah a narrative. um Yeah, I don't know. And the the PC version also just has a ton of quality of life stuff. Like, I think the level design is better. um The visuals are nicer. It's just generally the gameplay is more polished.
Future Projects and Collaborations
00:24:39
Speaker
There are more animations where there might have been missing...
00:24:42
Speaker
stuff in the dreams version and yeah i don't know a ah lot of ah lot of improvements i think do you already know what game that you're looking to work on next or make next from a solo perspective or are you thinking about how you're going to prototype or are you thinking you're going to take a short break Probably a short break, but I have a few ideas. i think like the next one might actually be another like Dreams quote-unquote port.
00:25:17
Speaker
Might not end up being a port. Might balloon in scope again. But the the one I'm thinking about working on is is not even my game. I've been talking to the creator of a game in Dreams called Lock.
00:25:32
Speaker
um Okay, you can't hear this on the podcast, but I am am actively sitting up in my chair. Yeah. um Yeah, Locke is like widely considered to be like one of the best games in Dreams. And I kind of agree. And the creator of that actually has been helping me with a little perspective a little bit. like He made the branding and stuff that you see on the store page.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I had actually spent some time between Sensorium and when I got hired by Media Molecule, I had actually like started working on a Locke port with him in Unity.
00:26:09
Speaker
But then because of weird contract reasons, I had to stop working on it for a while. But I believe I'm able to work on it again now. So I've been talking to him a little bit about it. And I think like when a little perspective is done, i think we want to start taking another shot at it.
00:26:25
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah, I'm assuming you've played you've played luck. I have not. um I've heard such good things that I don't want to spoil it for myself by watching a YouTube video. And I have not yet got into a place where I can play it in dreams.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's really interesting um because I think. I don't think he wants to, like, you know, a little perspective I made, like, ten times as big as the Dreams version. I don't think he wants to do that, but I think he wants to... There are definitely elements of the game that he's not happy with, and he wants to redesign.
00:27:01
Speaker
The thing about that game, though, is that, like, everything in it is so interconnected that if you redesign one little element, it affects the entire game. And so it's like... any Any minor change. even Even halving the amount of content could still take twice as much time.
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah. yeah even Yeah. Even reducing the scope would be non-trivial. So yeah, I think it it won't be a straightforward port. I don't think it'll be a massive scope increase, but I think there'll be design work to do.
00:27:31
Speaker
And I might help him with some of that. I might take a backseat and just be a little bit of a code monkey. I'm not sure. But I think he's he's mentioned like wanting some design input as well. So I might participate in that a bit if it happens. i mean, again, it's like... it We haven't even started it yet, so of course this is no guarantee that it will actually come out, but that's what I'm thinking about doing. yeah Very exciting.
00:27:55
Speaker
Honestly, that sounds like something that I very, very much hope comes to fruition, because I would also like to play that. I have played the Dreams game because it has frequently been towards the top of charts.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yeah. Have you played... um this is This is much later in Dream's lifetime, but he made another game called Daily Observer. i don't think I've played that. Okay, that's a very unique game as well that I quite enjoyed.
00:28:22
Speaker
but You're just telling me to re-download Dreams, and that doesn't take ah it doesn't take a lot for me to do. so Yeah, do it. yeah Daily Observer is cool. I think it's less straightforward to like...
00:28:34
Speaker
port to pc um probably yeah yeah that that one's a lot more of a like you can only make it in dreams a little bit oh yeah um so it's i don't know it's really cool though i think i like that one even more than lock wow to be honest Man, I wish... ah I don't know. It's hard because you also work for Media Molecule, but I'm like, just talking out loud here, I really wish that Dreams got a, at the very least, a player app on PC
Motivations and Experiences in the Game Industry
00:29:03
Speaker
so that more people who weren't on a PlayStation could experience some of the creative stuff that people were making in Dreams.
00:29:10
Speaker
But I understand that that is likely not possible. Do you have any questions for us? Yeah, I mean, one of your first questions was like, how do I balance like what I'm doing? And my answer to that was just, I enjoy it so much that I feel compelled to do that.
00:29:29
Speaker
So I guess my question for you is, why do you make games? Is there something you get out of it that's more than just like, you want to provide fun for people? Or like, is there a deeper philosophical reason to why you make games?
00:29:44
Speaker
Alan? Oh, I'm not self-introspective enough to think about that stuff. um i I mostly just like doing something that I can feel like, oh, I'm good at this. Like I'm i'm doing a good job here. I'm making something ah that is worthwhile, something that people will enjoy.
00:30:04
Speaker
um that's That's an awful lot of it. I try not to think about like, oh is is this like a meaningful like thing to contribute to the universe or anything like that?
00:30:17
Speaker
But ah and also, I don't really know how to do anything else at this point. um So I kind of have to keep making games or publishing games or like working in games out of ah momentum, if not anything else. Interesting. Interesting.
00:30:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've been working in games in various capacities for a very long time. Next year is going to next year being 2027 is going to be my 20th year in the industry. And there's a little bit of some cost fallacy, like Alan was kind of talking about, about like, well, if I just go on autopilot, I am staying in the industry and leaving is scary, even though My work is not in game design. My work is in production and release management and biz dev and ah a bunch of other like all the ancillary stuff that is not actually going into the engine.
00:31:13
Speaker
And so while I do have a lot of specialized knowledge, my skills are relatively transferable, but I just, I get such a kick out of the creative people that occupy this space and a lot of the ways that their brains work and a lot of the new experiences that people come up with. And so for the last like well over a decade at this point, I've basically just made it My life's work to find people doing weird creative things and help them with their creativity and help them get that in front of more people and get it to market. So that's why I work on games.
00:31:57
Speaker
But i would be lying if I said that I didn't have one or two moments where I was like, should I just like walk? Especially the last couple of years when like the industry has just been getting...
00:32:08
Speaker
so much smaller and so much smaller. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I definitely feel what both of you are saying a little bit where there's a little bit of a sunk cost thing. It's like, man, I put so many hours into like getting better at this.
00:32:21
Speaker
It's like, but how many hours have I spent not doing something else? Like how many things am I like terrible at if I decided to like stop making games? What would I even do? I don't know.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah. i Hard to say. a weird place to be, to be so specialized in one incredibly, like from the global perspective of like all industry, a very, very niche and hyper-specific industry. Yeah. ah Like it's it'd be one thing if my job was just filling out spreadsheets at a computer desk.
00:33:00
Speaker
I'd be like, oh, I could work in like 30 different industries at least. But it's like this is like, no, no, no, no no My, i mean, Alan, Alan knows very well. I just have all of this nonsense rattling around in my head that feels like it would be there even if I left the industry. So at this point, it's better to stay in the industry. Yeah, you you need to know about a console certification processes for the rest of your life.
00:33:28
Speaker
it it really It really feels like that um because I decided very early on in my career that one of the things that was going to set me apart was I was going to know every single console certification requirement by heart.
00:33:43
Speaker
And so ah down down to like the code numbers and everything. And so i can play a build and within 20 30 minutes, I can list every single cert failure on all consoles.
00:33:58
Speaker
And that is like really, really awesome, except for the part where that's just in me now. yeah What ah like what am I supposed to do if I leave the industry?
00:34:10
Speaker
Could be a... I was going to say it could be a cool party trick, but I can't think of any party where that would be a cool trick. Yeah, I was going to say, um if every single person in the party is bound by the same and NDA, then absolutely. True, true. um I was going to say, you could almost make like a detective game out of this.
00:34:31
Speaker
where you get given like a list of certification requirements for a made-up system and you get to play a game and you've got to send in a report. Could be like a ah keep talking and nobody explodes thing where one person has the manual and the other person has to play the game.
00:34:49
Speaker
Oh, I mean, that that actually sounds really, really fun and really funny, but also, where would I find the time? Also, you'd have the manual already memorized, so...
00:35:00
Speaker
Well, yes. I mean, it would that that that would be for like the five other freaks in this industry that think that CERT testing is entertaining and not like the worst part of the process.
00:35:12
Speaker
um But, um yeah, i don't know. that's ah That's a weird thing about my brain that I just have...
00:35:23
Speaker
have this all and it has gotten me ah it has gotten me a lot of work and also very early on i had to learn to never bill by the hour Because an equivalent test takes a major company like three days and it takes me like 30 minutes plus an hour of write up.
Closing Remarks and Online Presence
00:35:44
Speaker
geez And so sometimes when you're too good at your job, you have to stop billing hourly. Because if I told someone my hour hourly rate was hundreds of dollars an hour, people would balk at that.
00:35:59
Speaker
But also if I said, oh it's my hourly rate is like $50 an hour, then I'd be like, so that'll be $75.
00:36:10
Speaker
Then I can't eat, unfortunately. ah That would only work if I had a nonstop string of clients. But alas, enough about me. Alan, are there any other questions that you wanted to ask that we have not gotten to?
00:36:26
Speaker
No, I don't think so. um Was there anything else about a little perspective that we haven't touched on yet that you want to bring up? I don't think so. Aside from, I guess, by the time this comes out, it'll be out.
00:36:41
Speaker
And so whoever's listening to this, you should go get a little perspective and play it. Ba-doom-tsh! um Go get a little perspective and then come back.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. It was a fun project to work on. Now I'm just in the stressful parts of waiting for it to come out and seeing how it does. Well, fingers crossed.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And then here's hoping you also get a small bump when the podcast comes out. Yeah, hopefully. And yeah, thank you for thank you for the invite. It was a fun conversation.
00:37:19
Speaker
um Do you have any last questions for us before we wrap up? I don't think so. Awesome. Well, where can people find you online slash where can people find your games?
00:37:32
Speaker
um So I'm on Twitter and Blue Sky under the name RBD Jellyfish. My games, you know, are on Steam, a little perspective and sensorium.
00:37:47
Speaker
or what they're called. Well, I made another one that's on Steam, but it came out when i was in college and we didn't know what we were doing. But it's called Huebots, if you're curious. Like, Hue with no space and then bots.
00:38:00
Speaker
And... Yeah, I don't know. After this game's done, I might i might just... get away from social media because it kind of sucks right now. But right and that's where you can find me as of now. um Oh, and of course, I made a bunch of stuff on Dreams. so if you look up RBD Jellyfish on Dreams, you can find a bunch of little stuff I made there as well. I was going to say, American, March 2026, doesn't like doom scrolling? Weird.
00:38:28
Speaker
We have fun here, folks. we we We try and distract ourselves. All right. Thank you again so much for joining the podcast and for having a great conversation with us.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. And thank you for listening to the Drackneck 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.
00:38:53
Speaker
Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:39:06
Speaker
you