November 25, 2024 • 47 mins
Discover the future of creativity in the video game industry with insights from Ric Neil, the innovative founder of Noctua Interactive. Ric's extensive journey through giants like Electronic Arts and Amazon Video Game Studios sets the stage for an engaging discussion on how emerging technologies revolutionize game development. Explore how these advancements empower developers with limited resources and draw fascinating parallels with using robots in construction. Ric shares personal stories from his Silicon Valley upbringing that underscore the transformative potential for aspiring creators.
In an industry often challenged by the tug of traditional expectations, we delve into the delicate balance between creativity and commerce. Ric Neil offers invaluable perspectives on maintaining originality within corporate environments, dispelling myths about AI's role in creative fields. His advice on leveraging creativity as a competitive edge is refreshing and thought-provoking, highlighting the importance of mastering foundational skills to thrive in ever-evolving corporate systems.
Step into the creative mind of the Noctua Interactive founder, who demonstrates how AI can streamline production and foster innovation. The conversation highlights the importance of originality and adaptability in game development by sharing experiences developing a trivia game and a brawler project. As we reflect on the broader implications of technology in creativity, Ric emphasizes the power of community and collaboration, inviting listeners to join a collective journey toward a vibrant and innovative future in video games.
Thanks for listening.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Are you a writer, a composer, producer, game maker
and just sitting aroundscratching your head, going like
what is the future ofcreativity?
You know where do you start,what's important?
How do you know if you evenhave a shot at a creative career
?
This is Chris McHale, andwelcome to Creativity to Gigi.
(00:27):
And on today's show we havewith us Rick Neal.
Rick is the founder of NoctuaInteractive and he's worked at
Electronic Arts.
He's worked at Unity, AmazonGame Studios.
He was the managing director atStreamline Studios.
He's been all over thisindustry for years, from the
(00:49):
ground up.
He was a senior producer onMadden.
That's pretty cool, and Rickhas a lot of answers to our
questions.
So let's get to it.
Welcome to Creativity.
(01:09):
Jijiji, where we get yourJijiji on.
Yeah, Jijiji, Jijiji, Right, oh, that's good.
I separate out the mice fromthe men by who can get through
Jijiji without gettingtongue-tied.
A lot of people go like Jijiji.
Jai, jai Jai but you're justlike powering it out.
Anyway, look, I'm so happy youcame on here.
(01:33):
I want to tell you that you'reI mean, look, I love talking to
you, but, like, what's reallybeen interesting to me is like
you and I are both doing thesame kind of thing.
We're both sort of trying toinnovate our way into the future
a little bit.
Here I'm taking a a differentroute because I have different
goals than you, but but I thinkthat we're kind of like you know
, yeah, comrades, in a lot ofways.
(01:55):
But you know, your choice hasbeen one of the most interesting
to me and I I really wanted totalk to you about it and I
wanted to talk a little bitabout video games generally and
the future of them and howpeople are going to make money,
because really that's kind oflike it.
I mean, so many people have losttheir jobs and the industry is
changing.
I mean, the video game industryis hyperactive anyway, right
(02:16):
every every 18 months.
But what I like to do on this,on this podcast, is like we're
doing a lot.
You know I'm talking to a lotof people about their creativity
.
You know I've got photographersI'm talking to and artists, and
I'm talking to a communitytheater director later in the
week or anybody who's doing somecreative stuff, because
ultimately, you know, I believethat that's what we all should
(02:39):
be doing one way or another.
I don't care if you're anaccountant or a banker.
Right, I always say artists aremy leaders.
That way it keeps me away fromthe transitory stuff that we go
through.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Right, and it values what humans value.
Yeah, it values what humansvalue.
Humans value creativity andbeing surprised by something
entertaining, right, enlightened, and enjoy.
What do we try to do?
We try to enlighten ourcustomers, right, that's what we
do.
I get to enhance all of mycreative juices and my knowledge
(03:14):
of making really fun videogames that I've had since the
nineties with five of my friendsthat I trust, that know how to
sing these songs and write thesethings Right, and and we walk
away from all the support thatwe've ever had.
So now I can go do a gig and Ican get all the money and I
don't need a lighting guy and asound guy, and I don't need a
(03:35):
manager and I don't need a.
I don't need any of that stuffbecause now we have the tools,
especially in video gaming,where I'm a self-published, self
artist.
We're just five designersliterally working in design
tools and a tool that lets usbypass all of the support that
we've needed.
So the analogy I use is thisYou're a contractor, you built
(03:57):
amazing houses right, huge,amazing houses, right, and
you've done it for 20 years Now.
Somebody walked up and said Ican replace all of the workers
you have with robots.
They work 24 hours a day andthey do a way better job than
any craftsman you've had doingtile forever.
You still have to come up withthe creativity of what the house
looks like.
(04:17):
But here's all your robots, sothat one contractor and his two
friends can make the entirehouse themselves with robots.
That's all we're doing.
We're accelerating the outputof super creative individuals.
So we should go from 4000startups a month to 12,000 to
30,000 startups a month ofcreative people, because now the
(04:41):
tools are in everyone's hand.
That kid from South Africa canget Unreal and he has the same
chances I have of making a greatgame.
I was lucky to be born in theBay Area in the 60s, in the
middle of when the SiliconValley was coming up, where you
could go to Fry's and buyelectronic gear.
(05:02):
You couldn't do that anywhereelse in the United States, so
there was already a culture whenI grew up of electronics and
stuff.
So at the age of eight I got ina lot of trouble because I took
apart the TV and I added 16more speakers to the TV, put
them all around the family roomand wired them all up so we
could have speakers everywhereand hear everything.
My mom freaked out my dad'slike oh dude, dude, you should
(05:30):
use lower ohm wires, and hehelped me rewire the whole thing
right.
So it was that kind of culturethat I grew up in.
So I was working in theprinting industry from the age
of 13 till the age of 33.
32 clients were from siliconicsbuilding the first circuit
boards in Santa Clara toindustrial light and magic that
used the processor to do all therotoscoping in Back to the
Future and Star Trek and all theStar Wars games, movies, right.
(05:53):
So it was all an analog worldand photography was like.
One of my favorite accounts wasthe United States government
map system, usgs, and they hadthese huge cameras that could
blow back.
The room was 32 foot tall andthe blowback camera could do a
20 foot by 28 foot wide negative, so they could blow up these
(06:18):
huge maps and then shrink themdown and get the fidelity they
needed.
And there was this amazingfacility that had them and I got
to be the guy that went inthere and fixed all the machines
.
I wasn't operating the equipmentand that was the process in
photography you had to be theapprentice, then you had to be
the journeyman, then you had tobe the master and there was
unions and everything.
But I got to go in everyone'sdarkroom because I was the fixer
(06:40):
guy.
You had to come in and fix yourprocessor and get out of here
and get everything going.
And then video games hit and Iwas hooked on Pong and I spent
all my money in the 70s when Iwas 12 years old 25 cents at a
time, yeah going down and ridingand I just got hooked to video
games.
So, always playing video games,right, I got an Apple II and we
(07:00):
were playing any game we could.
We were stealing games.
We were, uh, looking at thebits on the disk so we could
figure out how to copy themright, just because that's what
we were doing.
Um, so I knew how to fixmacintoshes because agfa had
just switched to electronictypography from from analog
(07:21):
typography and they bought acompany called CompuGraphic and
the input device for theCompuGraphic typesetting device
was the Apple computer PageMaker1.0.
I knew how to fix the Applesbecause the first thing Agfa did
when I'm a field servicerepresentative, they send you to
Apple school.
Go learn how to fix thecomputer so you can keep this
(07:42):
going.
So I had one of the rare Appleservice ticket things that you
could have outside of Apple,because Apple didn't do service
back then.
Right yeah, get trained as atech.
So I was the Apple guy.
And because I grew up in the BayArea, I had a friend that
worked at electronic arts as adata input operator in
(08:07):
accounting.
He was basically runningledgers, right, so he was taking
the money coming in fromWalmart and putting.
Actually that's what his jobwas right.
So he was data entry operator.
But at EA back then when hejoined, I don't know, it was 70
people.
So everybody knew each otherand it was just a big geek fest
and everybody played games, eventhe accounting guy.
So on the weekends I would goto his house and we'd play games
(08:29):
together and I started becomingfriends with everybody at
Electronic Arts because of goingto these parties with Ray and
Alan.
And another friend of mine, ted, worked at Tandy at Radio Shack
and he got a job at ElectronicArts to fix the computers
because the engineers didn'tknow how to fix the hardware.
So he was there for about ayear and a half and he said you
(08:52):
know, we need a guy to fixapples.
And there I didn't know untilafter I got hired that the guy
that was also interviewing for ajob, who was literally retiring
as rocket scientist fromStanford and he wanted to get
into video gaming and he wasleaving, uh, the Stanford linear
(09:14):
accelerator program and he knewhow to work on Macintoshes and
they didn't know who to hire meor him.
And I won out because I hadbeen to parties with all these
guys and they knew me frompartying and I was a good thing
and that was the whole reason Igot into EA, risking a chance of
like yeah, I know how to fixand that was my job fixing
Macintoshes.
So I had done the Zig Zieglerand the making friends and
(09:36):
influencing people.
Dale Carnegie classes and, andthey both teach the same thing
start a meeting off with a smile, right?
If no, if no one wants to smile, stop the meeting.
Go, come back when everybodywants to smile.
Nothing is going to happen ifyou can't get these people to
smile.
So I just so I'll just do thatmy regular life.
That's what I did.
I walked into somebody's cubeand I'm like, yep, there's a
(09:57):
short between the keyboard andthe chair.
And then I noticed at EAthere's all the ancillary
regular process people, theselling and the QA guys and
(10:17):
these.
But there's a few gems in hereof these crazy, I don't know
autistic brains, these on thespectrum people that come up
with these wacky ideas.
And then two weeks later yousee this thing that you've never
seen before.
You're like what is that?
Right?
And then they had this kind ofprocess at EA to get everyone in
the same pool and everybodyfelt comfortable in creating
(10:39):
Right.
And I'm like wow, this is aninteresting creative pool that
they have here, and I'm a bigprocess guy, so I want to see
how does the process work, thesystem work, and then I can fix
it.
Ea coddled me and saw that, oh,all these people that are
joining the company that have athirst to learn how to do this.
The best thing we can do isteach them, because I can't hire
(11:02):
them from Stanford.
No one is teaching them how tomake games.
You're working on a developmentteam and you could figure out
how to get a guy out of test andmake him what we call the
assistant producer, which workedon the team they gave you.
You just got a bonus in yourcheck, wow, oh you.
You helped dan become anassistant producer.
Here's five thousand bucks, oh,wow, right.
So that culture once you putmoney on something, everybody
(11:24):
understands the value.
That's how people work.
That spawned amazing talent outof that team, right.
But at the same time, I got tosit down with my hero, richard
Garriott, and Andy Hollis andWarren Spector and Aaron Loeb
and talk about video gaming andtalking about anything, and they
would share anything.
I'm like how did you come upwith the idea?
(11:44):
Well, that was was 100.
Driven by the constraint of themachine, we couldn't do x, y
and z, so we just did a.
I'm like, oh, and that becamethe hook of the game.
Well, we made it fun, right?
It's learning from those guysthat were completely embracing
the teach everyone around meeverything kind of mentality,
(12:04):
and that's how I've made andthat's my whole career you know
I was talking with lance massey,who is a sound designer.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
He said you've always got to operate from the 30 000
foot perspective as well, whichis, you know you're in there
working with the tools, but yougot to kind of be up here like
yeah don't.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
What's the process?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
if you keep that brain, then then you're actually
monitoring your process so youcan recreate it and ultimately,
that's creativity.
It's interesting to hear thisstory because what you're doing
now and where you went in yourcareer makes perfect sense based
on this story, because in manyways, you're doing exactly the
same thing.
You're putting tools in thehands of artists, you're
(12:44):
creating processes and you'rekind of using it for a creative
goal.
It's exactly the same thing.
And you've done what I think alot of people are doing, which
is you've kind of backed down alittle bit.
I mean, I don't mean to putwords in your mouth, but you
backed down from a corporateengagement into a more back to
more like, okay, a hands-onstudio engagement with a lighter
(13:07):
, more agile team that's reallygot their hands around the
technology.
It's interesting, how did youyou worked on some big games
that what games did you actuallyend up?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
there's a documentary coming out next week on the
making of madden, so theyinterviewed me for four, three
hours on that three and a halfhours, so I think I'm going to
be in it.
I have a soundbite in theteaser.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
What was your role in Madden?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I started as an associate producer and ended up
as the senior producer when itmoved to Tiburon after five
years yeah, five years, Madden.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, and I can see the route now.
It's pretty clear.
The labyrinth it's a lot aboutEA giving their staff
opportunities to grow.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It's that guy that knows how to get in the weeds
and fix the data register ormake a polygon work or fix a
(14:11):
normal on a model, but he alsocan operate at 30,000 foot level
and keep all the people in thetrenches moving forward.
I used to write proper planningand clear communication when I
took over a team or started ateam and I put it on on
everybody's monitor and they'relike what's this?
A cult?
I'm like I just let you knowwhat I'm responsible for.
If you don't understand whatyou're supposed to be doing
(14:33):
today, that's on me.
And if you don't believe in theplan, I need you to come sit
down in my cube until youbelieve in the plan, because I
need to change the plan untileverybody believes, because
otherwise, because I need tochange the plan until everybody
believes, because otherwisewe're not going to finish Right,
and that goes way back toseeing these guys.
Because we're trying to dothings that had never been done
before, how do we know it'sgoing to get done?
I have to believe in everything.
If I don't believe the schedule, that we have to do this in two
(14:53):
weeks, I can't.
Every second of every day iswasted because I can't move
forward.
Period, right.
But if you're like OK, I kindof believe in the schedule, but
I believe Rick, because he'sselling me on the schedule and
he's using his Zig Ziglar salesskills to get me to believe
that's what it is the beliefsystem.
Anything in entertainment is abelief.
I have to believe this song isgoing to be fun, otherwise why
(15:16):
am I writing it Right?
So it's that kind of thing.
And yeah, 30,000 foot level iswhere every executive producer
operates at.
And to go back on your smallerteam thing, I think what I
learned also by going to bigcompanies is there are also
processes and pipelines andsystems that you have.
When you get to Amazon, you gotto work the system.
Don't fight the system, don'tswim upstream.
(15:38):
Use the tools they gave youaround.
They're all different.
And now you got to besuccessful at Amazon.
Right, we kind of saw it asstreamlined.
It's like okay, this is the,the lego set I got.
I'll be successful with thislego set.
Um, and that's the game atcorporate america.
You're not making games.
Yeah, you're.
You're managing that system toget an output and and hopefully
(16:00):
the game is okay, right, yeah,and it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
It actually doesn't work.
I mean, it works in terms ofyou can drive a bottom line and
you can create a product, but itdoesn't work in terms of
industry leading innovation.
It's it's like the opposite andmy career.
It's interesting talking to youbecause, um, I mean, I mainly
know you as an executive, okay,so, uh, we worked together.
You were the managing directorof the company I was working on.
(16:24):
But I've done a lot of livingat this intersection of
creativity and commerce and I'vespent a large chunk of my
career going to corporations andtrying to convince them to buy
my creative ideas.
And you know, basically, if youfunction like that, you
basically are a professionalpain in the ass to corporate
America.
I mean, it was really like whydoes it have to be this way?
(16:46):
Well, it has to be this waybecause it's going to suck if
it's not.
And I've always believedcreativity is a competitive edge
.
So, you know, to me it's likelet's get the creative right and
then you guys can figure outhow to make money with it.
But you know we're goingnowhere if we don't get the
creative right.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's the way I've always done and it's a different
, it's a total polar differencein how you motivate people to be
creative, as you, compared topeople who make money.
Right, right, it's the uhyou're, you're selling your,
your soul, right it's?
It's the oldest profession inthe world, as they say, is what
we're doing?
We're, we're whoring ourselvesout.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Kind of kind of I pushed back on that just a
little bit because I've had alot of success with my career
and you know it's been doingthings that people you know
really argue with me about.
You know, on the corporatelevel, you know, like you can't
do that, why are you using tincans?
You know, I mean like I'venever heard anything like that
(17:41):
before, and then it goes on theair and it becomes usually
successful.
So I mean, I'm like I push backon that hard.
The reason why I'm bringingthis up is because we're at the.
You know, I don't.
You know, I want to say we're ata pivot point, except that we
seem to be at a pivot pointevery 12 months, so I don't know
if that's relevant anymore.
You know, when I talk to youngcreators, you know, and they
talk to me about their creativecareer, I always tell them well,
you know, you should start out10 years of piano study.
(18:02):
Or, you know, go to art schooland learn how to draw.
You know, do draw with a penciland master those those
different steps in the craftbefore you go anywhere near like
a technology tool, like any ofthese AI tools.
What do you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's absolutely how it and that's what people don't
want to hear.
Right, really, our unfairadvantages between the five of
us.
We made over 300 games.
Teachers and parents want totell their students and their
kids oh no, you can make thenext Fortnite yeah, you can,
(18:40):
after a 25-year career in theindustry of making 700 crappy
games, but you're not going tobe the president of EA
graduating out of school.
You're not, and that's theshort circuit that everybody
thinks AI is.
That's the false narrative ofschool.
You're not, and that's theshort circuit that everybody
thinks ai is.
That's, that's the falsenarrative.
The false narrative is oh, paulmccartney used to have to
describe every note to thesymphony guy and he would write
(19:02):
all the notes down.
Now we gave paul mccartney aguitar.
You just fired all thosemusicians.
No, I didn't.
I made it make way easier forpaul mccartney to write way more
songs and to get what he wantsout of his brain directly onto
the tape machine faster thanit's just a superior tool.
You still need the talent, youstill have to have the
creativity, you still have tohave the fire in your belly
(19:24):
right.
When people tell me oh, I workedon a world of Warcraft for six
years.
Yeah, what did you do?
I was a lead animator.
I'm like, yeah, you didn't workon the game dude, you worked on
jira tickets and you closedthem out and that's all you did.
You were a process.
You're a robot, you're an ai inthe game.
Right, because there was aprocess we figured out we have
to make these animations, theyhave to be put on this xyz path
(19:46):
and here's, use this tool andthat tool and this tool and now
you go make this output for me,and then the, the game designer,
five of them on World ofWarcraft.
They put it all together.
Those are the crafters of thegame.
So now what I'm saying is AIallows you to be the game
creator, straight into theengine, onto the screen, for you
to get superior results quickly.
But you still have to have thatidea and that creative spark
(20:11):
and know what's fun.
You have to know what's fun andthat creative spark and know
what's fun.
You have to know what's fun.
The reason why you can hearsomething in nine seconds no,
five things to fix it's becauseyou listen to billions and
billions of things and now youhave that senior.
Oh, I know what good guitartone is.
That is not good guitar tone.
You know that, right, a kidcoming out of college is like,
yeah, I read a book about guitartone.
I think that's okay, he's gotto do it.
(20:36):
Sorry, he's got to be in it'stime in the saddle.
Nobody wants to hear that.
Nobody wants to hear it's 10000 hours to become an expert at
something.
So just keep doing it over tomake 10 games that suck right
before you get your first job.
Make your own game at home, andif you don't have that fire in
your belly and it's too hard andyou want somebody to be, then
you, that's you the wrongindustry.
That's why I say 99% of peopleare not creative.
They just want to playsomething else.
(20:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I can't and I don't think they understand the
professional world, because I'ma professional music producer.
I produce a lot of big musictracks.
If a guy comes into my studioand he plays me a track that he
made this way and that way usingthese tools and that tools, and
then a guy comes into my studioand sits down at the piano and
(21:18):
plays me his ideas, I'm hiringthe guy that sat down at the
piano and played his ideasBecause the tools in that guy's
hands are going to be likerocket fuel Amazing.
We started getting intosampling technology in the 80s,
you know, and at first it waspretty crude, but it got better
and better and better and now Ihave libraries full of symphony
orchestras that are pretty good.
(21:38):
However, in my work, whenever itgets to producing a final track
that I'm going to releasehere's a song I'm putting it out
, I'm going to sell it onBandcamp, whatever I'm going to
do, I always labor it on the topwith real players.
So just you know, even thoughI've got great sounding guitars
and great sounding pianos,ultimately nothing even comes
(22:00):
close to having a pianist and aguitarist.
So why do you think that is?
I just think it has to do withthe moment, you know, and it
also has to do withcollaboration, which is another
one of those secret sauces ofgreat creativity.
I mean, I can write a wholesong soup to nuts in this studio
(22:20):
.
Guitars, bass, drums soundsgreat.
I'll play it to people andthey're like that sounds great.
Then I'll bring in a guitaristand a bass player and a drummer.
It just goes next level.
So it's a combination of likeI've gone from the sample
instruments and me playing themall to like.
I've now got four human beingsinterpreting this stuff and each
(22:43):
one of them is a master intheir area.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
And when they're together, they play better.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, it's collaboration.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So my analysis of that is you can have robots do
anything you want them to do,but what you can't have them do
is bring human emotion into it.
And you're right.
You get Joe Pass playing guitarby himself in a room.
It's going to be amazing, joePass guitar playing, right.
You put him with four otherpeople and they're collaborating
(23:13):
and have fun together.
That's a magic thing, right?
That's that's the thing thatwe're trying to get that
creative energy, that creativespark.
It's like why does a band workinstead of it just being Paul
McCartney by himself?
Because the band is going toplay.
And that's the human elementeven working in games, that that
collaboration you call itReally what it is is.
(23:34):
That's that emotive, creativespark growing.
I believe that whenever you puta great team together, you
create another energy on theplanet.
I believe that when you have agreat relationship with someone,
whether it's a friend or yourwife, you're creating another
energy force on the planet, andwhen a relationship ends, it's
the death of that energy.
And when a team ends, it's that, and we should pay homage to
(23:56):
that, we should honor that.
We should see that that's howhumans work.
Look, none of this is new, dude.
The hindus figured it out 8 000years ago.
The shamans figured it out 10000 years ago.
This human dynamic of us beingable to manifest things in a
creative way is way better whenthere's five of us together on
the same page and we'remotivated to generate something.
(24:17):
That's the job of the executiveproducer.
Make sure everyone's on thesame vibe and the same page,
because you're going to getprofessional output.
And yes, we can do the NBAStanford thing and just break
down every game to what are thefive actions.
And here's the first 100 clicks, like we did.
I played him and take the soulout of everything and have
robots make games.
Sure, we can do that, butyou're not going to have that
(24:40):
energy force created and I don'tknow how to say it any other
way.
Is it on the disc when I put itin my xbox?
No, but it's represented in thegame that I play and I can feel
the energy that that team putinto it and feel that I don't
know how we tune games.
Dude, it's so weird.
I wish I could write it down.
I don't know how to tune games,it's about.
One thing I do know is ifeverybody's mad at each other
(25:02):
and the art director hates thelead programmer because he can't
get what he wants.
I can never tune a game andmake it fun, and if the art
director is like one step awayfrom dating the lead programmer,
if the art director is like onestep away from dating the lead
programmer, it's the best gameever, right, because that trust
and that human dynamic is that'swhat makes creativity
(25:23):
Creativity is is not measured inoutput, it's not measured in
something that we can see on thescreen or count on us.
It's not.
It's that energy of when theBeatles first got together.
They were mates, dude, theyloved each other, they were
making.
They actually believed thatthey were going to change the
world, and that belief is whatwe talked about earlier.
That's all you have.
Making a game.
You have to believe it's goingto be fun and if you can have a
(25:44):
team that loves each other andrespects each other and they
believe in that, then you have ahit game.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
You're, you're skirting around.
Uh, you know something I reallybelieve in, but it's something
you can never talk about thewoo-woo-woo factor of life.
When I read these guys talkingabout AGI and all that stuff,
I'm like I just roll my eyesLike dude.
Not only is it never going tohappen but, it's absolutely
unnecessary.
(26:11):
These tools are fabulous and wecan develop and use them for all
sorts of fantastic things, butthe idea that somehow you're
going to recreate humanintelligence is just like you're
Don Coyote tilting at awindmill.
But I just really think thatreally the most important thing
is like it's something we do notneed.
You guys are tool makers.
You should just work, focus onthe tools and then get out of
(26:33):
the way of the artists who areusing them.
Focus on the tools and then getout of the way of the artists.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
You can call the guitar and walk away.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, yeah, we need a sharper chisel.
Thanks, you know.
Now I'm going to make a statueout of this block of stone.
You can go and have lunch,thank you.
Explain to me your generalprocess.
You're overseeing there, you'vegot five or six people and
(26:58):
you're working together as ateam to come up with these games
.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah.
So I hit the jackpot and theCEO that I started the company
with this is his fourth startup,so he's done it before, right?
So the fear of how do we getthe money and everything.
It's kind of mitigated for mywhole team because, like
Nathan's done this, of coursewe're going to get started,
money will be fine, he knows howto run a company.
But on the other hand, heshowed up with money from his
(27:22):
last startup, which always helps.
But he said when I first methim he's like I went to college
to be a writer.
I've written 20 stories overthe last 20 years but I've
fleshed out seven of them that Iwould that.
I thought when I retired, I'mgoing to write these as novels.
These are great novel stories.
And then I went and looked atbook publishing and everything
(27:45):
and I decided you know, it'd beway more fun to make these video
games and see how humansinteract with my story and world
.
And there's, it's just going tobe a slug with no output on the
novel side.
So he's like I'm going to makevideo games instead.
That's when I first met him andhe's like I'm like you
shouldn't do that, dude.
Making games is really hard.
It's good that you have stories, but the more and more we
(28:07):
talked I realized our secretsauce is I have a founder that
showed up with money and sevenstories that he needs, not wants
needs to make as games.
That fire in your belly is allthe motivation, that's the
creative process we have.
So then you put a team togetherthat understands that vibe.
It's like these are Nathan'sstories, we're going to bring
(28:27):
them alive in the game and itkind of doesn't matter the genre
and the type of game you'regoing to make.
We're not all motivated to belike we're going to reinvent
headshots and first-personshooters.
Let's go after that.
That intent is totallydifferent than we have a founder
who has seven stories.
If we make all of these games,we're going to be really happy
that we made seven more games.
(28:48):
That's it.
We don't care if any of themare his.
We don't.
Our numbers are based on cell300000 on Steam, which has one
(29:10):
point eight billion people andlive off that and create really
good stuff and have fun makingthose games like we did back in
the right.
Use an AI tool to write theentire dialogue system right and
he can right.
So now we can understand whatthe story is and on the other
end it's like oh, we're going tocraft this into a Metroidvania
game.
We really like Hollow Knight,and so we're going to use the
kind of the dynamics of HollowKnight, pivot a little bit and
put that game in.
That's the beauty of videogaming.
(29:32):
Now you can just followsomebody else's game, add your
own sauce to it.
It's your game.
There's no, you can't copyrighta game play element.
Right, it's kind of like I lookat it as a lot like a band.
What kind of music?
And we're going to be agrateful dead cover band.
How about we write our ownsongs that are kind of like the
dead meets talking heads?
Oh, there's now.
(29:52):
You have a whole new band.
That creativity came out ofthat, right.
But but you really do have tostart with what we call a fast
follow, what you would call acopy, when you're building any
game.
These days, if you want to sayI'm going to reinvent gaming,
you're warren specter and I'mgoing to do the next immersive
rpg sim, you kind of need 100million dollars in 10, 15 years
(30:13):
to do denn.
Dennis Dyack has been workingon his new game that's going to
reinvent the genre for sevenyears.
He'll probably do it, but heprobably needs another three or
four years to do it.
We're not doing that.
So we thought about this a lotlast year and our strategies
kind of changed a little since,right before Gamescom, we
realized the conventional way ofmaking video games is dead.
(30:37):
So stop trying to go for thatpattern, right?
What's a new pattern, right?
Well, we have some startupmoney from Nathan.
We have a team that I know canexecute and make things.
Let's stop putting all oureffort into getting the three
million dollars we are asking togo make our Metroidvania game
and let's put that on the shelf.
We have all the idea ready togo.
(30:57):
It's scoped out.
If you gave me the money, Icould start tomorrow.
But let's go make some otherthings just to prove our point.
We're telling everyone we canmake things a lot quicker with
AI, so let's prove it out.
So we started on a journey inAugust late August, early
September to let's do a fastfollow of a brawler game,
because a brawler has onefeature the problem with doing a
(31:20):
vertical slice.
Right now, you've got to putall the features in.
Well, that's 80% of your work,because you have to have all the
features in a game.
You know that.
So what we decided?
Let's make a brawler game thatwe can make with us four people
and some AI tools, and let'sWith the goal of can we make
(31:42):
enough to sell to pay for ourhealth care this year?
Yeah, which is nothing.
Can we make 70 grand on a game,right?
That seems like a doable goal.
Really hard to do, actually forthe first game you do, right.
But on the other hand, it testsall our pipelines and how are
we going to self-publish and howare we going to get through QA
and how are we going to dotranslation and how are we going
(32:02):
to do ESRB all the other stuffthat's not making games.
We're going to exercise thatpipe, right, so that when we're,
if we do have to go toinvestors, we can turn to them
and say we're already apublishing producer.
We already have a couple ofgames out, right?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
And so now we have an opportunity with David Sunshine
, who owns the largestrepository of trivia questions
on the planet, to make a triviagame.
Well, adam Bell, our CTO heworked at Gamescom.
I don't know if they did 30 ofthem.
Derek Sunshine has done over 20a month for three months.
He made multiple trivia games,so we have it in our DNA to make
(32:37):
a casual game.
So my challenge is let's proveto all of everybody we're saying
yeah, rick, we have reallysmart people with AI tools who
work faster.
Can you make a trivia game inless than a month?
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Okay, so how does that not eat up your team?
I mean you've got a lean teamlike five or six people I don't
know how many people you've gotworking on it and now you're
going to take on some serviceprojects.
What does that do?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's not a service project, it's go make another
game.
So, okay, okay, pablo Castillo,our lead designer and and
working in unreal, it's hisbrawler idea.
So let's test that idea oflet's get all the blockers away
from Pablo being able to singhis song in unreal.
Pretty much the entire game hasbeen written by him.
(33:20):
The CTO, adam is helping, ishelping out with oh, I can work
on the camera for you.
Tell me what to do.
So there's a little bit ofjobbing that stuff out.
But Pablo knows Unreal so wellhe can go be solo dev on this
project and make it himself.
When it comes to art, we'reusing purchased assets and then
we'll fix them later with, if weneed to change the assets, what
(33:40):
they look like.
But getting to the fun is themost important thing for Pablo.
That's not blocked right.
Adam, who's worked on multiplegames at the same time in his
whole career, is like hey, dude,you can prop up a trivia game
while you help Pablo.
He goes yeah, fuck, yeah, I cando that right.
So there's no real diluting ofthe team and the effort still
remains pure on both thosethings, and it's not really a
(34:07):
distraction.
It would be a distraction ifthey're like you have to use our
engine and our tech and I needthis sdk integrated.
That's not what we're doing.
We would work with a team thatwants one of our games to work
in their portal and we get thegame right.
So that's kind of where we'restaying.
We're I'm staying on the.
I'm building teams that buildgames.
I'm not not building DevOpsteams and monetization teams and
marketing teams and ad networkteams.
I'm not doing that and if Ineed that stuff, I'm just going
(34:29):
to job that out, because that'sthe commodity of gaming.
What's not the commodity iswhat you talked about earlier.
So those four to six guys inthat team that are highly
creative and now I've removedall the blockers into them being
able to be productive rightaway in Unreal, right away.
We started Alpha.
That's my new thing.
We started Alpha.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Okay, let's say a couple.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I'm going too fast for you.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
No, you're not.
Actually you're coming somereally great stuff.
There's been some heavy-dutypiracy going on in the creative
world which has left a lot ofartists like myself who have a
lot of creative work out there,a lot of songs on Spotify and a
lot of words you know beenpublished in books and stuff.
It's like it's really put adeep question as to exactly what
(35:14):
is going on and, quite frankly,it kind of feels like,
especially with what's beengoing on in the political world
in the last couple of years,that you know we're into a final
assault on copyright itself.
Copyright is a hindrance to alot of the business planning in
the technology industry.
(35:35):
You know it's obvious that theyare not respectful of copyright
, you know, and artists andwriters and musicians are the
low-hanging fruit, you know, andit's come down to a lot of
artists are going up against,you know, deep-pocketed
corporations to fight for theirshort story, right.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I'm kind of sidestepping the whole thing
because we're using our concepts, hand-drawn by Rachel, to get
that output from the art tools.
So we're using references onour work, like we need to build
a bigger library of our own tomake things, but it's working
and we can edit things and wetake things from that.
So our content is never goingto be we're just going to copy
(36:17):
Mickey Mouse and put it up therebecause Mickey Mouse is known,
because the difference is thiswe're part of that 1% that is
not going to ship the nextmickey game.
We're shipping new content.
We're creative guys.
We're writing new songs.
Right, and you're right.
99 of the reddit people arejust going to rip off everybody
else's ideas and reach andthat's the crap that no one
wants to hear and that's thecrap that no one wants to play.
(36:39):
That's's not creative, that'sjust rote.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I can take the AI tools and I can run Studio GG by
myself.
I can build my own websites.
I can do my own designs.
I can do my own whatever.
You have got a company of fivehighly qualified artists that
are functioning, and your modelis great.
What's missing in both thosethoughts is this the industry
(37:03):
that trained and nurtured me anddelivered me to the world at
this high level of creativeexperience is no longer there.
So the question becomes ifyou're a young creative
listening to this conversationbetween two successful creative
executives, how the fuck are yousupposed?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
to get there.
I would be so motivated if Iwas a young person right now.
You know why?
Because I don't need to go to abig publisher EA to make my
game.
I can go make it myself andlaunch it on Steam and see if
it's any good and build my owncommunity, and I can be a solo
dev and go all the way up and Ican be among us.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
So is that going to buy you a house?
That's really what it is.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
If you are good enough, if you're.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Jerry Garcia yes, if you're Chris McHale, no, I mean,
chris McHale is a journeymancreative who has made a good
living and sent his kids tocolleges and bought two houses
and cars and the whole shitBecause you figured out the
system.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
It wasn't because the system supported you.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
It's always been this way.
I mean, like you know, bobDylan is going to make a living,
no matter what.
I mean he's going to breakthrough, no matter what, no
matter how much he tries not to.
You know, it's like.
I always loved Kurt Cobain, wasalways like you know, I don't
want to write any pop songs.
And then went out and wrote,you know, five classic pop songs
that are still played on theradio today.
It's not always what theartists want.
(38:15):
I mean, if you're blessed withthat level of talent, it's going
to happen for you, you know,you know it's.
I mean, you need luck.
I always need luck in lifeanyway, but I mean, basically
that's gonna.
So like we're kind of at thatpoint where the five percent are
going to make money and the 95have got to go figure out some
other way to make money.
Is that's where we're at?
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I mean, I would have loved to been a professional
musician and have the samelifestyle that I have by playing
bass and tuba.
I I'm pretty good to sit withanybody.
I'd sit with you and you'd feelgood.
I can make any guitar playersound better as a bass player,
right, but I'm not that guy,right, and I could have eked out
of a living and been okay, um,but I wouldn't have had the but.
(39:01):
But for me, I still play music.
You know why?
Because Because I need to, andthat's the creative energy that
we're talking about.
Even if you're not making moneyas a musician, you're still out
playing and you're gigging andyou're in a cover band in Tahoe
and you're playing three gigs amonth and you're super happy
because the juice you get, whatyou expect out of music, is the
joy you get when you play it.
(39:21):
If you're going to make itmusic to be like I'm going to be
rich and I'm going to be thenext billy eilish, that's the
wrong intent and you'll neversucceed, right?
If you go in saying I'm justgoing to, I need to sing my song
, kurt cobain, and it's a newthing and I want to do that.
No one can stop you.
You're a force of nature and ifit resonates if it resonates
and you're lucky you might makesome money on it.
(39:42):
That's the way we should lookat music and all creative
endeavors on the planet.
If you're good enough and youcan find somebody to buy your
art, then you can sell it beforeyou die otherwise what's the
test for young creators?
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I mean, you're starting out in this business.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Start making shit.
Now, if you don't, I talk topeople like I want to do.
My kid wants to be in gaming.
Okay, what game engine has hedownloaded and started building
a game with?
Oh none.
He's gonna wait to go to school.
Okay, fail, he'll never be agame maker.
Oh no, dude, he took my pc andhe loaded up minecraft and he
built five mods on it.
Now he's downloading unity andhe's building things and his
(40:18):
mom's mad because he formattedher hard drive.
That's the kid.
Kid that's going to make videogames.
The same with a guitar player.
I'm waiting for someone toteach me how to play guitar so I
can be the next Neil Young.
That guy will never make itright.
If it's like he was five yearsold and I couldn't take the
guitar out of his hand and allhe did was play guitar and sing
Neil Young songs, that kid willmake it.
That's the belly.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
So there's been a huge shakeout in the video game
industry in the last, like youknow, 36 months or something
like that A phenomenal amount ofpeople, I think 50,000 or more
people.
Yeah, have lost their jobs.
I mean, I'm just and those jobs?
It's not that they lost theirjobs and they're going to find
another one.
Those jobs, literally were notcoming back.
(41:00):
Yeah, yeah, so so is it just, isthat, is this, is that shake up
?
Just another version of whatyou're talking about?
It's like the the deadwood hasbeen overboarded the processes
and the pipelines are changing,right.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So now the industry has.
So the bigger games like callof duty has 4 000 people on it,
right, they have to generatethat money every year, otherwise
activision goes out of business.
As a process and a pipeline guy, you don't mess with that
factory, you leave that factoryalone.
The next factory comes alongand we figure out how to
optimize things, because I needmy bread and butter factory to
(41:33):
make those things.
So Call of Duty could stillconsider every hand drawn
animation and nothing in AI forprogramming and nothing in AI
and modeling, because they can'tafford to do that, right, they
just can't.
So they have to run that way.
So for bigger teams, sure, butI'm telling you, if you're the
VFX lead VFX guy on Forza I doall the VFX and it's beautiful
(41:56):
and I won two awards You're notmaking games, sorry.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
So if you're talking to young creators, it's like
what you're kind of saying isget your hands on the tool and
start making stuff and get yourexpectations in line.
If your expectation is to goout and have a successful career
, you're probably off on thewrong foot to begin with.
If your expectation is I'm justgoing to write a cool song and
go to a coffee house and see howthe five people there like it
(42:22):
or not, that's right, that's,that's probably a good
expectation, and maybe that fivepeople turns into 10 people.
You know, and you, you kind oflike, see the path open up in
front of you.
So it's as you say it's, it'stough, people don't want to hear
this stuff, but it's also sortof reality.
And and the other reality is,um, you look at me, uh, you know
, um, I am still working hardevery single day on on my
(42:46):
creativity.
I still pick up my guitar everysingle day and, you know, get
my keep my fingers working yeah,because I need to, and you got
to have a sort of an obsessivenature.
You got to say like I'm going tomake the 10 mods from minecraft
or whatever you're going to do.
That's kind of obsessive work.
So I mean, I've only comeacross not many people in my
(43:09):
career who really have that tobe honest with you.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
That's us right.
That's right.
It's us, it's us.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
And you've got to sort of stay a little obsessive.
Ask my wife.
She's not going to come in hereall happy about this
conversation because she's goingto be like yeah, Chris is like
ridiculous, he works 14 hours aday.
You know what?
I don't work a single hour aday.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
All of the operating systems that we use today on
computers, all the great codinglanguages, were written by
people that graduated collegefrom 1956 to 1962.
There's no new operatingsystems.
There's no scripting languages,perl all that stuff was by
those guys because they werecoming up when the computer was
(43:57):
brand new and it was punch cardsand they could that's.
They had Fortran and Pascal andthey're like we can do better
than this, right, and they werethere by necessity, but were
also 100 lucky.
I was 100 lucky to be in thebay area where electronic arts
is trying to do something newand I could be that guy.
No one had talent, no one had away to make a game, so
everybody was on the same levelplaying field to get started.
(44:20):
That this is another one ofthose moments, right when kids
are coming up, it's like wait aminute.
I went to school right when AIwas coming out.
So, yeah, it's three of us.
We do the work of 500 peoplebecause we all learned AI
natively as we came up.
That's where we're at.
People don't want to admit that.
Here's the beautiful thing.
(44:42):
The thirst for humans to ingestentertainment is endless,
bottomless.
There's 28,000 games on Steam.
There could be 75,000.
It could be a million, itdoesn't matter.
People will keep buying that.
It just keeps getting bigger.
Humans want content.
Right now, we're going tofulfill all these needs with AI.
(45:04):
Robots are going to take us toschool, they're going to teach
us, they're going to doeverything for us.
What they're not going to everbe able to do is delight and
entertain my brain, and that'swhere we're all going to go.
We're all going to be creatorsin 100 years.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
I try to keep creativity to Jijiji to 40
minutes because I believe peopleonly want to listen for 40
minutes.
You and I are closing in on anhour and 35 minutes, so this may
be the warm piece of Creativity, jijiji, and I can't tell you
how grateful I am that you cameon this show.
I'd be happy to do it again.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
I think there's other fundamental things I've gotten
to the point in my life where Iget more out of mentoring and
helping people than I do out ofmaking money.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Trust me, I hope you become a friend of this show.
I'm building this show oneepisode at a time.
I'm only into six or sevenepisodes, but yeah, there's a
lot to talk about.
And I think that people say tome how are you going to make
money with your podcast?
I me, how are you going to makemoney with your podcast?
(46:06):
I'm always like I'm not tryingto make money with my podcast,
I'm just I'm just trying to putevergreen content out there so
people coming behind us canlisten to the shit and go like
these guys were truly out oftheir fucking minds.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
You love, I can tell the minute I saw in your eyes.
You love humans and you lovethe creative spark and you love
giving humans the opportunity tolive a happy, fulfilled life.
And if you make 8 000 games andnone of them make any money and
you are a cash register guy atSafeway and you paid for your
life but you were able to live alife where you made 8,000 games
(46:31):
and you felt really good aboutit, that's a fucking fantastic
life, dude, and that's all we'retrying to do.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
This has been Creativity to GG produced by
Studio GGG, and that was RickNeal, veteran game maker,
someone who believes increativity and the process of
creativity, like I do, somebodywho's dedicated his life to it.
I thought he had a lot ofinteresting things to say and we
hope that you like listening.
(47:02):
Please review the podcast,subscribe to the podcast, like
the podcast and visit us atstudioggio.
You know, join up.
Join us as we innovate our wayto a new, creative future.
Creative workers unite is whatI like to say.
This is Chris McHale.
Thank you so much for joiningus and listening and we'll see
(47:24):
you next time.
Are you a writer, a composer, producer, game maker
and just sitting aroundscratching your head, going like
what is the future ofcreativity?
You know where do you start,what's important?
How do you know if you evenhave a shot at a creative career
?
This is Chris McHale, andwelcome to Creativity to Gigi.
(00:27):
And on today's show we havewith us Rick Neal.
Rick is the founder of NoctuaInteractive and he's worked at
Electronic Arts.
He's worked at Unity, AmazonGame Studios.
He was the managing director atStreamline Studios.
He's been all over thisindustry for years, from the
(00:49):
ground up.
He was a senior producer onMadden.
That's pretty cool, and Rickhas a lot of answers to our
questions.
So let's get to it.
Welcome to Creativity.
(01:09):
Jijiji, where we get yourJijiji on.
Yeah, Jijiji, Jijiji, Right, oh, that's good.
I separate out the mice fromthe men by who can get through
Jijiji without gettingtongue-tied.
A lot of people go like Jijiji.
Jai, jai Jai but you're justlike powering it out.
Anyway, look, I'm so happy youcame on here.
(01:33):
I want to tell you that you'reI mean, look, I love talking to
you, but, like, what's reallybeen interesting to me is like
you and I are both doing thesame kind of thing.
We're both sort of trying toinnovate our way into the future
a little bit.
Here I'm taking a a differentroute because I have different
goals than you, but but I thinkthat we're kind of like you know
, yeah, comrades, in a lot ofways.
(01:55):
But you know, your choice hasbeen one of the most interesting
to me and I I really wanted totalk to you about it and I
wanted to talk a little bitabout video games generally and
the future of them and howpeople are going to make money,
because really that's kind oflike it.
I mean, so many people have losttheir jobs and the industry is
changing.
I mean, the video game industryis hyperactive anyway, right
(02:16):
every every 18 months.
But what I like to do on this,on this podcast, is like we're
doing a lot.
You know I'm talking to a lotof people about their creativity
.
You know I've got photographersI'm talking to and artists, and
I'm talking to a communitytheater director later in the
week or anybody who's doing somecreative stuff, because
ultimately, you know, I believethat that's what we all should
(02:39):
be doing one way or another.
I don't care if you're anaccountant or a banker.
Right, I always say artists aremy leaders.
That way it keeps me away fromthe transitory stuff that we go
through.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Right, and it values what humans value.
Yeah, it values what humansvalue.
Humans value creativity andbeing surprised by something
entertaining, right, enlightened, and enjoy.
What do we try to do?
We try to enlighten ourcustomers, right, that's what we
do.
I get to enhance all of mycreative juices and my knowledge
(03:14):
of making really fun videogames that I've had since the
nineties with five of my friendsthat I trust, that know how to
sing these songs and write thesethings Right, and and we walk
away from all the support thatwe've ever had.
So now I can go do a gig and Ican get all the money and I
don't need a lighting guy and asound guy, and I don't need a
(03:35):
manager and I don't need a.
I don't need any of that stuffbecause now we have the tools,
especially in video gaming,where I'm a self-published, self
artist.
We're just five designersliterally working in design
tools and a tool that lets usbypass all of the support that
we've needed.
So the analogy I use is thisYou're a contractor, you built
(03:57):
amazing houses right, huge,amazing houses, right, and
you've done it for 20 years Now.
Somebody walked up and said Ican replace all of the workers
you have with robots.
They work 24 hours a day andthey do a way better job than
any craftsman you've had doingtile forever.
You still have to come up withthe creativity of what the house
looks like.
(04:17):
But here's all your robots, sothat one contractor and his two
friends can make the entirehouse themselves with robots.
That's all we're doing.
We're accelerating the outputof super creative individuals.
So we should go from 4000startups a month to 12,000 to
30,000 startups a month ofcreative people, because now the
(04:41):
tools are in everyone's hand.
That kid from South Africa canget Unreal and he has the same
chances I have of making a greatgame.
I was lucky to be born in theBay Area in the 60s, in the
middle of when the SiliconValley was coming up, where you
could go to Fry's and buyelectronic gear.
(05:02):
You couldn't do that anywhereelse in the United States, so
there was already a culture whenI grew up of electronics and
stuff.
So at the age of eight I got ina lot of trouble because I took
apart the TV and I added 16more speakers to the TV, put
them all around the family roomand wired them all up so we
could have speakers everywhereand hear everything.
My mom freaked out my dad'slike oh dude, dude, you should
(05:30):
use lower ohm wires, and hehelped me rewire the whole thing
right.
So it was that kind of culturethat I grew up in.
So I was working in theprinting industry from the age
of 13 till the age of 33.
32 clients were from siliconicsbuilding the first circuit
boards in Santa Clara toindustrial light and magic that
used the processor to do all therotoscoping in Back to the
Future and Star Trek and all theStar Wars games, movies, right.
(05:53):
So it was all an analog worldand photography was like.
One of my favorite accounts wasthe United States government
map system, usgs, and they hadthese huge cameras that could
blow back.
The room was 32 foot tall andthe blowback camera could do a
20 foot by 28 foot wide negative, so they could blow up these
(06:18):
huge maps and then shrink themdown and get the fidelity they
needed.
And there was this amazingfacility that had them and I got
to be the guy that went inthere and fixed all the machines
.
I wasn't operating the equipmentand that was the process in
photography you had to be theapprentice, then you had to be
the journeyman, then you had tobe the master and there was
unions and everything.
But I got to go in everyone'sdarkroom because I was the fixer
(06:40):
guy.
You had to come in and fix yourprocessor and get out of here
and get everything going.
And then video games hit and Iwas hooked on Pong and I spent
all my money in the 70s when Iwas 12 years old 25 cents at a
time, yeah going down and ridingand I just got hooked to video
games.
So, always playing video games,right, I got an Apple II and we
(07:00):
were playing any game we could.
We were stealing games.
We were, uh, looking at thebits on the disk so we could
figure out how to copy themright, just because that's what
we were doing.
Um, so I knew how to fixmacintoshes because agfa had
just switched to electronictypography from from analog
(07:21):
typography and they bought acompany called CompuGraphic and
the input device for theCompuGraphic typesetting device
was the Apple computer PageMaker1.0.
I knew how to fix the Applesbecause the first thing Agfa did
when I'm a field servicerepresentative, they send you to
Apple school.
Go learn how to fix thecomputer so you can keep this
(07:42):
going.
So I had one of the rare Appleservice ticket things that you
could have outside of Apple,because Apple didn't do service
back then.
Right yeah, get trained as atech.
So I was the Apple guy.
And because I grew up in the BayArea, I had a friend that
worked at electronic arts as adata input operator in
(08:07):
accounting.
He was basically runningledgers, right, so he was taking
the money coming in fromWalmart and putting.
Actually that's what his jobwas right.
So he was data entry operator.
But at EA back then when hejoined, I don't know, it was 70
people.
So everybody knew each otherand it was just a big geek fest
and everybody played games, eventhe accounting guy.
So on the weekends I would goto his house and we'd play games
(08:29):
together and I started becomingfriends with everybody at
Electronic Arts because of goingto these parties with Ray and
Alan.
And another friend of mine, ted, worked at Tandy at Radio Shack
and he got a job at ElectronicArts to fix the computers
because the engineers didn'tknow how to fix the hardware.
So he was there for about ayear and a half and he said you
(08:52):
know, we need a guy to fixapples.
And there I didn't know untilafter I got hired that the guy
that was also interviewing for ajob, who was literally retiring
as rocket scientist fromStanford and he wanted to get
into video gaming and he wasleaving, uh, the Stanford linear
(09:14):
accelerator program and he knewhow to work on Macintoshes and
they didn't know who to hire meor him.
And I won out because I hadbeen to parties with all these
guys and they knew me frompartying and I was a good thing
and that was the whole reason Igot into EA, risking a chance of
like yeah, I know how to fixand that was my job fixing
Macintoshes.
So I had done the Zig Zieglerand the making friends and
(09:36):
influencing people.
Dale Carnegie classes and, andthey both teach the same thing
start a meeting off with a smile, right?
If no, if no one wants to smile, stop the meeting.
Go, come back when everybodywants to smile.
Nothing is going to happen ifyou can't get these people to
smile.
So I just so I'll just do thatmy regular life.
That's what I did.
I walked into somebody's cubeand I'm like, yep, there's a
(09:57):
short between the keyboard andthe chair.
And then I noticed at EAthere's all the ancillary
regular process people, theselling and the QA guys and
(10:17):
these.
But there's a few gems in hereof these crazy, I don't know
autistic brains, these on thespectrum people that come up
with these wacky ideas.
And then two weeks later yousee this thing that you've never
seen before.
You're like what is that?
Right?
And then they had this kind ofprocess at EA to get everyone in
the same pool and everybodyfelt comfortable in creating
(10:39):
Right.
And I'm like wow, this is aninteresting creative pool that
they have here, and I'm a bigprocess guy, so I want to see
how does the process work, thesystem work, and then I can fix
it.
Ea coddled me and saw that, oh,all these people that are
joining the company that have athirst to learn how to do this.
The best thing we can do isteach them, because I can't hire
(11:02):
them from Stanford.
No one is teaching them how tomake games.
You're working on a developmentteam and you could figure out
how to get a guy out of test andmake him what we call the
assistant producer, which workedon the team they gave you.
You just got a bonus in yourcheck, wow, oh you.
You helped dan become anassistant producer.
Here's five thousand bucks, oh,wow, right.
So that culture once you putmoney on something, everybody
(11:24):
understands the value.
That's how people work.
That spawned amazing talent outof that team, right.
But at the same time, I got tosit down with my hero, richard
Garriott, and Andy Hollis andWarren Spector and Aaron Loeb
and talk about video gaming andtalking about anything, and they
would share anything.
I'm like how did you come upwith the idea?
(11:44):
Well, that was was 100.
Driven by the constraint of themachine, we couldn't do x, y
and z, so we just did a.
I'm like, oh, and that becamethe hook of the game.
Well, we made it fun, right?
It's learning from those guysthat were completely embracing
the teach everyone around meeverything kind of mentality,
(12:04):
and that's how I've made andthat's my whole career you know
I was talking with lance massey,who is a sound designer.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
He said you've always got to operate from the 30 000
foot perspective as well, whichis, you know you're in there
working with the tools, but yougot to kind of be up here like
yeah don't.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
What's the process?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
if you keep that brain, then then you're actually
monitoring your process so youcan recreate it and ultimately,
that's creativity.
It's interesting to hear thisstory because what you're doing
now and where you went in yourcareer makes perfect sense based
on this story, because in manyways, you're doing exactly the
same thing.
You're putting tools in thehands of artists, you're
(12:44):
creating processes and you'rekind of using it for a creative
goal.
It's exactly the same thing.
And you've done what I think alot of people are doing, which
is you've kind of backed down alittle bit.
I mean, I don't mean to putwords in your mouth, but you
backed down from a corporateengagement into a more back to
more like, okay, a hands-onstudio engagement with a lighter
(13:07):
, more agile team that's reallygot their hands around the
technology.
It's interesting, how did youyou worked on some big games
that what games did you actuallyend up?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
there's a documentary coming out next week on the
making of madden, so theyinterviewed me for four, three
hours on that three and a halfhours, so I think I'm going to
be in it.
I have a soundbite in theteaser.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
What was your role in Madden?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I started as an associate producer and ended up
as the senior producer when itmoved to Tiburon after five
years yeah, five years, Madden.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, and I can see the route now.
It's pretty clear.
The labyrinth it's a lot aboutEA giving their staff
opportunities to grow.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It's that guy that knows how to get in the weeds
and fix the data register ormake a polygon work or fix a
(14:11):
normal on a model, but he alsocan operate at 30,000 foot level
and keep all the people in thetrenches moving forward.
I used to write proper planningand clear communication when I
took over a team or started ateam and I put it on on
everybody's monitor and they'relike what's this?
A cult?
I'm like I just let you knowwhat I'm responsible for.
If you don't understand whatyou're supposed to be doing
(14:33):
today, that's on me.
And if you don't believe in theplan, I need you to come sit
down in my cube until youbelieve in the plan, because I
need to change the plan untileverybody believes, because
otherwise, because I need tochange the plan until everybody
believes, because otherwisewe're not going to finish Right,
and that goes way back toseeing these guys.
Because we're trying to dothings that had never been done
before, how do we know it'sgoing to get done?
I have to believe in everything.
If I don't believe the schedule, that we have to do this in two
(14:53):
weeks, I can't.
Every second of every day iswasted because I can't move
forward.
Period, right.
But if you're like OK, I kindof believe in the schedule, but
I believe Rick, because he'sselling me on the schedule and
he's using his Zig Ziglar salesskills to get me to believe
that's what it is the beliefsystem.
Anything in entertainment is abelief.
I have to believe this song isgoing to be fun, otherwise why
(15:16):
am I writing it Right?
So it's that kind of thing.
And yeah, 30,000 foot level iswhere every executive producer
operates at.
And to go back on your smallerteam thing, I think what I
learned also by going to bigcompanies is there are also
processes and pipelines andsystems that you have.
When you get to Amazon, you gotto work the system.
Don't fight the system, don'tswim upstream.
(15:38):
Use the tools they gave youaround.
They're all different.
And now you got to besuccessful at Amazon.
Right, we kind of saw it asstreamlined.
It's like okay, this is the,the lego set I got.
I'll be successful with thislego set.
Um, and that's the game atcorporate america.
You're not making games.
Yeah, you're.
You're managing that system toget an output and and hopefully
(16:00):
the game is okay, right, yeah,and it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
It actually doesn't work.
I mean, it works in terms ofyou can drive a bottom line and
you can create a product, but itdoesn't work in terms of
industry leading innovation.
It's it's like the opposite andmy career.
It's interesting talking to youbecause, um, I mean, I mainly
know you as an executive, okay,so, uh, we worked together.
You were the managing directorof the company I was working on.
(16:24):
But I've done a lot of livingat this intersection of
creativity and commerce and I'vespent a large chunk of my
career going to corporations andtrying to convince them to buy
my creative ideas.
And you know, basically, if youfunction like that, you
basically are a professionalpain in the ass to corporate
America.
I mean, it was really like whydoes it have to be this way?
(16:46):
Well, it has to be this waybecause it's going to suck if
it's not.
And I've always believedcreativity is a competitive edge
.
So, you know, to me it's likelet's get the creative right and
then you guys can figure outhow to make money with it.
But you know we're goingnowhere if we don't get the
creative right.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's the way I've always done and it's a different
, it's a total polar differencein how you motivate people to be
creative, as you, compared topeople who make money.
Right, right, it's the uhyou're, you're selling your,
your soul, right it's?
It's the oldest profession inthe world, as they say, is what
we're doing?
We're, we're whoring ourselvesout.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Kind of kind of I pushed back on that just a
little bit because I've had alot of success with my career
and you know it's been doingthings that people you know
really argue with me about.
You know, on the corporatelevel, you know, like you can't
do that, why are you using tincans?
You know, I mean like I'venever heard anything like that
(17:41):
before, and then it goes on theair and it becomes usually
successful.
So I mean, I'm like I push backon that hard.
The reason why I'm bringingthis up is because we're at the.
You know, I don't.
You know, I want to say we're ata pivot point, except that we
seem to be at a pivot pointevery 12 months, so I don't know
if that's relevant anymore.
You know, when I talk to youngcreators, you know, and they
talk to me about their creativecareer, I always tell them well,
you know, you should start out10 years of piano study.
(18:02):
Or, you know, go to art schooland learn how to draw.
You know, do draw with a penciland master those those
different steps in the craftbefore you go anywhere near like
a technology tool, like any ofthese AI tools.
What do you feel about that?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's absolutely how it and that's what people don't
want to hear.
Right, really, our unfairadvantages between the five of
us.
We made over 300 games.
Teachers and parents want totell their students and their
kids oh no, you can make thenext Fortnite yeah, you can,
(18:40):
after a 25-year career in theindustry of making 700 crappy
games, but you're not going tobe the president of EA
graduating out of school.
You're not, and that's theshort circuit that everybody
thinks AI is.
That's the false narrative ofschool.
You're not, and that's theshort circuit that everybody
thinks ai is.
That's, that's the falsenarrative.
The false narrative is oh, paulmccartney used to have to
describe every note to thesymphony guy and he would write
(19:02):
all the notes down.
Now we gave paul mccartney aguitar.
You just fired all thosemusicians.
No, I didn't.
I made it make way easier forpaul mccartney to write way more
songs and to get what he wantsout of his brain directly onto
the tape machine faster thanit's just a superior tool.
You still need the talent, youstill have to have the
creativity, you still have tohave the fire in your belly
(19:24):
right.
When people tell me oh, I workedon a world of Warcraft for six
years.
Yeah, what did you do?
I was a lead animator.
I'm like, yeah, you didn't workon the game dude, you worked on
jira tickets and you closedthem out and that's all you did.
You were a process.
You're a robot, you're an ai inthe game.
Right, because there was aprocess we figured out we have
to make these animations, theyhave to be put on this xyz path
(19:46):
and here's, use this tool andthat tool and this tool and now
you go make this output for me,and then the, the game designer,
five of them on World ofWarcraft.
They put it all together.
Those are the crafters of thegame.
So now what I'm saying is AIallows you to be the game
creator, straight into theengine, onto the screen, for you
to get superior results quickly.
But you still have to have thatidea and that creative spark
(20:11):
and know what's fun.
You have to know what's fun andthat creative spark and know
what's fun.
You have to know what's fun.
The reason why you can hearsomething in nine seconds no,
five things to fix it's becauseyou listen to billions and
billions of things and now youhave that senior.
Oh, I know what good guitartone is.
That is not good guitar tone.
You know that, right, a kidcoming out of college is like,
yeah, I read a book about guitartone.
I think that's okay, he's gotto do it.
(20:36):
Sorry, he's got to be in it'stime in the saddle.
Nobody wants to hear that.
Nobody wants to hear it's 10000 hours to become an expert at
something.
So just keep doing it over tomake 10 games that suck right
before you get your first job.
Make your own game at home, andif you don't have that fire in
your belly and it's too hard andyou want somebody to be, then
you, that's you the wrongindustry.
That's why I say 99% of peopleare not creative.
They just want to playsomething else.
(20:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I can't and I don't think they understand the
professional world, because I'ma professional music producer.
I produce a lot of big musictracks.
If a guy comes into my studioand he plays me a track that he
made this way and that way usingthese tools and that tools, and
then a guy comes into my studioand sits down at the piano and
(21:18):
plays me his ideas, I'm hiringthe guy that sat down at the
piano and played his ideasBecause the tools in that guy's
hands are going to be likerocket fuel Amazing.
We started getting intosampling technology in the 80s,
you know, and at first it waspretty crude, but it got better
and better and better and now Ihave libraries full of symphony
orchestras that are pretty good.
(21:38):
However, in my work, whenever itgets to producing a final track
that I'm going to releasehere's a song I'm putting it out
, I'm going to sell it onBandcamp, whatever I'm going to
do, I always labor it on the topwith real players.
So just you know, even thoughI've got great sounding guitars
and great sounding pianos,ultimately nothing even comes
(22:00):
close to having a pianist and aguitarist.
So why do you think that is?
I just think it has to do withthe moment, you know, and it
also has to do withcollaboration, which is another
one of those secret sauces ofgreat creativity.
I mean, I can write a wholesong soup to nuts in this studio
(22:20):
.
Guitars, bass, drums soundsgreat.
I'll play it to people andthey're like that sounds great.
Then I'll bring in a guitaristand a bass player and a drummer.
It just goes next level.
So it's a combination of likeI've gone from the sample
instruments and me playing themall to like.
I've now got four human beingsinterpreting this stuff and each
(22:43):
one of them is a master intheir area.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
And when they're together, they play better.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, it's collaboration.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So my analysis of that is you can have robots do
anything you want them to do,but what you can't have them do
is bring human emotion into it.
And you're right.
You get Joe Pass playing guitarby himself in a room.
It's going to be amazing, joePass guitar playing, right.
You put him with four otherpeople and they're collaborating
(23:13):
and have fun together.
That's a magic thing, right?
That's that's the thing thatwe're trying to get that
creative energy, that creativespark.
It's like why does a band workinstead of it just being Paul
McCartney by himself?
Because the band is going toplay.
And that's the human elementeven working in games, that that
collaboration you call itReally what it is is.
(23:34):
That's that emotive, creativespark growing.
I believe that whenever you puta great team together, you
create another energy on theplanet.
I believe that when you have agreat relationship with someone,
whether it's a friend or yourwife, you're creating another
energy force on the planet, andwhen a relationship ends, it's
the death of that energy.
And when a team ends, it's that, and we should pay homage to
(23:56):
that, we should honor that.
We should see that that's howhumans work.
Look, none of this is new, dude.
The hindus figured it out 8 000years ago.
The shamans figured it out 10000 years ago.
This human dynamic of us beingable to manifest things in a
creative way is way better whenthere's five of us together on
the same page and we'remotivated to generate something.
(24:17):
That's the job of the executiveproducer.
Make sure everyone's on thesame vibe and the same page,
because you're going to getprofessional output.
And yes, we can do the NBAStanford thing and just break
down every game to what are thefive actions.
And here's the first 100 clicks, like we did.
I played him and take the soulout of everything and have
robots make games.
Sure, we can do that, butyou're not going to have that
(24:40):
energy force created and I don'tknow how to say it any other
way.
Is it on the disc when I put itin my xbox?
No, but it's represented in thegame that I play and I can feel
the energy that that team putinto it and feel that I don't
know how we tune games.
Dude, it's so weird.
I wish I could write it down.
I don't know how to tune games,it's about.
One thing I do know is ifeverybody's mad at each other
(25:02):
and the art director hates thelead programmer because he can't
get what he wants.
I can never tune a game andmake it fun, and if the art
director is like one step awayfrom dating the lead programmer,
if the art director is like onestep away from dating the lead
programmer, it's the best gameever, right, because that trust
and that human dynamic is that'swhat makes creativity
(25:23):
Creativity is is not measured inoutput, it's not measured in
something that we can see on thescreen or count on us.
It's not.
It's that energy of when theBeatles first got together.
They were mates, dude, theyloved each other, they were
making.
They actually believed thatthey were going to change the
world, and that belief is whatwe talked about earlier.
That's all you have.
Making a game.
You have to believe it's goingto be fun and if you can have a
(25:44):
team that loves each other andrespects each other and they
believe in that, then you have ahit game.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
You're, you're skirting around.
Uh, you know something I reallybelieve in, but it's something
you can never talk about thewoo-woo-woo factor of life.
When I read these guys talkingabout AGI and all that stuff,
I'm like I just roll my eyesLike dude.
Not only is it never going tohappen but, it's absolutely
unnecessary.
(26:11):
These tools are fabulous and wecan develop and use them for all
sorts of fantastic things, butthe idea that somehow you're
going to recreate humanintelligence is just like you're
Don Coyote tilting at awindmill.
But I just really think thatreally the most important thing
is like it's something we do notneed.
You guys are tool makers.
You should just work, focus onthe tools and then get out of
(26:33):
the way of the artists who areusing them.
Focus on the tools and then getout of the way of the artists.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
You can call the guitar and walk away.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, yeah, we need a sharper chisel.
Thanks, you know.
Now I'm going to make a statueout of this block of stone.
You can go and have lunch,thank you.
Explain to me your generalprocess.
You're overseeing there, you'vegot five or six people and
(26:58):
you're working together as ateam to come up with these games
.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah.
So I hit the jackpot and theCEO that I started the company
with this is his fourth startup,so he's done it before, right?
So the fear of how do we getthe money and everything.
It's kind of mitigated for mywhole team because, like
Nathan's done this, of coursewe're going to get started,
money will be fine, he knows howto run a company.
But on the other hand, heshowed up with money from his
(27:22):
last startup, which always helps.
But he said when I first methim he's like I went to college
to be a writer.
I've written 20 stories overthe last 20 years but I've
fleshed out seven of them that Iwould that.
I thought when I retired, I'mgoing to write these as novels.
These are great novel stories.
And then I went and looked atbook publishing and everything
(27:45):
and I decided you know, it'd beway more fun to make these video
games and see how humansinteract with my story and world
.
And there's, it's just going tobe a slug with no output on the
novel side.
So he's like I'm going to makevideo games instead.
That's when I first met him andhe's like I'm like you
shouldn't do that, dude.
Making games is really hard.
It's good that you have stories, but the more and more we
(28:07):
talked I realized our secretsauce is I have a founder that
showed up with money and sevenstories that he needs, not wants
needs to make as games.
That fire in your belly is allthe motivation, that's the
creative process we have.
So then you put a team togetherthat understands that vibe.
It's like these are Nathan'sstories, we're going to bring
(28:27):
them alive in the game and itkind of doesn't matter the genre
and the type of game you'regoing to make.
We're not all motivated to belike we're going to reinvent
headshots and first-personshooters.
Let's go after that.
That intent is totallydifferent than we have a founder
who has seven stories.
If we make all of these games,we're going to be really happy
that we made seven more games.
(28:48):
That's it.
We don't care if any of themare his.
We don't.
Our numbers are based on cell300000 on Steam, which has one
(29:10):
point eight billion people andlive off that and create really
good stuff and have fun makingthose games like we did back in
the right.
Use an AI tool to write theentire dialogue system right and
he can right.
So now we can understand whatthe story is and on the other
end it's like oh, we're going tocraft this into a Metroidvania
game.
We really like Hollow Knight,and so we're going to use the
kind of the dynamics of HollowKnight, pivot a little bit and
put that game in.
That's the beauty of videogaming.
(29:32):
Now you can just followsomebody else's game, add your
own sauce to it.
It's your game.
There's no, you can't copyrighta game play element.
Right, it's kind of like I lookat it as a lot like a band.
What kind of music?
And we're going to be agrateful dead cover band.
How about we write our ownsongs that are kind of like the
dead meets talking heads?
Oh, there's now.
(29:52):
You have a whole new band.
That creativity came out ofthat, right.
But but you really do have tostart with what we call a fast
follow, what you would call acopy, when you're building any
game.
These days, if you want to sayI'm going to reinvent gaming,
you're warren specter and I'mgoing to do the next immersive
rpg sim, you kind of need 100million dollars in 10, 15 years
(30:13):
to do denn.
Dennis Dyack has been workingon his new game that's going to
reinvent the genre for sevenyears.
He'll probably do it, but heprobably needs another three or
four years to do it.
We're not doing that.
So we thought about this a lotlast year and our strategies
kind of changed a little since,right before Gamescom, we
realized the conventional way ofmaking video games is dead.
(30:37):
So stop trying to go for thatpattern, right?
What's a new pattern, right?
Well, we have some startupmoney from Nathan.
We have a team that I know canexecute and make things.
Let's stop putting all oureffort into getting the three
million dollars we are asking togo make our Metroidvania game
and let's put that on the shelf.
We have all the idea ready togo.
(30:57):
It's scoped out.
If you gave me the money, Icould start tomorrow.
But let's go make some otherthings just to prove our point.
We're telling everyone we canmake things a lot quicker with
AI, so let's prove it out.
So we started on a journey inAugust late August, early
September to let's do a fastfollow of a brawler game,
because a brawler has onefeature the problem with doing a
(31:20):
vertical slice.
Right now, you've got to putall the features in.
Well, that's 80% of your work,because you have to have all the
features in a game.
You know that.
So what we decided?
Let's make a brawler game thatwe can make with us four people
and some AI tools, and let'sWith the goal of can we make
(31:42):
enough to sell to pay for ourhealth care this year?
Yeah, which is nothing.
Can we make 70 grand on a game,right?
That seems like a doable goal.
Really hard to do, actually forthe first game you do, right.
But on the other hand, it testsall our pipelines and how are
we going to self-publish and howare we going to get through QA
and how are we going to dotranslation and how are we going
(32:02):
to do ESRB all the other stuffthat's not making games.
We're going to exercise thatpipe, right, so that when we're,
if we do have to go toinvestors, we can turn to them
and say we're already apublishing producer.
We already have a couple ofgames out, right?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
And so now we have an opportunity with David Sunshine
, who owns the largestrepository of trivia questions
on the planet, to make a triviagame.
Well, adam Bell, our CTO heworked at Gamescom.
I don't know if they did 30 ofthem.
Derek Sunshine has done over 20a month for three months.
He made multiple trivia games,so we have it in our DNA to make
(32:37):
a casual game.
So my challenge is let's proveto all of everybody we're saying
yeah, rick, we have reallysmart people with AI tools who
work faster.
Can you make a trivia game inless than a month?
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Okay, so how does that not eat up your team?
I mean you've got a lean teamlike five or six people I don't
know how many people you've gotworking on it and now you're
going to take on some serviceprojects.
What does that do?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It's not a service project, it's go make another
game.
So, okay, okay, pablo Castillo,our lead designer and and
working in unreal, it's hisbrawler idea.
So let's test that idea oflet's get all the blockers away
from Pablo being able to singhis song in unreal.
Pretty much the entire game hasbeen written by him.
(33:20):
The CTO, adam is helping, ishelping out with oh, I can work
on the camera for you.
Tell me what to do.
So there's a little bit ofjobbing that stuff out.
But Pablo knows Unreal so wellhe can go be solo dev on this
project and make it himself.
When it comes to art, we'reusing purchased assets and then
we'll fix them later with, if weneed to change the assets, what
(33:40):
they look like.
But getting to the fun is themost important thing for Pablo.
That's not blocked right.
Adam, who's worked on multiplegames at the same time in his
whole career, is like hey, dude,you can prop up a trivia game
while you help Pablo.
He goes yeah, fuck, yeah, I cando that right.
So there's no real diluting ofthe team and the effort still
remains pure on both thosethings, and it's not really a
(34:07):
distraction.
It would be a distraction ifthey're like you have to use our
engine and our tech and I needthis sdk integrated.
That's not what we're doing.
We would work with a team thatwants one of our games to work
in their portal and we get thegame right.
So that's kind of where we'restaying.
We're I'm staying on the.
I'm building teams that buildgames.
I'm not not building DevOpsteams and monetization teams and
marketing teams and ad networkteams.
I'm not doing that and if Ineed that stuff, I'm just going
(34:29):
to job that out, because that'sthe commodity of gaming.
What's not the commodity iswhat you talked about earlier.
So those four to six guys inthat team that are highly
creative and now I've removedall the blockers into them being
able to be productive rightaway in Unreal, right away.
We started Alpha.
That's my new thing.
We started Alpha.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Okay, let's say a couple.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I'm going too fast for you.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
No, you're not.
Actually you're coming somereally great stuff.
There's been some heavy-dutypiracy going on in the creative
world which has left a lot ofartists like myself who have a
lot of creative work out there,a lot of songs on Spotify and a
lot of words you know beenpublished in books and stuff.
It's like it's really put adeep question as to exactly what
(35:14):
is going on and, quite frankly,it kind of feels like,
especially with what's beengoing on in the political world
in the last couple of years,that you know we're into a final
assault on copyright itself.
Copyright is a hindrance to alot of the business planning in
the technology industry.
(35:35):
You know it's obvious that theyare not respectful of copyright
, you know, and artists andwriters and musicians are the
low-hanging fruit, you know, andit's come down to a lot of
artists are going up against,you know, deep-pocketed
corporations to fight for theirshort story, right.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I'm kind of sidestepping the whole thing
because we're using our concepts, hand-drawn by Rachel, to get
that output from the art tools.
So we're using references onour work, like we need to build
a bigger library of our own tomake things, but it's working
and we can edit things and wetake things from that.
So our content is never goingto be we're just going to copy
(36:17):
Mickey Mouse and put it up therebecause Mickey Mouse is known,
because the difference is thiswe're part of that 1% that is
not going to ship the nextmickey game.
We're shipping new content.
We're creative guys.
We're writing new songs.
Right, and you're right.
99 of the reddit people arejust going to rip off everybody
else's ideas and reach andthat's the crap that no one
wants to hear and that's thecrap that no one wants to play.
(36:39):
That's's not creative, that'sjust rote.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
I can take the AI tools and I can run Studio GG by
myself.
I can build my own websites.
I can do my own designs.
I can do my own whatever.
You have got a company of fivehighly qualified artists that
are functioning, and your modelis great.
What's missing in both thosethoughts is this the industry
(37:03):
that trained and nurtured me anddelivered me to the world at
this high level of creativeexperience is no longer there.
So the question becomes ifyou're a young creative
listening to this conversationbetween two successful creative
executives, how the fuck are yousupposed?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
to get there.
I would be so motivated if Iwas a young person right now.
You know why?
Because I don't need to go to abig publisher EA to make my
game.
I can go make it myself andlaunch it on Steam and see if
it's any good and build my owncommunity, and I can be a solo
dev and go all the way up and Ican be among us.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
So is that going to buy you a house?
That's really what it is.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
If you are good enough, if you're.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Jerry Garcia yes, if you're Chris McHale, no, I mean,
chris McHale is a journeymancreative who has made a good
living and sent his kids tocolleges and bought two houses
and cars and the whole shitBecause you figured out the
system.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
It wasn't because the system supported you.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
It's always been this way.
I mean, like you know, bobDylan is going to make a living,
no matter what.
I mean he's going to breakthrough, no matter what, no
matter how much he tries not to.
You know, it's like.
I always loved Kurt Cobain, wasalways like you know, I don't
want to write any pop songs.
And then went out and wrote,you know, five classic pop songs
that are still played on theradio today.
It's not always what theartists want.
(38:15):
I mean, if you're blessed withthat level of talent, it's going
to happen for you, you know,you know it's.
I mean, you need luck.
I always need luck in lifeanyway, but I mean, basically
that's gonna.
So like we're kind of at thatpoint where the five percent are
going to make money and the 95have got to go figure out some
other way to make money.
Is that's where we're at?
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I mean, I would have loved to been a professional
musician and have the samelifestyle that I have by playing
bass and tuba.
I I'm pretty good to sit withanybody.
I'd sit with you and you'd feelgood.
I can make any guitar playersound better as a bass player,
right, but I'm not that guy,right, and I could have eked out
of a living and been okay, um,but I wouldn't have had the but.
(39:01):
But for me, I still play music.
You know why?
Because Because I need to, andthat's the creative energy that
we're talking about.
Even if you're not making moneyas a musician, you're still out
playing and you're gigging andyou're in a cover band in Tahoe
and you're playing three gigs amonth and you're super happy
because the juice you get, whatyou expect out of music, is the
joy you get when you play it.
(39:21):
If you're going to make itmusic to be like I'm going to be
rich and I'm going to be thenext billy eilish, that's the
wrong intent and you'll neversucceed, right?
If you go in saying I'm justgoing to, I need to sing my song
, kurt cobain, and it's a newthing and I want to do that.
No one can stop you.
You're a force of nature and ifit resonates if it resonates
and you're lucky you might makesome money on it.
(39:42):
That's the way we should lookat music and all creative
endeavors on the planet.
If you're good enough and youcan find somebody to buy your
art, then you can sell it beforeyou die otherwise what's the
test for young creators?
Speaker 1 (39:54):
I mean, you're starting out in this business.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Start making shit.
Now, if you don't, I talk topeople like I want to do.
My kid wants to be in gaming.
Okay, what game engine has hedownloaded and started building
a game with?
Oh none.
He's gonna wait to go to school.
Okay, fail, he'll never be agame maker.
Oh no, dude, he took my pc andhe loaded up minecraft and he
built five mods on it.
Now he's downloading unity andhe's building things and his
(40:18):
mom's mad because he formattedher hard drive.
That's the kid.
Kid that's going to make videogames.
The same with a guitar player.
I'm waiting for someone toteach me how to play guitar so I
can be the next Neil Young.
That guy will never make itright.
If it's like he was five yearsold and I couldn't take the
guitar out of his hand and allhe did was play guitar and sing
Neil Young songs, that kid willmake it.
That's the belly.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
So there's been a huge shakeout in the video game
industry in the last, like youknow, 36 months or something
like that A phenomenal amount ofpeople, I think 50,000 or more
people.
Yeah, have lost their jobs.
I mean, I'm just and those jobs?
It's not that they lost theirjobs and they're going to find
another one.
Those jobs, literally were notcoming back.
(41:00):
Yeah, yeah, so so is it just, isthat, is this, is that shake up
?
Just another version of whatyou're talking about?
It's like the the deadwood hasbeen overboarded the processes
and the pipelines are changing,right.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So now the industry has.
So the bigger games like callof duty has 4 000 people on it,
right, they have to generatethat money every year, otherwise
activision goes out of business.
As a process and a pipeline guy, you don't mess with that
factory, you leave that factoryalone.
The next factory comes alongand we figure out how to
optimize things, because I needmy bread and butter factory to
(41:33):
make those things.
So Call of Duty could stillconsider every hand drawn
animation and nothing in AI forprogramming and nothing in AI
and modeling, because they can'tafford to do that, right, they
just can't.
So they have to run that way.
So for bigger teams, sure, butI'm telling you, if you're the
VFX lead VFX guy on Forza I doall the VFX and it's beautiful
(41:56):
and I won two awards You're notmaking games, sorry.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
So if you're talking to young creators, it's like
what you're kind of saying isget your hands on the tool and
start making stuff and get yourexpectations in line.
If your expectation is to goout and have a successful career
, you're probably off on thewrong foot to begin with.
If your expectation is I'm justgoing to write a cool song and
go to a coffee house and see howthe five people there like it
(42:22):
or not, that's right, that's,that's probably a good
expectation, and maybe that fivepeople turns into 10 people.
You know, and you, you kind oflike, see the path open up in
front of you.
So it's as you say it's, it'stough, people don't want to hear
this stuff, but it's also sortof reality.
And and the other reality is,um, you look at me, uh, you know
, um, I am still working hardevery single day on on my
(42:46):
creativity.
I still pick up my guitar everysingle day and, you know, get
my keep my fingers working yeah,because I need to, and you got
to have a sort of an obsessivenature.
You got to say like I'm going tomake the 10 mods from minecraft
or whatever you're going to do.
That's kind of obsessive work.
So I mean, I've only comeacross not many people in my
(43:09):
career who really have that tobe honest with you.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
That's us right.
That's right.
It's us, it's us.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
And you've got to sort of stay a little obsessive.
Ask my wife.
She's not going to come in hereall happy about this
conversation because she's goingto be like yeah, Chris is like
ridiculous, he works 14 hours aday.
You know what?
I don't work a single hour aday.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
All of the operating systems that we use today on
computers, all the great codinglanguages, were written by
people that graduated collegefrom 1956 to 1962.
There's no new operatingsystems.
There's no scripting languages,perl all that stuff was by
those guys because they werecoming up when the computer was
(43:57):
brand new and it was punch cardsand they could that's.
They had Fortran and Pascal andthey're like we can do better
than this, right, and they werethere by necessity, but were
also 100 lucky.
I was 100 lucky to be in thebay area where electronic arts
is trying to do something newand I could be that guy.
No one had talent, no one had away to make a game, so
everybody was on the same levelplaying field to get started.
(44:20):
That this is another one ofthose moments, right when kids
are coming up, it's like wait aminute.
I went to school right when AIwas coming out.
So, yeah, it's three of us.
We do the work of 500 peoplebecause we all learned AI
natively as we came up.
That's where we're at.
People don't want to admit that.
Here's the beautiful thing.
(44:42):
The thirst for humans to ingestentertainment is endless,
bottomless.
There's 28,000 games on Steam.
There could be 75,000.
It could be a million, itdoesn't matter.
People will keep buying that.
It just keeps getting bigger.
Humans want content.
Right now, we're going tofulfill all these needs with AI.
(45:04):
Robots are going to take us toschool, they're going to teach
us, they're going to doeverything for us.
What they're not going to everbe able to do is delight and
entertain my brain, and that'swhere we're all going to go.
We're all going to be creatorsin 100 years.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
I try to keep creativity to Jijiji to 40
minutes because I believe peopleonly want to listen for 40
minutes.
You and I are closing in on anhour and 35 minutes, so this may
be the warm piece of Creativity, jijiji, and I can't tell you
how grateful I am that you cameon this show.
I'd be happy to do it again.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
I think there's other fundamental things I've gotten
to the point in my life where Iget more out of mentoring and
helping people than I do out ofmaking money.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Trust me, I hope you become a friend of this show.
I'm building this show oneepisode at a time.
I'm only into six or sevenepisodes, but yeah, there's a
lot to talk about.
And I think that people say tome how are you going to make
money with your podcast?
I me, how are you going to makemoney with your podcast?
(46:06):
I'm always like I'm not tryingto make money with my podcast,
I'm just I'm just trying to putevergreen content out there so
people coming behind us canlisten to the shit and go like
these guys were truly out oftheir fucking minds.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
You love, I can tell the minute I saw in your eyes.
You love humans and you lovethe creative spark and you love
giving humans the opportunity tolive a happy, fulfilled life.
And if you make 8 000 games andnone of them make any money and
you are a cash register guy atSafeway and you paid for your
life but you were able to live alife where you made 8,000 games
(46:31):
and you felt really good aboutit, that's a fucking fantastic
life, dude, and that's all we'retrying to do.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
This has been Creativity to GG produced by
Studio GGG, and that was RickNeal, veteran game maker,
someone who believes increativity and the process of
creativity, like I do, somebodywho's dedicated his life to it.
I thought he had a lot ofinteresting things to say and we
hope that you like listening.
(47:02):
Please review the podcast,subscribe to the podcast, like
the podcast and visit us atstudioggio.
You know, join up.
Join us as we innovate our wayto a new, creative future.
Creative workers unite is whatI like to say.
This is Chris McHale.
Thank you so much for joiningus and listening and we'll see
(47:24):
you next time.
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