00:00:00
00:00:01
From Call of Duty to Marvel Rivals: Balancing Risks and Fun in Game Direction with Thad Sasser
57 Plays21 days ago
Episode Description: In this episode, we dive into the world of game development with Thaddeus Sasser, Game Director of Marvel Rivals at NetEase. Thad shares his journey from working on major franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield to leading the development of Marvel Rivals. We discuss the challenges of balancing creative vision with stakeholder expectations, bringing iconic Marvel characters to life in a hero shooter, and the final push towards the game’s highly anticipated launch. Whether you’re a game developer, a Marvel fan, or someone interested in the behind-the-scenes of game design, this episode offers invaluable insights.
Timestamps & Key Takeaways:
- [02:15] Announcing Marvel Rivals at Gamescom Thad talks about the excitement and relief of announcing Marvel Rivals' release date and the addition of Captain America and Winter Soldier. He shares how this announcement has energized the team as they enter the final stages of development.
- [08:40] What Does a Game Director Do? Thad explains the role of a game director, detailing how it involves holding the creative vision, managing the team, and making crucial decisions that keep the project aligned and moving forward. He emphasizes the importance of leadership and inspiring the team.
- [15:30] Balancing Marvel’s Vision with Creative Freedom We explore the challenges of working with a huge IP like Marvel. Thad discusses how his team collaborates with Marvel to ensure characters stay true to their origins while still pushing gameplay boundaries to surprise and delight players.
- [21:50] Designing Characters and Team Synergy in Marvel Rivals Thad dives into the process of designing diverse heroes with unique abilities and how they ensure balanced and engaging gameplay. He shares how characters like Spider-Man are adapted to maintain their iconic traits while offering a fresh gameplay experience.
- [28:10] Lessons Learned from Past Franchises Reflecting on his work on games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, Thad shares the importance of iteration, feedback, and making tough cuts in the development process. He explains how these experiences have shaped his approach to Marvel Rivals.
- [35:00] The Next Steps for a Game Director Thad discusses potential career paths for game directors, from moving into studio-level design roles to starting their own studios. He reflects on his passion for staying hands-on with the creative process and being the vision holder for projects.
Key Quotes:
- “You have to push the boundaries of the franchise to surprise and delight players while staying true to the core IP.”
- “There’s a moment when you find the fun, and that’s what keeps you hooked.”
- “I love being the vision holder and part of the creative process.”
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, everybody. Greg here from the Player Engage podcast. And here's just a heads up of what you're about to listen to. Today we're talking to Thaddeus Sasser from NetEase. He's the game director of the up and coming Marvel Rivals game. We talk about a lot of cool things in this episode. It's really exciting. We talk about the roles and responsibilities of a game director. What do they do?
00:00:23
Speaker
challenges in balancing creativity with stakeholders' expectations. How do you bring Marvel characters into a hero shooter and make sure they stay grounded? We also just get insights from Fad's journey in game development. He's worked on Call of Duty. He's worked on Battlefield and so many other memorable games in the industry. And this is the importance of community feedback. It's going to be a fun, packed episode. There's great stuff, so listen up and I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:58
Speaker
Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the Player Engage podcast. Greg here and today I have an episode I'm very excited about. Today we're talking to Thaddeus Sasser. He's the game director for Marvel Rivals and works for NetEase. That has been in the industry for a long time working on great projects with EA and Amazon and Deep Silver. He's worked on titles like Battlefield and Call of Duty. And I'm really excited to understand what does a game director do and how do you collaborate with partners overseas and partners as such as Marvel. So I'm really excited that thank you so much for joining me today. How are you? I'm doing great, Greg. Thank you. Hi, everybody. you know I'm really excited to talk to you. I love talking about game design. It's a bit of a hobby of mine, as you can imagine.
00:01:42
Speaker
oh It's good to be doing what you love in your hobbies. and And that's fantastic. And let's start with kind of right off the bat. And we're going to talk a little bit about Marvel Rivals for people that are listening, but we're not going to dig too deep into it because it's all a giant secret that comes out in a couple months. And we're going to respect that. But at Gamescom, where we first met, you were able to announce the actual date that it's going to come out. You were able to announce the price at no cost. And I'm curious from your perspective, now that you've announced that stuff, is it a weight off your chest?
00:02:12
Speaker
you feel better. Absolutely. i You know, the game is coming out December 6th as we announced the games come and everybody on the team is always thrilled when you can talk about your game finally to the public. And you know, we've, we've been through ah an alpha and a beta. And so we've been able to talk about it ah in bits and pieces, but as we get closer to launch, be able to talk more about the game. And that's such a huge relief for the team because they've poured their hearts and souls into this game for, you know, a year or two years or longer. And it's, it's always a relief to be able to see the fan reaction and and to get energy from all those people who are excited about your game.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, and you definitely shocked some people in the most pleasant of ways by announcing that it's not going to be costing anyone anything. it's goingnna be You can get all the characters at no cost, and that's fantastic. But forgetting all that, I'm really curious from your perspective. you know I talked to different studio people here and there, right? What is the role of a game director? That's a really good and kind of a complex question, Greg. you know A game director, the the title and the duties can change from studio to studio is one of the things I've found.
00:03:15
Speaker
And, you know, for the, the listeners out there, I think it's important to kind of understand some of the job families in game design. You know, when I first started, I had no idea that there were more than just programmers and artists. I just figured there was some smart people making it work and they just kind of worked together and made it awesome. And what I found over time is that there, there are very specific roles and they each kind of have a ah specific responsibility. If you think about the artists, for example, and these, these are the people who do the lighting or do the models or do the texturing or create the world environments or create the awesome concept art you've seen or even do the UI it and things of this nature, the artists really make the game look pretty. Their job is to make it appealing and exciting for the players and to draw them in and to make it accessible so people can understand how it works.
00:03:59
Speaker
And this, is this is just one of the jobs. And one of the other jobs, of course, is engineers or programmers. And these are the people that make the game work. They take all these pieces and they make them work together and make sure the complicated things like the rendering is good and the frame rate is fast and the network is not laggy. And, ah you know, that all of the pieces work together and and are.
00:04:18
Speaker
useful for the players and and function properly. And then you've got the role of production and these are the people who make sure the game gets on time gets done on time on budget and help schedule everything and coordinate communication and make sure everybody's talking and working towards the same goal.
00:04:34
Speaker
And then you have my favorite job, of course, which is the game designers. And the game designer's job is really to make the game fun. It's to come up with some cool ideas and some mechanics and then take them to the players and get feedback and listen to them and iterate over time and through iteration, make the game more and more polished and more and more fun. So those are some of the basic roles. And as you proceed down these tracks, they're typically kind of two different tracks you can go down. You can go down the track of being an expert, of really digging deep into your discipline and mastering every aspect of it and being able to be one of the the most successful people in the world at this specific discipline. And there's some very, very deep disciplines in there. But you can also go the another direction, which is leadership, where you acquire expertise and then you have to learn a whole new skill set of of how to lead and how to inspire and and how to manage people. And it's funny because ah it's almost like the skills that got you to where you are won't take you to where you need to go in that case. So it's like learning a whole new set of skills. so
00:05:29
Speaker
It's a really interesting career. It's very dynamic and very challenging, and it's kept me engaged for over 20 years. When you're a game director right like you are, what's the skillset that you normally tap into the most? Is it project management, which which I hear often? Is it something else? It's a mixture of a lot of things. It's definitely a little bit of project management, and you know over over the years, I've worked for a lot of different publishers. You mentioned Amazon and Electronic Arts and you know I worked for Activision and Ubisoft and Deep Silver. and A bunch of different places and each one of them has their own approach to game development. and And over time you learn things that work really well and you learn some things that maybe don't work so well. And you kind of build your own toolbox of of tricks and tips and methods you can use to be more effective in your job. And that's one aspect. And then as I mentioned, there's the leadership or the management aspect, which are actually two separate things. Leadership is inspiring people and connecting with them and
00:06:20
Speaker
and sharing ah kind of the fun of of making a game together. And management is a little bit more about the tasking and driving to the goals and achieving you know the results for the business and things of that nature. And then there's also the fun part, which is kind of the the vision holding in the game design where you've got the pillars of the game and you're you're trying to help people understand how these pillars work and give them some guardrails so they can make as many decisions as they can and still all be going in the same direction. And that's a really fun and also challenging aspect of the job.
00:06:50
Speaker
So it sounds like through becoming a game director, you've became become more of this manager. Do you miss, let's call them the old days? Do you miss getting your hands dirty in code or or you were a designer you mentioned, right? Kind of looking at the gameplay. Do you miss that stuff or do you still kind of get to touch it from your role? Well, you know, it's funny. I joke about this sometimes. I do miss the days where I could just put on my headphones and jam out to music and and make something and and put it directly in the player's hands. I do get to do that once in a while, but it's much more rare as a game designer or as a game director. And then also you'll tend to end up picking up the task. You don't have anybody else to do at the end of the project. You'll have to fill in here and there. And so you may end up doing things like localization strings, which is not any game designer's dream job. And apologies if it is your dream job, but it was never my dream job to do the localization strings. So I think there's, there's a, you still get to do it, but then of course you've got your weekends and that's where you can really, you know, kind of spend your time. If you want, if you like to code, you can do it there. If you like the level design, you can do it there. I know a lot of game designers who do this as a hobby too in their spare time.
00:07:51
Speaker
don't tell my bosses, but I always joke that I'd still do this even if you didn't pay me. it You know, it's funny. It sounds like your bootstrapping is still, you know, sittingtting it every cleaning up all the little pieces that need to be tidied up at the end. Right. know You know, you made a post on LinkedIn earlier today that talked about your, in Call of Duty, you helped create the bomber level that was part of the big, I think it was E3 or, or just the, uh, the, the presentation United offensive way back when that's right. Yeah. It's a,
00:08:17
Speaker
You know, and I remember these original Call of Duties, you know, remember them back from like the N64 era of going up against Medal of Honor, right? And kind of the two different games going up against each other and how it was just always fun to see the new game coming out. And you look at it now and it's like, wow. But when you're creating something like that, does it feel special? Do you know these special moments when you're building them or does it not come until later?
00:08:39
Speaker
I love that question. And what I found is that there's kind of a seminal moment in a game where you're developing it and you go, oh, that was it. That was the fun. We found it. This is the thing. And then you chase after that, right? I like to to use the phrase fail, fast, follow the fun, right? And what that means is that you keep making things, keep trying things. You try new ideas and you do them as quickly as you can. You reiterate iterate through them as a game designer and you get feedback. And early, early on, the feedback mostly comes from the internal development team.
00:09:06
Speaker
And when you're all playing the game together every day, so there'll be some days where you're like, oh, this isn't working. This isn't fun. This is crashing. This is this the frame rates bad here. This just didn't work. This didn't feel good. And then there'll be that moment, like I said, where you go like, aha, we, Eureka, we found it. And that's such a great feeling. And once you've got that, your eye got hooked for life. ah Let's put it that way. I was like, this is amazing. And I just, I can't get enough of this. you It feels so good to work on something and for it to be fun when you're playing at the same time.
00:09:36
Speaker
What is that feeling like? I know we always talk. about I've heard everyone say you need to find fun. You need to find fun. You just playing the game. It's like this holy crap moment. Like that was awesome. We need to do that again and again and again. You know, I have an example of this from working on Battlefield Hardline. ah Battlefield Hardline was a cops and robbers version of the military franchise. And we struggled initially because it was We were using all of the military assets, and we had a lot of the the same technologies. and And a lot of times when you start a sequel, you'll start from a base game, right? And you'll have a lot of the the same kind of feature set that you start with. But then over time, as you start to find the identity of the game, you can create something new out of that. And I remember specifically, we were playing one day, we were playing multiplayer, and we were playing one of our new game modes called Heist.
00:10:22
Speaker
and heist is about stealing money bags from that are basically in a vault somewhere and you have to break in as the robbers you have to break in and steal the bags and as the the cops you have to stop the robbers from stealing it and we tried all kinds of different things and we had some some goofy ideas at one point there were eight bags in three locations and it was too chaotic and then once we started to figure out that it was really about focusing the fight and creating tension around a single objective We had one session one day where we played it at the end of it. Everybody was like, that's it. That's the game. That's the thing we're making. And from there, everything else, all the other decisions started to fall into place. We're like, oh, we understand the vision better. We understand the direction better. We understand what the fun of this specific type of gameplay is. And it really helped solidify the game. And it was and such a pivotal moment in creating that game. It was just fantastic. It sounds like such a fun experience to be able to be a part of it. I remember Hardline very well. I remember it drastically different than any other call.
00:11:16
Speaker
battlefield before then, but I feel like I had a rocky start, then everyone embraced it, saying, hey, this is not the battlefield we're used to, but this is still a battlefield. And all of a sudden, I had like a cult following that just loved that game. I think that's very true. you know It ends up going on to sell 10 million units, which I'm quite proud of. That was something yeah the team achieved that was just an amazing success in my book. Congratulations for that. And jumping back to Rivals here for a moment, you know Marvel is this massive universe that has tons of fan expectations.
00:11:45
Speaker
How do you balance the Marvel's input for the vision while still having some creativity from your side in the development process? Well, you know, I think that's always tricky when you work with a stakeholder because the stakeholder has so much knowledge about their specific franchise, whether it's Marvel or whether it's DICE with Battlefield or or whether it's Ubisoft with Ghost Recon or whoever it might be.
00:12:07
Speaker
there's There's always ah a creative stakeholder that has a great deal of knowledge when you come into a franchise like that. And it's really important. The first thing you do is you have to understand what you're working with. You have to do a lot of research. You have to understand what are the games that are in this this IP, in this this franchise? how do How do they work together? Why do they work? What are the best examples of success? success And what are the worst examples of ah failure? And how can I learn from those? And then through doing this and then working very closely with the the people who are involved with the the intellectual property,
00:12:36
Speaker
by talking to them, by going to visit them and and getting that FaceTime with them, you start to get a better sense of what's expected and and what you can do to kind of push the boundaries of of the franchise and create something that's going to surprise and delight players, but also still be true to the core IP.
00:12:52
Speaker
And that's something that's an ongoing process. I used to i used to joke that we were trying to hit a a target in a moving window. It was a very small target, and the window's constantly moving. And every time you go to a gate reviewer, you get feedback. You'd be like, oh, it's too far this way, or it's too far that way. And you'd constantly kind of fine-tune it and adjust it until finally, you hopefully landed it right in that window. And that's that's a a really intense creative process. And it's also thrilling and super fun when you start to get it right. You mentioned something interesting. And I don't know how to ask this question, but I'm going to throw it out there and see what sticks and what doesn't stick.
00:13:22
Speaker
You mentioned that it was, um, you had stakeholders, which is important and they come with some, you've played probably previous Marvel games and see what didn't work in that. What didn't work kind of what made it from what did it, but you also have that same experience from all the different shooting games that you've been working on as well as all the different hero shooters that are available right now. So are you probably looking at your catalog of what you've worked on and thinking, I want to bring this from battlefield. I want to bring this from call of duty. I want to bring this mechanic here. Am I making this up? Is this really what happens or.
00:13:51
Speaker
I mean, certainly all of your experience ties into that. you know And it's maybe not a one-to-one. Like, you know, ah Battlefield and Call of Duty are very military. And Marvel's not really very military. We don't have any killing of Marvel rivals. You're knocking out your opponents, right? They're going to recover.
00:14:04
Speaker
So it's it's it's a very different context, but yet at the same time, you still learn some kind of best practices. Boy, players really like to know when they're getting hit, which direction they're getting hit from. That's really important. Players find it really important to know how much health they have and how how soon it is before they get knocked out or killed or taken out of the action. So and these are these are kind of general principles you learn through working on these types of games over over the years. And you can bring all of these examples forward. Maybe you also learn how to do great play tests and collect data from players in effective ways.
00:14:32
Speaker
Or you learn more about what types of players want and their expectations, what their motivations are, whether they're the intrinsic motivations or whether you can motivate. And intrinsic motivations are the ones that come from inside. You're like, oh, I like to choose how to do what I want to do. Or I like to to demonstrate how good I am at the game.
00:14:48
Speaker
Or the extrinsic motivations, which are like, oh, I want to do this thing to get the cool skin or or the unlock for the the weapon or the new attachment or whatever. So there's a lot of of kind of factors that all tie into great core game design that you can take from your past experience and and work with a new title on almost in some ways, no matter the genre, but it really does help if they're close. ah Multiplayer competitive games have a lot more similarities.
00:15:09
Speaker
Did you have that creative freedom in any ah places when it came to the hero's abilities? For example, Spider-Man has the Spidey sense pop up when there's a when there's an enemy nearby. Obviously, Spidey has a spider sense, but are you able to kind of manipulate it and use it how you want in the game? I think that's a great question. And one of the things that's great about Marvel Heroes is they really have a good like kind of core identity. right There's Spider-Man, he's got to have webs. right He's got to be able to web sling. He's got to be able to shoot webs. That's kind of core to who he is.
00:15:39
Speaker
He's never going to carry a gun and run around and shoot people. That's not Spider-Man's identity. So there are some restrictions, but a lot of times, designers actually thrive from restrictions. It's funny, because if you put a designer in a small box, the designer will try frantically to get out. They'll think of all kinds of things. Well, what can I do with webs? Can we have them shoot webs at a 360 and web everybody nearby? you know what What can we do with this? How can we how can we realize the the Spidey sense in the game? How could that work? you know And so I think being able to push on the edges of the box can create some really fun and exciting like gameplay moments, whether it's ah a military shooter or whether it's ah a superhero-based multiplayer competitive game.
00:16:14
Speaker
I love that. you know it It reminds me of just having a sandbox. right When you have a sandbox, you can design something. If you're me building a skate park in Tony Hawk, it looks like crap at the end because it's just this infinite thing I can build. I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do. But when you have those starting points, those pillars, it's like, all right, well, I got to be able to shoot webs. I got to be able to have the sense. It really hones down, at least gives you direction, which I think is awesome. that That's a great example, Greg. If I said to you, hey,
00:16:41
Speaker
Greg, you only get four half pipes, three rails, and two walls. And I want you to build the best park you can build. And five other people are also going to do this. And then we want to play them all. You would find that to be a very different challenge than what you said, which is, well, I just created stuff until I filled everything. You'd be like, whoa, wait, wait. Now I've got a little box. And how do I achieve? I have this idea. What if you bounced off the wall, and then you grind on the rail, and then you go through the half pipe or whatever, right? And so now, because you've got these pieces, you've got a little language, you can start building different gameplay sentences, if you would.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's, uh, you know, I never really kind of clicked that together, but it makes a lot of sense to me now. And and thank you for for bringing that up. Um, you know, you're working on one of the, the biggest IPs that are coming out in, in 2024 here, continuing to 2025 and.
00:17:27
Speaker
If you look back at your career, you worked at some of the most amazing games, at least to me, that I grew up with Battlefield and Call of Duty and just kind of defined my childhood. And I'm wondering, when you were in grade school, what did you want to do when you grew up? And how did you end up here? How did that path get you to to where you are today? I had no idea what to do what I wanted to do for a long time, Greg. It took me quite a while to find my way into this career, honestly.
00:17:51
Speaker
um I tried a bunch of different things originally. And when I was in high school, I thought, Oh, I want to be a psychologist. I want to figure out the human brain works. And I got into into college. I started studying psychology and went, Nope, this is not what I want to do. And then I thought, Oh, you know, maybe I'll try music. I really like, you know, music and playing instruments and making music with other people. That'll be really fun. And I went through that for a while. And I was like, wow, I'm really not super talented at this. Maybe I should try something else.
00:18:15
Speaker
And when I switched to computer science, my advisor said, it's surprising how many people switch from music to computer science. So, and that that kind of started ah part partially because when I was a child, my dad bought one of the very first IBM PCs. It was, well, this is, I'm giving up how old I am here, but.
00:18:30
Speaker
You know, way back in the day when personal computers were just becoming a thing, I got a personal computer, and one of my friends and I, we taught ourselves how to program, and we made little games. We used to make games by typing them in from the back of magazines, right? You used to have the code in a magazine. You'd type it in, and you'd play it. And that was so much fun, and I would take it, and that would change the code. And years later, I got into modding games. I would take a game like Civilization II, and I'd make my own tech tree, my own nations, and my own set of units, and so on. And I always had so much fun doing that.
00:18:59
Speaker
But I, thinking back, even when I was a little kid, when I was five, six, seven, when I would play with my friends, I would make little role playing games. I remember making ah a Star Wars based game when I was about eight or nine with one of my friends. And I wasn't a good game designer back then. I was eight or nine, but I still had the the idea that this is, I want to live a fantasy. I want to have a different life. I i loved reading and I loved realizing these ideas in different mediums. And so it's always kind of been a core part of my identity. And it's funny because I didn't,
00:19:26
Speaker
I think that was a real job. I just thought that was something I like to do. And I was working in IT, and I was working for myself. I was my own boss, and I did not like working for myself. I was not a great boss. And I was reading through the paper one day through Classifieds, and I saw an ad say, get paid to play games. And I was like, that sounds amazing. So I applied to Activision QA. And it turns out that you aren't just playing games. You're playing the same broken game over and over again every day, and you're writing about how it's broken. But I actually enjoyed that, and I was pretty good at it. and through that i kind of ascended through the the ranks of QA until I got to the point where I got to be an embedded tester at a developer, a little developer called gray matter interactive. And there I got to to contribute to a game called return to castle Wolfenstein. I don't know if you remember that, but I'd played the original on the apple two, I think way back when the 2d sprite based game. And here was the full 3d version. It was, it was really kind of a really fascinating dream come true. and To be able to work on that was great. I,
00:20:22
Speaker
got to talk to the developers. I got to work with some really great people. And at the end of my my stint there, they said, hey, how would you like a job? And I thought, heck yeah. Sign me up. So from there, I worked for Grey Matter Interactive. And that's that's where we did Call of Duty United Offensive. what What a lucky break. That's the first game I get to ship. right i get to As a game developer, I get to work on the first expansion pack to the very first Call of Duty ever.
00:20:43
Speaker
And from there, I was hooked. you know I went to work for Treyarch for many years. I went over to Ubisoft. I worked on Ghost Recon. I went over to EA. I worked on Battlefield and and so on and so on until I eventually end up here working with the the amazing Marvel IP and and getting to work on such a fun game with this team. Is there a genre other than shooter you've ever been a part of? So I did an open world sort of superhero game called Agents of Mayhem. It wasn't necessarily critically or commercially well received, but it was a great team and it was a fun project. and I'm quite proud of how that team came together and managed to ship that game. I loved your story coming up in that understanding, A, that it's a role, because no one knows what they want to do when they grow up. And especially when you don't think it's a thing. I remember when I wanted got into gaming or when I wanted to get into gaming, I was i remember playing ah Dr. Mario with my dad in the NES. And we would sit around playing Dr. Mario. And he would whoop my butt every time. And it's just like I fell in love with it. and and like
00:21:40
Speaker
I wanted to be a developer and I took a coding course and I failed it right away. I was never good at learning foreign languages. Like I've sucked at learning Spanish or French, and then I was taking C++. plus plus I'm like, this is just another foreign language. What's going on here? And I realized that this wasn't for me. And then I realized there's other paths to get there. And that's why I love hearing your story about how you even became a game director, right? Because you don't necessarily need those development skills. and I think it's something that people need to realize that, you know, it's not always a single path that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. ah and anyone can get into this gaming industry and and just hearing those stories of people I haven't got there like yourself is something that is just it gives me chills because it's awesome how how you get there you know I speak to a lot of students I love public speaking I love speaking to students and I got a lot of interesting questions about well how do I get into game development I'm like well one of the things you need to do is figure out what are the things that excite you about gaming I want to write stories okay well that's
00:22:32
Speaker
that's the narrative discipline. You're going to need to to talk to narrative designers and to write game writers and and figure out are you more technical with the writing or are you more about the high level concept and story and and how are you going to go about you know finding these contacts and getting the kind of experience you need to understand how to pitch yourself for this kind of job. Or maybe like I said maybe earlier the artists make it look pretty. Maybe you're really good at sketching things. You love coming up with alien landscapes for example or maybe giant robots and this is your passion and you can follow that and you can find a job doing that in the industry so there's all kinds of different careers and maybe even you just like talking to people about games you know maybe you you want to do be a community manager or you want to you want to moderate discussions or or do analysis of ah of gamers and their feedback there's all kinds of different jobs in gaming it's not just
00:23:18
Speaker
the people who directly work on the software. But there's all kinds of other roles that are really critically important to making a great game as well. So my advice to students is always you know find out what what it is about gaming that you love and and dig more into that. Ask questions of the people who do those jobs. Find out what those jobs are and then ask the questions. What what does this job do? What does it mean to do this? What's your day to day job look like? Yeah, I think that's beautifully said. Don't force yourself into a job just because you want to be there. Find what you love and follow the passion because then you're going to love going to work.
00:23:47
Speaker
And there's a very big difference there. Don't just be in gaming because you want to be in gaming. Do what you want to do and and see if it aligns with something in gaming. You know, and you you said that keyword passion, which is the thing that I think developers have to have. It's the job is not easy. It's a very tough job. You know, there's ah been a lot of layoffs in the industry and so on. There's a lot of rough times for a lot of people. And that passion is one of the things that will sustain you. Right.
00:24:09
Speaker
You know, it's, it's kind of a double-edged sword in some ways, but being able to care deeply about what it is you do and care about creating the experiences for players, that tends to make it all worth, at least for me. If I can get something that I've worked on in the hands of the players, and I don't care if they know who I am or what I've done, but if I see them having fun with it, or I hear them talking about with excitement, my, my day is made, my month is made, my year is made. I love that. Well, you got a lot of good time coming up then. Um, about halfway through the podcast, I'd like to do a fireball around where I'll just throw some questions at you and uh,
00:24:39
Speaker
Good to go. Fireball away. Fireball. Everyone hates this first question. I don't know why. What did you have for breakfast? Breakfast? I had a bagel with an egg and some pepper jack cheese and some Tabasco. It was pretty delicious.
00:24:51
Speaker
Nice. ah You just got back from visiting your HQ in China. Are you an aisle or a window seat person? Oh, I'm always aisle. I don't like to sit for long periods of time. So I have to get up and pace a little bit when I can. You know, there'll be certain periods of the flight where it's okay to go stand in the bulkhead or, or stand in the galleon stretch. And I'm six foot two. I'm a big guy. I don't necessarily fit in every airport airplane seat very well. So, you know, I like to get up and stretch. What is your dream vacation?
00:25:21
Speaker
my dream vacation. Well, I love the beach. I love San Diego. And I would say going and getting a rental place on the beach in San Diego would be pretty high up on the list. But I also like the mountain. So I think getting a mountain cabin up in the snow would also be a blast. So I think either one of those. And luckily you can find both of those in California. Polar opposites, right? Yeah. Almost literally. what ah What game are you playing right now?
00:25:47
Speaker
Oh, ah well, actually I just got back into Apex Legends. I love the shooting in that game and they've added some really interesting progression mechanics in mid-match where now your character starts to level up and you unlock more perks, which I find really interesting because we did something similar in hardline a long time ago. So it's, it's fascinating to see some of these ideas persisting and, and, you know, kind of still in the genre. Do you think those are lessons learned from the studio? Like is it passed along through dice or whoever it goes? I mean, Apex is a respawn, right? So it's,
00:26:14
Speaker
Yes, you know it's always hard to say. I know that designers learn from other designers, but I also have seen a lot of what I call design convergence, which is we need a lot of smart people thinking about the same problems. They tend to come up with some pretty clever solutions that are pretty similar. So it's always hard to tell. Is this is this inspired by something or is it an original idea that just appears to be the same? And I never really know, but I always like to think that smart people arrive at smart solutions together. There you go. You're off the hot seat.
00:26:45
Speaker
I wanna, you mentioned something a little earlier and I wanna see how we can loop this into becoming a question, right? um You were, ah Battlefield is known for their multiplayer gaming and every Battlefield I think tries to pigeon hold in a narrative story to have that campaign element because then people complain there's no campaign, well it's Battlefield. but um You have announced that there's a narrative to rivals and we don't have to deep dive deep into that, but how do you,
00:27:14
Speaker
How do you put storytelling into a game that's a hero shooter? And how do you build upon that to keep people... It's not a single player mode, but how do how do you keep those players engaged? And maybe it's a question I can't ask, but...
00:27:26
Speaker
No, you you can ask this question. I think it's a a valuable question as well. You know, what's the essence ah of Marvel? It's the superheroes, the supervillains, right? And so having the characters talk is a primary way you can deliver a story, and whether they're saying funny quips or they're saying something contextual in the heat of battle, or they're talking about the game mode objective or whatever it is.
00:27:45
Speaker
Those are some of the ways you can deliver storytelling. and I think one of the other characters that people don't really think about as a character, but the environments tell a story as well. Why are you in this place? What's happening here? Why why are there spider webs holding up the roofs of these buildings when the bases are destroyed? Oh, that's because the roof is the most expensive part to build. And it's a preservation act. They're saving the most expensive part because they can rebuild the lower part more easily. So there's all these little details that go into building a world. And sometimes we don't even explicitly talk about these with the players. and We just expect you to kind of explore the world and start to pick up on it over time. There's all kinds of of ways you can go about telling stories with these different characters, the world or or the superheroes of the supervillains. You mentioned a little earlier and I want to back up to two things that you mentioned earlier. One, you you talked about you one your interest in psychology and and you took some psychology courses. ah Do you find yourself using psychology in your day-to-day job? Absolutely. I think every every designer does, whether they do it, you know, kind of explicitly or not.
00:28:42
Speaker
You know, and I think there's there's ah an ethical way to do it. There's an unethical way to do it. I think there's, there've been some great books about this as well. I try to be very ethical when I think about game design. I prefer to rely on, you know, kind of intrinsic motivations. I talked briefly about those other, but there's the idea of autonomy. I can choose what to do, right? Of mastery. I can get better at and and kind of feel like I'm achieving progress at getting better at the game. And then there's the related aspect, the social aspect. And then you can start to tie these together, like, oh, I want to show off my mastery to my friends and and oh I want to make choices with my friends together and we can tell a story together. So there's all kinds of different player archetypes that work in these intrinsic motivations and that's typically where I start. Now of course there's the other side of the coin which is potentially slightly less ethical. I think for some people if you think about the Skinner box it's one of the first things you you learn about in operant psychology when you're studying psychology. Like oh if you have a rat in the cage and he has a pellet dispenser and he pushes the lever he'll get a pellet
00:29:37
Speaker
uh, some of the time and then we'll get an electric shock other parts of the time. And by changing the ratio of pellet to shock, you can condition the rat to go over and push the lever repeatedly. Right. that's That's kind of the dark side of of psychology. and That's the side that I i prefer to to not think about as heavily and to think more about how do we entice players to to want to to enjoy the game, to to want to come in and to see more content. Obviously, developers have to make money, right? That's the only way we can survive and keep doing this and keep making entertainment. Everybody has to be financially rewarded. But how do we do it in an ethical way? How do we do it in a way where the players feel that they're getting more value than they're paying for?
00:30:12
Speaker
You know, I always like to think about, this is kind of silly, but I always think about my gaming time in terms of a dollar per hour proposition. And and if I'm paying a dollar per hour, if I get, if I pay $60 for a game, I want to get 60 hours out of it. And I feel like I've hit my value proposition. So multiplayer games for me are a great investment. I love that. Now that people might price that differently. They might say, well, if I get four hours of entertainment out of an amazing movie quality game, I'm willing to pay $15 now. That's what I pay at the movies.
00:30:37
Speaker
So it's very different for each type of player. But I think there's there some interesting comparisons there. What's what's your personal value point? how How do you think about your entertainment and and what kind of value do you place on your time with that? Yeah.
00:30:50
Speaker
It's a fascinating way to look at it. I love that explanation of it. And it's a good way for me to convince my wife to let me buy more games. ha Don't use your powers for evil, Greg. yeah i I love always hearing that, you know, like a lot of the people I do talk to say they want to be lawyers, they want to be teachers, and they're in these roles that you know, do require that type of knowledge or whether you're educating people on how to play a game. And it's funny how all this stuff kind of goes back and you can look at it. What did I want to be when I grow? Well, the core values of what that was is what I'm doing. And and it's kind of cool to just be able to kind of relate that. And sometimes it's way off and it just ruins my whole theory. So well no, what what a great example. I mean, I know definitely lawyers and teachers use psychology. How do how do I motivate these students to learn?
00:31:32
Speaker
What is it about the material that they would find interesting? How do I give them a way to be motivated, intrinsically motivated to learn these things? Because I can't give them rewards in class other than grades. How do I motivate the students who don't care about the grades? How do I get them interested and engaged? I love that aspect. And I've never been a lawyer. I've been a teacher, but I've never been a lawyer, so I can't speak too much about that. But I'm certain that something applies there as well. There's still time, Thad. There's still time.
00:31:56
Speaker
ah One thing I love that you guys do is that you you engage with the community and you collect feedback. The the subreddit for Marvel Arrivals is thriving, has people making their own characters, and I'm sometimes confused if it's real or not a real character. And feedback from my own job is important, because I love making sure that and we we provide tools, but I want to make sure that people are collecting feedback. Because if you want a good game, you need to be able to listen to who you're talking to. So how do you, as a team, how do you collectively work together to get that feedback, analyze that feedback, and make educated decisions?
00:32:27
Speaker
Well, let's, let's talk first ah about player feedback. I think one of the important things to do is to not take player feedback at face value. Always. A lot of times players will say things and they aren't necessarily communicating what their intent is. And you kind of have to sometimes ask deeper questions, but oh, why do you think that way? Is it because of this?
00:32:44
Speaker
Oh, well, if it's not that, is how do you think this would change? This change would affect you. Oh, would this affect the the the way you feel? And kind of being able to dig into that and understand the intent behind what they're saying is more important and more useful than literally the suggestion they just gave you. I think the other thing to remember is that everybody can be a game designer, but not everybody is a good game designer. And that's that's something that takes experience. You know, I think it's Malcolm Gladwell talked about the 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in it.
00:33:12
Speaker
in a skill, and that's something that game designers devote that kind of time to. They spend thousands of hours playing games, analyzing games, talking about games with other designers, making games the most important and the most useful learning step of all. And that kind of skill, if you've got the deeper understanding of game design and you can ask questions of the the people that are giving you the feedback, you could start to be like, oh, I see what they're saying, but I think what will really solve this problem, I think what's really happening is they don't understand the UI.
00:33:38
Speaker
Or they really think that this mechanic is unfair. They feel like they can't react to it. Or here's what's really happening. And then what you do is you do an iteration. You make that change, and then you test again. And you see, hey, did the signal change? Are they still saying the same thing? And this is one of the best ways I found to increase the quality and the fun of your game over time. I like to say that the more times you can iterate, the closer you can get to a great game. And that speed of iteration is is really, really important.
00:34:03
Speaker
ah this ah This has no real solid answer, right? But how quickly can you iterate up assuming it changes depending on the size of the change? but you could You could do it a lot of different ways. Sometimes you will do ah you queue up a bunch of different changes, usually two or or maybe three changes, and you'll have different builds so you can run through the changes one after the other. That's often not quite as useful as kind of doing more deliberate targeted changes. You want to make sure you don't change too many things at once, because if you change too many things, it starts to become confusing to read the data. well Why is that? mean I talked about users don't always give you the exact thing, their exact intent, right? The more variables you've changed, the more confusing that can be to decipher. So if you change a couple of things, it becomes much easier to measure the response. Like, well, I'm pretty sure that they had more fun because we changed the thing that was broken.
00:34:47
Speaker
right And that that's kind of what you want out of that. You often in that same role have to make tough decisions. Often you have to cut features that maybe people liked or characters that people like. Can you talk about historically a game that you've worked on where you maybe had to make one of those decisions and it was a tough one. Maybe you got flack for it or or that. And how do you keep, how do you keep motivation up when you do something like that? I've got two, I've got two really good examples from Hardline of this. So early on, as I said, you know, we're kind of developing off the the base of Battlefield 3 and 4.
00:35:17
Speaker
And so we had a lot of functionality in there. and We're like, oh, let's put in airplanes. Airplanes are fun. People like flying. And then the more we played with it and the more we thought about it, I was like, well, the only real function for an airplane, it's only really got one person in it. I mean, you have to put guns in it. And then what's the fantasy of the cops or the robbers flying an airplane with guns? And so it was a little bit controversial and and unpopular with some of the team, but I was like, we're cutting airplanes. They just don't fit the fiction. They don't fit the vision. They don't have a meaningful gameplay role in the space. Like how are you using an airplane in a heist? It wasn't making sense. it too many problems to figure out at once. So it's like, okay, we're we're going to cut airplanes. And so we did that. And I think, you know, some of the fans, there's a small percentage of fans that absolutely love the airplanes in Battlefield, and I don't blame them. I love them too. And they they were a little bit upset about that. Like, how come you didn't have airplanes? I was like, well, it just didn't make sense. and The other thing was, is the the team got really excited about the idea of flat tires.
00:36:09
Speaker
And I was like, I don't know. I don't think that slowing down players and making steering where it sounds like a fun experience. It sounds like it's just going to get frustrating. And they were like, no, no, no, we're going to have stop sticks. We're going to have, you know, those the things where you throw them out in the road, the cars run over them and the tires pop or you can shoot the tires. It's going to be awesome. And I was like, well, all right, we can try it. And so we got a bill with flat tires and I played it and I went.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, nope. I don't agree. This isn't going to be fun. And I just want to stop. It's going to be expensive for development. I just want to cut it now. And that was a difficult one, because again, like some members of the team don't agree with that. But I think that's one of the reasons why you have somebody who's responsible for making those hard decisions that you talked about. You've got to have somebody who's hewing to the vision, who's trying to maintain the identity of the game and make sure that they're the advocate for the player. No, this is what's more fun. This is what the player is looking for. Players like the fast pace of Battlefield. They don't like it when Battlefield gets too slow and clunky.
00:36:59
Speaker
So let's let's make sure that we don't make it worse to drive while you're driving. Let's make it fun and exciting and fast paced. And I think ultimately that was the right decision for the game. you know The vehicle mode we came up with Hotwire went on to become the number one most played mode in the game for the first time in the franchise beating conquest in terms of time played. And that was that was a sure sign that we'd done something right with the vehicle. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the best way to get that feedback possible is to see people playing the game like you mentioned earlier. Yeah.
00:37:27
Speaker
um As a game director, not as bad, but as a game director, what's the next logical step if you want to keep going up the chain of command, right? Where do you go from there? Technically, I think the next step is a studio design director, which is more of a studio level position. You know, as a game director, one of the things I do is ah a little bit more strategy. You know, I think each level you kind of rise in the hierarchy, you get less hands on as we talked about and you become you know, more about the strategy or the management and so on. and And for me, I think that a studio design director might do something like i help the the portfolio of titles across the studio, right? Be looking at the strategy for all the titles and how they fit together, how the how all the SKUs kind of fit together and make a compelling offering across multiple years.
00:38:15
Speaker
Or you might be doing things like mentoring ah the the game directors or the the game designers on your team and and helping them build a better vision and refine their ideas and and deliver to the players in a faster, more efficient way. So it becomes ah a much more kind of a higher level position. And again, a little bit more removed from the actual game production. It's more about managing at the studio level.
00:38:36
Speaker
For me, I'm not certain that's the job I necessarily want. I tend to love working on an individual game. I love being the vision holder. I love being a part of the creative process and I love sharing the excitement with the team. therere I've mentioned before the magic when you find the fun in the game and you can have multiple types of of those moments throughout the development of game. I've got ah a great team here in Seattle. and We've had a couple of those magical moments like this is amazing. We want more of this. And I kind of I kind of live for that. That's kind of why I do this and that and getting the game in the hands of the players is is really the best part of it for me. So I think that I'm quite happy being a game director or a creative director or you know the
00:39:12
Speaker
the kind of the person who holds the vision or or directs the the game. that's That's my favorite aspect of the job, for sure. Yeah, it sounds like it gets much more business-y up top and less, let's call it, fun, but but still has, I'm sure, a different type of fun. yeah Exactly. different Different type of fun. It's fun that you mentioned that creative process. We had Jack on the show and he was in level design for vitals and he speaks very enthusiastically just as you do and I love it. and And I'm curious from your perspective, you know, you've said now that you've made levels, right? So do you ever go down to like the level design team? And do they roll their eyes when you roll up? Like, Oh, that's back to tell us about level design.
00:39:48
Speaker
ah If they do that, I'm doing it wrong. right And I would certainly take that as as feedback, whether it was explicit or implicit. um ah Ideally, what happens is if I drop by, I'm like, hey, what are you working on? And they're excited to tell me. I'm like, that's a great idea. And then I can ask them questions about it.
00:40:03
Speaker
And by asking questions, maybe I get them to think about something new or something they hadn't thought about or something they didn't know somebody else was working. Oh, did you know so-and-so was working on this other idea? Oh, I didn't know that. That sounds like we could work on that together. I'll have to go talk to them about it. And so that's, that's i i like I said, I think the job of the leader is more to inspire and to provide guardrails. How how do you keep everybody going in the same direction and get them motivated to work on this thing that you all want to make, that you're all passionate about?
00:40:29
Speaker
And of course you're gonna have creative conflict from time to time. It's inevitable. I mentioned a couple of examples that just a few minutes ago, right? But it's important still that everybody plays nice together and has fun while they're doing it. And you're making games, you're making fun. It should be fun while you do it. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with curiosity, right? And that gets everyone thinking. Like if you're if you're curious, you'll get everyone else thinking as well. And I think that's such a great way to approach something because everyone's vested at that point.
00:40:54
Speaker
yeah I love it when when the developers have ownership. I think that the reason you hire experts and you put them on the front line is to have them make fast decisions, right? Again, if I'm giving them the right guardrails, they can make fast decisions and and hit the target, right? And if they're not hitting the target, and I need to go look at the guardrails I provide and go, well, why aren't they hitting the targets? Am I not giving them good enough guidance so they don't understand the vision? Do they not understand the player? Do they know who we're making the game for? All those kinds of questions are the first thing I go to.
00:41:22
Speaker
How do you yourself stay educated on the types of games that are happening, right? Extraction shooters are getting a big, big wave right now, right? Hero shooters are still around. like Is it just playing games? How do you like how you get thinking about what's next? you know My wife was always amused when I tell her, I can need to go do some research, right? Because it is playing games. And she she used to to kind of excitedly exasperatedly, ah I got to go play Xbox for three hours, honey. I'll see you later. yeah But i you know that's the reality of it is you do have to play out. I mean, it's it's a fun job, but it's still a job, right? You still have to do your homework. And that means not just playing the good games, but also playing the bad games. And playing the bad games can be just as useful. Why did this game fail? Why did this game not work? Why did the players not find something to love about this? What were they confused about?
00:42:12
Speaker
And that's a really important part of it. I think the other thing you need to do also is you need to read a lot. There's always somebody thinking really hard and deep about something you haven't thought at all about. I read a great article the other day, a white paper by some really smart guys over at MIT, who are talking about um mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics, and and what each one of those meant in a specific, you know in ah in a game setting, and and how mechanics were the system that created the dynamics, which were the behaviors of the players that engaged with the aesthetic which is how the players felt about the gameplay and that was such a fascinating lens to look at games through and I think there's always something else to learn whether it's you know about the user experience oh what do players like about these what are some of the dark patterns we talked about ethical game design earlier what are some of the dark patterns to avoid that I don't want to fall into the trap of using or
00:42:58
Speaker
So there's always something new to learn. It's one of the things I love about game development. And now put on top of that, there's always some new tech. Holy cow, Unreal 5.4 just came out. Did you see what you could do? You could do this now. I didn't know you could do that in the tool. That's amazing. So there's all kinds of things you can always. One of my favorite things to do is learn. And I love continuing to learn. And game development is always a learning adventure. So it's just fascinating. Yeah, it's awesome.
00:43:22
Speaker
ah Yeah, I got nothing to say on that. I love it. i I think from, from playing games, especially games that aren't good, right? Understanding why, I mean, not to call out a game, but Concord's a great example. It wasn't necessarily a bad game, but what happened there? Why did it fail? Understanding the missteps that it took and how do you prevent yourself from doing that? And, and there's more than just that. There's a lot of games out there, right? It was a bad timing. Was it bad marketing? Was it over promising under delivering? Was it no community, no excitement built? There's tons of things there, right? And I think, Absolutely. I love you brought up marketing. That's, that's one of the things I've been learning and thinking about a lot recently and how important that is and about organic growth. You look at, look at a game like valve's deadlock and the brilliant job they've done of stealth marketing that game with the invite system where you're able to invite your friends and you're excited about the game. You're going to and go invite your friends to be excited about. That's such a ah brilliant way to, to kind of create a, uh, uh, you know, a social network of of people that play your game. So just, there's just some brilliant examples out there. And like I said, it's, it's an adventure of, of continuous learning.
00:44:23
Speaker
So I have one more question for you, Thad, and then I can let you be free. and um You're three months out from launch. At this point, what is left to do in the game? And it doesn't have to be rivals if that's not what we want to talk about. But when you're at the month but minus three months out, right? Like what are you doing at this point? Everything. You're fixing everything. So a game is a huge, huge endeavor by, you know, lots and lots of people. And I'm not going to say how many people. There's a lot of people involved. There's a lot of moving pieces.
00:44:52
Speaker
And whenever you have anything of that complexity, there's going to be problems. They're often known as bugs. You've probably heard of these. And these, it's literally from the old days where you literally get a bug inside the computer and you'd have to go find the bug and remove it, right? And these bugs can really greatly impact the user fun, right? If the game comes out like Battlefield 4 does and the servers burn down, fall over and sink into the swamp and all the players are outraged.
00:45:16
Speaker
that's That's a huge miss. You don't want that to happen ever, right? You you want to make sure that you you've got everything buttoned up and you've got a response for any possible problem it could have. And so a lot of the times, as you're coming up the launches, you're trying to to cross all the T's and dot all the I's and and make sure that everything is going to work. And there's a lot of complicated steps involved in this. you know Depending on what platforms you want, you have to go through a certification process that ah has all kinds of crazy requirements you might not have thought of. What happens if you unplug all the controllers and let the game sit for 24 hours? Have you ever tried that?
00:45:46
Speaker
Oh no, we never did. Oh, we got to check that. Okay. There's all kinds of things like that you have to go through in order to get the game to ship that a lot of people have never thought about. it And so it's a very, very busy time. In fact, it's one of the most, it's the busiest and most stressful time of making a game is shipping it. But then hopefully it's all worth it at the end. And when the players get their hands on it on day one and they love it and there's, they're talking about the fun they're having. That's when the payoff is. Beautiful. I lied. I have one more question. yeah What is the most difficult part of your job?
00:46:17
Speaker
Hmm, the most difficult part of my job. What are the things that you don't look forward to? What would that be? You know, I like being places, but I don't like traveling. I don't we talked about airplanes earlier. I don't like being on airplanes. I'm a big dude. And I love being in Guangzhou. It's such an adventure. It's such a different place. And it's got so many cool things. The food is amazing. The people are awesome.
00:46:42
Speaker
But getting there is a 13 and a half hour plane flight if you're lucky, right? Sometimes with a five hour layover and it's just, it's really taxing. And then the time zone difference really throws me for a loop too. It's like, it's like a full eight or nine hours off and that's really hard to adjust to. So the the act of traveling itself, not a fan of, I keep wishing that we would have Dr. Strange's portal. I could just say, guys, I'm here. You know, that would be great. Whoever gets that going is going to become ah the first trillionaire if if someone's not that already.
00:47:10
Speaker
but that this has been such a fun conversation. I appreciate you opening up explaining to me all the different concepts and what you do as a game director and all the other roles as well. It's exciting to hear about someone that's made games I've played and I've loved it. And thank you for that. ah Before we do end today's podcast, is there anything you'd like to just share or say?
00:47:32
Speaker
I talked earlier about getting in the gaming industry and and finding the things you want. I also want to point out that the gaming industry is going through a tough time right now. And so if you are thinking about going to the gaming industry, it's smart to have a plan B that maybe isn't tech based. Maybe you have another passion as well that that you can pursue and you can look at gaming and and think about how you're going to get into it. So I would say it would be smart to always have a backup plan. you know A lot of the skills in game development don't necessarily transfer to other industries. And I think it's important that you set yourself up for the best success and the the happiest life you can. So make sure that you've got a solid idea of what you want to do and then have a backup plan to sustain you on your way there. Well said. And again, Thad, thank you so much for coming out today. We'll have links to NetEase, to Marvel Rivals, to Thad.
00:48:19
Speaker
Everything so bad. Thank you again for this and best of luck in December I'm excited to be online on December 6 getting my butt handed to me on rifles See you there. Thank you, Greg. It's been great talking to you