May 8, 2025 • 44 mins
What does Gorav think about his first video game in years? How can arts, pre-med, music, and writing backgrounds set you up for a video game career? What do Spider-Man, MLB 2K, and Call of Duty have in common? This week, we learn from the captivating story of Eric Monacelli, Executive Producer at Marvel Games. Before that, Eric has had a decorated career experience across video game studios such as Naughty Dog, 2K Games, Capcom, Infinity Ward, and Atari. He is also a published author in Primary Psychiatry.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Chow Chow, welcome. Welcome to the Linen Suit and
Plastic Tie Podcast. This is the podcast where we
dissect and analyze the epic, the amazing, the cool, the
impossible, the awesome, the notactually impossible power of
story time and learn how to harness that power in our
everyday life. That word was lives by the way,
(00:29):
just in case I'm Gov. And I'm Kevin.
Kevin, before you start, and I know I told you in the intro,
I'm do this real quick. One thing, one thing I'm
noticing, but one, I'm back in my LA apartment, lots of stuff
happening again. We're going to get into it in a
later episode. But one thing I'm noticing is
because because I've been movingaround a lot, we've been doing
(00:50):
the intros and the main episodeskind of disjointedly.
So the best part of me is when Iwatch them back, now that we're
using YouTube, we're noticing stuff like you give me shit all
the time because you know, I'm ahand movement guy.
So that comes on camera. Everything we're doing is coming
on camera. But one thing that's really
noticeable is how my beard changes depending on when we
film. So like I haven't shaved since
(01:13):
before we filmed this episode but you'll see the beard looks
different just in a little bit of time.
But in our last episode we had recorded the intro a couple
weeks after the main episode andit goes from LON beard to clean
shaven. Yeah, I mean, we're literally
going from no visual of anythingto having to watch every little
(01:33):
movement on it. And that is a really interesting
point brought up actually, because another thing I noticed
from the editing side of things is for both of us, what we start
to do when we're not talking. And when it's in audio, if
you're not talking, you just don't show up in the episode.
But when you have video, that's a little different because the
(01:56):
camera is still on you. You're being recorded every
single second, and for us who are not completely used to it
right now, it's really interesting to start picking up
like moments of disengagement almost.
Yeah, you probably laugh becauseI just did it.
It's so weird because I am a fidgety person.
(02:17):
It's one of the biggest reasons I take notes in classes I'm in
at school. Not because I'm going to go read
them later, God no. Because like, it keeps me
engaged. That's why I take notes at work,
right? But that was the other thing
though, because we both got intothe habit of taking notes as we
were talking to our guests. But when it shows up on camera,
it's the moment we stop talking,the moment we finish a question,
(02:41):
we immediately look down on the camera.
But the audience can't see what we're actually doing.
So it just looks like we got immediately disengaged.
So this is for the record, that we are both actually taking
those into actively listening when you saw us disengaged.
But another thing that was really interesting, Gaurav, is
(03:04):
recently we got you exploring a new format of storytelling.
You're starting to try this new video game that we are the two
of us are playing together called Split Fiction.
So just a little context is Kevin's a pretty big gamer and
I'm not, so I'm like exploring this with him almost like the
first time besides little games I've played in the past and
(03:27):
Duolingo. Yeah, and we'll get into that
probably in a little episode as well.
But what's interesting from US playing this dual player video
game together though, is that for the same exact content, we
get both the player and the non conventional player points of
(03:47):
view. And something I noticed you
doing though, that was really interesting is the moment we get
out of the like interactive playing segment of the game and
gets into the cutscenes where there's just dialogues and kind
of scripted play almost. You would actually drop the
(04:09):
controller and start scrolling through your phone.
I don't know if you'd notice yourself doing that.
I really was trying. I've really tried not to and
like I I was, I was worried that's where you were going and
I was like, no, he's not becauseI thought I was being pretty
good at not he was moments. I mean, oh, we've been playing a
while. I haven't like not having
checked my phone. I'm I'm going to do this
justification mode. I can see myself being like,
(04:31):
listen, let me prove to you why I use my key.
Yeah, but but that's that is notthe point.
I'm the what I'm trying to raisehere, though, is part of your
experience understanding this new storytelling format is that
in your brain, you probably recognize that the moment the
interactive segment stops is themoment you need to stop.
(04:55):
You can stop engaging, whereas that that is not the entire
video gaming experience. The story actually is is still
continuing in a good games, the interactive and the cutscene
segments actually seamlessly flow in and out of each other
where even if it stopped pressing the button doesn't,
(05:16):
that doesn't mean you stop experiencing the story.
Whereas for me, I'm more used tothis format now.
I know to stay engaged, but it'sreally interesting for me to
watch you try to get used to this new format and it's kind of
a quirk almost from what you typically the type of stories
that you typically consume. Yeah, when I watch a movie at
(05:39):
home, I really try not to use myphone, but I struggle with it
sometimes not to be fully engaged because, you know, we're
so used to having that ability or my anxiety a lot of times
pulls me to my phone to check things.
But you're right, in the cutscenes, that's a moment where
you know, you don't have to be engaged.
You can pay attention, understand, while doing other
things. So it's the same, right.
OK, break, put down the controller, pick up my phone.
(06:01):
And that's where you see, oh, This is why gaming's so
interesting, because they can combat the second screen
problem. Yeah.
And to help us understand this unique storytelling medium
better, this week we are talkingto a storyteller who is so
acknowledged in this medium. Eric Monicelli is the expert
(06:26):
storyteller for today's episode.If you know anything about video
games, Eric's profiles should beextremely fascinating to you
because he started off working at 2K, working on some of the
MLB games and their marketing. And then he went around some
(06:47):
pretty well known video game studios such as Naughty Dogs,
which is where The Last of Us inUncharted came from.
Infinity War, he worked on Call of Duty, Capcom, and most
recently he is executive producer at Marvel Games.
So if you've heard about Spider Man games on PlayStation, Black
(07:07):
Panther, and the most recent hitgame Marvel's Rivals, that all
falls under the umbrella of Marvel games that Eric and his
team help work on at market. So this is fascinating
conversation to understand all the insurance and outs about
designing and marketing video games and interesting career and
(07:31):
life journey in itself. So let's get into it.
Hello, how do you do? Sit down, gather round.
We've got stories about stories that'll make you a drink of
wonder. Amnesty because life can be.
Dried at a dress for the time with the Lin min suit and fly
(07:56):
stick tie Lin min suit and fly stick light Now here's Gore
Riven, Gavin. Eric, to start us off, can you
tell us a little bit about yourself?
Was this your story? Yeah, so man, this goes, my
(08:17):
story is pretty long, but I grewup in a very small rural town
called Sheridan, NY. So it was about man 2000 people
total. I had a, a father who was super,
super into computers, entertainment and, and Atari and
all this stuff. And so that sort of peaked my
curiosity and, and gave me this love and respect for just code,
(08:41):
I guess, and, and video games. And then as I got older, I got
really, really into music and arts and fashion and sports.
And I think the intersection of all those really informed my
love of entertainment and my love of proving that video games
are an art form, which is the driving function of my entire
career. Amazing.
(09:02):
We're very similar in the sense that we explore story time as an
art form and understand the different formats and different
variations. We've had a couple video game
people on the show. We've had a lot of comic book
people because I'm a big comic book nerd.
I have been my entire life, and they're just such interesting
forms of story time. So I love people who understand
that, but we also know that you weren't always planning on
(09:24):
getting into video games, right?You went to Colombia.
I think you're pretty mad. I want to get this right.
Primary psychiatry on PMS this for this.
Yes, yes. Something disorder.
Tell us about that. Oh.
Man, so I originally, I mean rewinding it way back, music was
(09:44):
the driving force of everything I did.
I didn't go to college right away.
I went to SUNY Fredonia, which actually is a pretty well known
SUNY school for music. And so I was going just for
English. I would like to write and that
sort of thing. All the people told me I was a
good writer. I was like, sure, whatever, that
sort of thing. It really didn't interest me.
But after my music career reallydidn't pan out, I really needed
(10:06):
to branch out from the small town that I was in.
And so I transferred into NYU. I ended up getting an honors BA.
When I graduated with my BA in literature, I was like, what am
I going to do with my life? I could teach.
My mom was a teacher. I love teaching.
Taught middle school for a year.I actually was working with the
student who had a lot of developmental issues and he he
(10:31):
piqued my curiosity in psychiatry.
Then I applied to Columbia. The program I was in wasn't a
good fit for who I was and I dropped out of Columbia.
But the one thing I did do to get into Columbia is the a woman
I was living with while I was teaching middle school.
Her husband was a professor and he wrote on primary psychiatry
about dysphoric disorder. And I was a good writer at the
(10:53):
time. So I made it pretty and I
published it in this journal andhe gave me a second author
credit on it. And so that's how I got that
published. You know, I dropped out after a
while. And then I was like, what am I
going to do? And I was applying to this is to
work. But the woman I was interviewing
with told me, hey, I hear you talking a lot about how you love
(11:14):
video games. I don't think I'm going to hire
you for this job. Wow.
But I have this friend who's friends with like Kadeo Kojima,
and it's from Japan, and she runs this company called New
York Tokyo. I think you should talk to her.
And so that was my very first job in gaming.
(11:37):
It was how I got started. It was a very happenstance,
fortunate series of events, speaking loudly about my
passions to the right person at the right time.
And that's that's sort of where it all started.
We love a good pivot on the show, right?
This is a big thing where we askwhat's your story?
And a lot of people say, well, my story is more windy than
most. Everyone will say this and it's
(11:58):
funny 'cause there's no straightline, right?
We love a good pivot because it's someone who said, you know
what? This isn't working even though
I've been thinking about it for X years.
I'm going to try something else.Yeah, definitely not a straight
line. Like there's no, there's nothing
in life that's worth it that will ever be a straight A to B,
right? I learned that the hard way.
I probably made a little too many pivots, like music to
(12:19):
teaching to psychiatry to video games.
But you know, it got me where I am and I'm unfortunate for all
the learning. You know, so I am curious about
that too, because if a little bit of music and a little bit of
psychiatry, a little bit of art,a little bit of literature, how
do these elements help you forward your path?
They are the wrapper and the framework for how I think about
(12:42):
the work I do in gaming. And ultimately what I think
about gaming is we're in the business of building virtual
worlds. No matter what aspect you are
in, if you're a designer, if you're a publisher, if you're a
product manager, producer, artist, coder, you're basically
living in this virtual world that's modeled oftentimes upon
(13:04):
the real world. And I also think of games as
these digital artifacts that arecreated.
And when you're creating these digital artifacts, you got to be
very thoughtful around what kindof curation you put into what
kind of he put into the game in this little virtual world you're
building. So while I was at NYUI, actually
was a museum studies research assistant.
(13:26):
So museology is a fancy word forit.
And I noticed that there's this intersection between museum
curation and how you want a player experience to work.
For me, the best sort of player contentment for video games is
this sort of very, very itative wheel of like creating the the
perfect exhibit space for peopleto play in that can be viewed
(13:50):
and revisited and make some curious and interested.
So that's one example, literature, psychiatry, pretty
straightforward. It's like play is a
psychological state and understanding how people like to
play, you need to understand psychology.
Fashion, I look to a lot that's for like character design.
So I, I love it. I take all aspects of life and
(14:12):
it all fundamentally. I know that sounds very
discursive, but it really gets back to the fact that we're
making these virtual worlds based on the real world.
And when you do that, you have to take all elements of the real
world in and see what fits in this little virtual world that
you're creating and curating as a digital artifact.
I really love this idea you brought up about building the
(14:34):
virtual world that is essential to what video games do.
On that point though, I think there are obviously a lot of
different storytelling formats that kind of do the same effect
effect, especially in a fictional sense, especially in
what you do right now between Marvel games.
You have all these IPS that are coming from other storytelling
(14:55):
mediums. They originally started from
comic books. And of course there's the
cinematic universe and those arefictional story worlds that have
attracted a huge and loyal fan base overtime.
But with your understanding in the video game industry though,
how do you think storytelling invideo game is unique compared to
(15:16):
these other mediums in terms of building a virtual world and
telling a compelling story? Yeah, I mean, video games have
always had the benefit of they fully immerse the player in a
very active way. It's not passive participation.
With movies, even books, you sort of sit back, you sit back,
you're you're engaging in a verypassive way.
(15:37):
Video games are sort of a lean forward entertainment, right?
It forces the player to engage. It forces the player to have
their own sense of control and agency and, you know, trigger
those reward centers and those responses that you want.
It's a feedback thing. So like, you know, personally
for me, I play a lot of baseballgames, as you probably noticed
(15:58):
by the hat I'm wearing and the Jackie Robinson painting behind
me and the Pawnee glove over there.
I love baseball and I wished I became a baseball player.
That was my that was my my number one goal.
I wanted to be a shortstopper pitcher for the New York Mets.
Did that happen? Absolutely not.
But you know, I think that's something video games can do.
They have their sense of wish fulfillment.
I might not be able to do this in the real world, but I can do
(16:19):
it in this game and feel super strong or powerful or proud or
or mighty or or even sad. Different emotions.
Like one of my favorite games inthe past few years is Grease,
and that game is exceptionally sad, but it just helps the
processing loneliness and emotions.
And so I think games have this power to do that that no other
medium has in a very, very active way.
(16:42):
Totally, I've played through both Spider Man and Spider Man 2
myself and PS5 and absolutely itjust feels different when you
actively get to control Peter Parker.
Morale is swinging around New York City.
I'd also love to know how would you describe your current role
(17:03):
as executive producer in video games?
What exactly does an executive producer do in your capacity?
I had a longer title which was senior director of product and
franchise development, which I think was a very good descriptor
of what I do. I think of games as a product
and also as franchises, and I try and develop them.
(17:26):
That's very simplistic, but alsoI have this personal thing that
video games are two things. They're a game and they're a
product. The product is the thing you're
selling, and you want people to buy the unique selling points,
the consumer promise. And then the game is the craft
and the artistry and the work that all the developers put into
it. And part of my job being an IP
(17:47):
holder and working on license game is I work with both sides
to make sure everybody's happy and all the things are working
in concert. This is what the developers are
going to care about from the artand craft side.
This is what the publishers are going to care about from the
business of selling the game. How do we make it sing?
So an audio, it resonates with an audience in a psychologically
meaningful way. And that's kind of the middle I
(18:09):
feel and what I've been doing atmy job.
So that's the highfalutin philosophical way of what I do.
What I do day-to-day is I'm on alot of emails, I read a lot of
scripts, I play some builds, I talk to a lot of people.
I am therapist for a lot of creatives and that's pretty much
it, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's, it's it's
amazing. It's an interesting role because
(18:29):
you write, you're balancing a lot of things.
And also the game industry is ina really interesting place in
the media landscape because one,not enough people know how big
the gaming industry is. And then two, well, a lot of the
rest of the media is struggling with this second screen issue
where people aren't engaging as much in like television movies
because they're on their phones.That's harder to do in the
gaming industry, right? The whole point is to fully
(18:51):
immerse someone. So I think it's such an
interesting time to be working on like major IPS and in this
industry where storytelling is really exploding and you've
worked on major IPS like The Last of Us, Capcom, Marvel, Call
of Duty. How do you go about
understanding these worlds as you do it?
How do you go about understanding the different
mediums? I think every game I've
(19:13):
approached in a different psychological aspect, and it all
gets back to the matter of like,hey, what wish is this game
fulfilling for the player? Some of them are very simple,
like Call of Duty. You get to feel like a soldier.
Cool. What does that mean?
How do you sell that? How do you make it unique and
new? You know, if you take Spider
Man, for instance, it's like swinging through Marvel's New
York. That is the fantasy.
(19:34):
You want to swing, you want to shoot, you want to crawl, web,
zip, do all these things that are that make you feel like
Spider Man and make you feel like you are the protector and
the friendly neighborhood hero of New York.
And so digging into how would I feel as a player?
How what would what would be good?
And sometimes there's some gamesthat I'm like, OK, I don't play
(19:56):
these kind of games, but let me understand how the players think
and what they can do. You know, a good example of that
was I worked on this game calledwhen I was a Capcom called
Sengoku Basara, which was a Dynasty Warrior style anime
game. Not really my thing, not
something I love to play, but like understanding.
(20:17):
Cool. You want to feel like you're so
powerful you can take on an armyby yourself.
Right, like getting into those mindsets and understanding that
psychological promises. The key to helping people
understand why they want to playthem?
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the most important tenants of
storytelling we talked about in the show that understanding your
audience, taking the time to understand what are they trying
(20:38):
to do. And I love this idea of wish
fulfillment. Like, OK, how can this game
fulfill the wish that no other medium has been able to in the
past, right? It's not about recreating
something. It's about fulfilling that wish,
that promise that the other media of a stories kind of have
already made. How do you feel that in your
way? Yeah, yeah.
And like I said, it's the difference between the immersion
(21:00):
and the active versus passive participation.
But I also think movies are likean hour and a half to three
hours Max 3 1/2. If you're going too long, a
vision can be anywhere from 10 minute, 10 minute YouTube video
to a 30 minute sitcom to an hourlong drama.
I think video games because you're trying to give people
(21:22):
this wish fulfillment that you hope will last infinite hours.
Honestly, you know, like my biggest goal is I want
everything I work on to become timeless.
You know, my, my ultimate goal working on the Marvel stuff is
like some person who plays it intheir 20s when they have a kid,
when they're 30 or 40 or 50, they're like your spider man's
cool, but mine was the coolest. Let me show you, right?
(21:46):
And that's the Spider Man that they go play.
They take them back to Marvel Spider Man and Marvel Spider Man
2 or, you know, the Guardians ofthe Galaxy games or any of our
other games, right? So that's what I aim for.
Just try and have some storytelling that's timeless and
meaningful. What are the key principles you
follow then, when you think about keeping players engaged
and coming back to play your games and making your
(22:08):
storytelling timeless, how do you approach that?
I think part of it is understanding the thematic,
overarching themes of the story and then the foundational
pillars of like, okay, mentorship, whatever it is,
right? You know, Marvel has its own
brand pillars that like we always go back to and like,
obviously one is being heroic, right?
(22:29):
And so you need to go back to relatability, right?
Complexity, intensity. This moment's intense, but could
we ratchet it up to 11? How do we get get there and and
show really just a depth and of emotional weight and complexity
to it. So making sure we have key
things that we're always drivingback to store.
You can. People call them different
pillars, North Stars, creative strategy, whatever keeps you
(22:52):
coming back to that story and telling it in a engaging way.
I think that's true of every game.
You can select every video game and be like, what was this game
really about? What were they trying to do?
Yeah, you know, I love that. I think it's it's so important
to have these guiding principlesto be able to approach it in
this kind larger than life way. And I love the design thinking
(23:12):
elements. Can you tell us a little bit you
know Marvel, I've had a great year, a few years in video games
and movies and comments and TV. I'm a big Marvel guy.
Tell us a bit about what makes Marvel storytelling unique.
What is kind of the Marvel Way Marvel method in the gaming
industry? Well, First off, thank you for
being a fan and supporting us. It's always, always good.
(23:34):
We love that. And I think for me personally
and how how I approach it, I think Marvel is just, it has
these aspects to it. It's open, it's complex, it's
relatable, it's heroic, these things.
There's some levity and humor toit, right?
Like things that are just like way back in the day and, and
when Jack Kirby and Stan Lee andall the folks were working on
(23:54):
it, they always called it the world outside your window.
And that that holds true. I think what they're what's been
evolved nowadays is there's thisfluidity to marvel that it sort
of goes along and sort of understands cultural relevancy
and trends and what's going on through people's minds and sort
of adapts things. And one of the stories that I
like to tell, and you know, people may not always think
(24:16):
about this or realize this, You know, if you think about where
Steve Rogers came from, it was World War Two.
He was punching Hitler in the face.
He was punching Nazis. Great, cool, right?
Like that's Captain America. That's what you want.
The Hulk, gamma radiation. There was a lot of concern when
it when he was invented over theatom bomb.
If you look at the Punisher, probably one of the more clear
(24:38):
examples, when he first came out, he was a vet from the
Vietnam War. If you look at the Netflix
series, he's a vet from the Iraqi war.
So they sort of shift the timeline to sort of create this
sort of cultural relevancy. And it keeps the brand fresh, it
keeps the brand fluid, it keeps the brand relatable.
And when you think about those two wars, when you think about
the Vietnam War versus the Iraqiwar, there's different kind of
(24:59):
warfare and different sort of psychological outcomes of people
who engaged in them. And so now the character's
personality shift a little bit because of that.
And so in the comics, you would see the Punisher in one way and
now in the Netflix, so you see them written another way because
it is reflective of what their experience was.
And so I think that sort of stuff and that sort of
(25:21):
storytelling is critical and really, really gets into it.
So like, I love character BIOS, I love history, I love seeing
the lore. I love seeing what shaped this
character for who they are, right.
And and you know, when we have conversations about what story
treatment is going to be look looking like character BIOS are
a big part of it. You know, the story treatment
(25:42):
itself obviously is a big part, but you know, it starts with the
pillars and the themes and it goes from there.
And I think Marvels exceptionally good at being
fluid with their brand, where they don't get too rigid, they
don't get too caught up in, hey,our characters have to be this
certain way and behave this certain way is like, hey, does
this work? Does this tell a good story?
(26:03):
Let's mix it up, let's change itup.
And I think that keeps things fresh.
And that's really the magic. Of Marvel, has there been any
characters you've bought on thatyou learned something new about
while creating? And how did that process kind of
go? Yeah, I mean, I worked on it
with something new. I think all the creative teams
(26:23):
we work with, especially the games that we have good success
with, they bring a new fresh take and spin on these
characters. And I tend to learn something
new about how I viewed the characters or how they interact
with the world or what what it means for them.
It's an obvious 1, You know, I didn't work directly on the
game. Danny Q's the executive producer
(26:45):
on it. But Marvel Rivals has Jeff the
Landshark in it. I knew a little bit about Jeff.
I like read some of them in the comics, but like just seeing how
they made him so adorable, how they made him have such
personality and just sort of be like everybody's favorite mascot
in a game like Marvel Rivals. Is it really made me learn about
(27:06):
like, Oh yeah, cool. This is what this character is
capable of, right? Like, you know, you see it
initially, you're like, OK, it'sjust a sidekick.
But like, no, it could be a mascot.
It actually could carry, you know, the flag for a whole game
if you if you phrased it the right way.
So you learn, you learn things like that.
You know, I've worked on Spider Man for about 10 years now.
When I first got to Marvel, Spider Man definitely wasn't
(27:28):
even in my top ten favorite superheroes.
But working on the Insomniac version of Spider Man,
definitely one of my favorite superheroes, right?
Insomniac was able to make a very unique take on the hero
that I find highly relatable. You know, for for me, growing
up, when I saw Spider Man comics, it was like, oh, he's a
teenager that somehow ends up with Mary Jane and is a genius,
(27:51):
but I always messes up. And I was like, OK, how could
all these things happening if you're super smart and you get
the Super pretty girl? Like it just doesn't make sense
in my head, in my head, right? And so when Insomniac aged him
up a little bit, gave him some more 20 year old problems, let's
say, it just clicked for me. I was just like, I get it.
I get this character. I understand why it's so
(28:12):
relatable and universally loved and one of people's favorite
superheroes of all time. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the
most important parts about Spider Man and kind of these
Marvel heroes like Stan Lee wanted him to be a teenager with
teenage problems, to relate and build that empathy with their
readers, right. So it's one of the most
important thing is that they have real problems that they
aren't invincible. They aren't these things that
(28:33):
make some large than life. You kind of have to build back
to core principles. What is that like when you're
kind of working and you're seeing the impact of the
audience playing these games, You're seeing kids and they're
learning lessons. How do you go about telling a
great story but also making surethe right lessons are imparted
with your audience? Yeah, I mean, you're always
showing the human side of the superhuman, right?
(28:55):
That's what we talked about quite a bit too.
And that human side is honestly what makes these heroes so
memorable and relatable and noteworthy.
And, you know, beyond the the fluidity that Marvel has in
terms of like how it treats its characters, it is that human
element that really makes it superheroes connect with people,
I think. And we say often when Spider Man
(29:16):
succeeds, Peter Parker fails. When Peter Parker feeds, Spider
Man fails, right? Like there's that dichotomy and
that tension all the time. And, you know, we all feel that
in our personal, personal and professional lives, right?
Like you could have a really bigwin at work, but then you get
home, get yelled at by your partner and you're like, oh, no,
right. So it's like, or vice versa,
(29:36):
right? So, you know, I think that's the
thing that really, really makes Marvel heroes different from a
lot of the superheroes out thereand and makes them unique.
One of my favorite superhero comics of all time was the Matt
Fraction David Aja any Wu run onHawkeye.
And that is the most human St. level version of the superhero
(29:57):
ever. And he's just protecting his
building in Brooklyn with Lucky the Pizza Dog, which I love
Lucky, I love Hawkeye, I love Kate Bishop.
And so I think that story is really what got me back into
comics. Honestly, when that came out, I
was like, this is amazing. And so I think those sort of
things really just resonate withme and it connected with like
(30:19):
some of my own personal experiences in life.
I'm not like protecting a block in Brooklyn, but I lived in
Brooklyn and I did have sort of the same sort of like
neighborhood vibes and and that sense of like pride for my
community. Yeah, love those insight.
And a huge part of your career in this industry is dedicating
is dedicated to marketing obviously the games and the
(30:42):
studios and you have worked across such a wide range of
genre of games and different types of studios.
So I'd love to understand from you, you know, how do you think
about the differences between these different audiences?
Let's say Naughty Dog, where thethe studio itself has a pretty
(31:02):
strong brand image. People have certain expectation
or, you know, Call of Duty from Infinity War.
That's like, you know, a subset of this video game franchise IP
that's very well known versus now where you're in Marvel games
where I think people are obviously way more aware of the
same IPS but in different mediums.
(31:23):
How do you approach your marketing and understand your
audience differently? Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's
getting to the the principles ofwhat each studio is about,
believe it or not. One of the things that Naughty
Dog for me, when I worked there 2011 through 2015, I thought
Naughty Dog was underappreciated.
And they kind of were because they were just a video game
(31:44):
studio at the time. The HBO show hadn't come out,
the Uncharted movie hadn't come out.
They were a video game studio in2014 that had been around 30
years. And if you got in a Lyft or an
Uber and told somebody that you worked at Naughty Dog, they
immediately thought you worked for a dog food company or a porn
girl and think you worked for a video game company, right.
(32:06):
And I think part of what my goalthere was, and I, I had the idea
to do the 30th anniversary celebration for Naughty Dog.
I did a lot of work around that to just sort of lift the studio
brand up to get it more into thezeitgeist, especially after we
had the critical success of Lastof Us that we did on the on the
game level. That's what you got to recognize
and that's what you need to do. You know, a lot of my career has
(32:28):
been seeing where the gaps in the holes are in an organization
and what they're not doing. You know, and what Naughty Dog
had not done to that point was been really good at promoting
their studio brand, but now they're great at it.
You know, with Infinity Ward, I did a similar thing when I
joined there. I wanted to sort of refactor
their image a little bit. I wanted to modernize it, make
(32:49):
it a little more sleek. I worked on a space game.
So my brother worked at NASA or does work in NASA.
So I was like, yo, I want to work on a space thing.
Maybe I get to work with my brother.
I got to work with some of his colleagues, but not him.
And so we got to do some cool stuff around that.
And so, you know, you all approach it from a different
perspective and just kind of make the best of what you can
(33:10):
for each, for each studio and each place you're at and think
about what those, what those brand missions are, what the
brand values are, how they want to talk to people and sort of
get that out there. And I'm curious, how does that
work in kind of a bigger or likeDisney as a whole and Marvels or
how do you work with how does the story time process work?
(33:30):
How do you stay nimble? How do you kind of learn from
different Disney games or different Marvel departments or
different things going on? How do you go about approaching
a bigger studio? It's a lot of finding out who is
passionate organization about what you're doing right.
Like if you reach out to people,you're like, all right, do you
love Marvel? Do you really love Marvel?
(33:51):
Do you love video games? OK, cool.
Like all right, like what can wedo together, right?
And so you, you find that going on.
You also when you join a place, you, you want to make sure that
they respect the medium, you know, and I, I think Disney, as
evidenced by what they're doing in video games now, has
definitely learned like, yo, video games are where it's at.
When I first joined, they were kind of catching up.
(34:13):
And now I think the work we did and the work Lucas did and a lot
of other teams, Pixar, 20 Century Fox, all our Disney
games, sort of have elevated gaming in the eyes of the org
itself. And that was the big, big goal
of mine when I joined Disney because I was, we're going to
Call of Duty, I was we're going to Naughty Dog.
I was working on some of the biggest games out there.
(34:36):
And I didn't want to join another licensing team and just
make license games, slap a logo on there.
I wanted to make games that weregoing to be timeless and lasting
and also change the perspective of people on like what games
could be. It always gets back to, for me,
proving out games are their own art form, their own technical
achievement, their own high level of craftsmanship and
(34:59):
creating this amazing digital artifact that people can see
preserved in some form for hopefully, you know, the rest of
their their life and talk about it and experience it and go back
to it when they need to feel something or escape from
something or do do whatever theyneed.
So, you know, like I always try and look for the people that
want to support that ultimate objective.
(35:31):
And Eric, we have learned so many great stories and insights
from you today. And for final closing question,
we call it suspenders. This is where we ask you a fun
random thing. It's unrelated and you can give
us any answer. You feel like the question of
the day is if you had to go backto school for something
unrelated to your career, what would it be and why?
(35:57):
Unrelated to my career, it's hard to say because as I said, I
think everything can connect to video games in some way.
But my dad was sold tractors andI grew up around a lot of
mechanics and I was a mechanic for a little while when I was
18, but I didn't really and respect it.
(36:18):
I didn't get into it enough, right?
Like the trade and the craftsmanship of it, because
everybody where I grew up was that they had a trade, they had
a skill. And so now, you know, I'm in a
house now and, and doing stuff and living in a house and things
like that. I was like, man, I wish I was
more handy, right? So I probably go back to school
to, to have some sort of tradingskill or, or that sort of thing.
(36:42):
Also getting better at music. I did study a little music, but
I, I think learning a trade like, you know, home repair,
plumbing, something that really,really gets into the, the nitty
gritty of it would be a nice skill to to have.
I love it. Well, thank you so much for
joining us. This is amazing.
Yes. Thank you.
I appreciate your time. Welcome to Top Hat.
(37:16):
This is the part of the episode where we dissect and analyze
some of the cool, epic and amazing insights we got from
this week's expert storyteller. And this week we had the amazing
Eric Monicelli from Marvel Gamesand Kev.
It was the perfect marriage of some of our favorite favorite
things, comic book fan, Marvel fan, plus your video game
expertise and fandom. So it was great because we got
(37:37):
to kind of combine these and talk to someone about such not
only a powerful spawn storytelling, but also one of
the most fast growing sectors ofthe industry.
Yeah, and he's so well versed inall those aspects too, because
we obviously talked about video games and video game designs and
storytellings, but he was also very well knowledge in what
(37:59):
makes Marvel storytelling worse.So it's such a fascinating
conversation with someone who really understand all facets of
the storytelling that he works on.
And that's the thing about building your careers.
You're not just talking about your last thing, right?
You're talking about the whole journey.
So one, I love it when we talkedto someone like Eric where we
(38:19):
love a pivot. He grew up in this rural town.
He didn't grow up a huge gamer. He thought he was going to do
one thing, then he thought he was going to do another thing.
Then he started doing cool things in medicine, right?
And then he's like, you know what?
Gaming and every single one of those career choices, those
pivots, those experiences, the fact that he was really into
different forms of storytelling like literature and music, every
(38:41):
single thing fed into his career.
Like if it wasn't for his love for music, if it wasn't for his
medical career, he wouldn't havethese tools in his toolkit that
helped him be a unique gamer. Having outside perspective,
outside experiences, being able to think about something
differently is really what sets you apart in any industry.
It reminds me a lot about our conversation with Andy Pearson
(39:03):
when we asked him, well, what other marketers do you look at?
Because there's other amazing marketing firms that are doing
different things like Duolingo, like Doctor Squatch.
And he said none of them. No offense to them, but I get my
inspiration from SNL and music. So it's the reminder that not
only is speed bumps and twists and turns parts of life, not
only are they stuff to celebratebecause it teaches you lessons,
(39:24):
but it's stuff that makes you more unique and it gives you the
skills to approach a problem differently.
It gives you the skills to say, even though I modeled my career
after these five people, becauseI went through these unique
things, I can build my own life.It's not about following a path.
It's about forging one that's fully unique and honors your
whole experience. And that's just storytelling.
(39:45):
It's about telling you that I'm not trying to do someone else's
story, I'm trying to build my own.
Yeah. And what's important is
embracing the fact that your story is going to be non linear
and multifaceted and being able to embrace the diversity of your
own experience fully that allowsyou to draw inspiration from all
the little twists and turns. And 1 great example that Eric
(40:10):
shared with us is. How his love for art and
studying museums. Museology specifically helped
him understand game design, and he sees good game design as a
successful curation of these digital artifacts.
And that is in turn what motivates players to keep coming
(40:32):
back to interact with the game, the story, the world.
He takes so much inspiration from the diverse background that
he came from, and that is what allows him to excel.
And something else Eric talks about that was really
interesting is there's this wishfulfillment aspect in every
video game. Because what's unique about
(40:54):
gaming as a format is you are actively engaging, interacting
in the world, in the story you're playing, the protagonist.
So the story you experience in avideo game is the story you
created. So when it comes to marketing,
what wish does this game fulfillfor the players?
And if you're able to effectively communicate that to
(41:16):
your audience, that's how you'reable to successfully market your
game, your product to your fan. Base I loved when he talked
about like the pillars of Marvelentertainment is we want to take
you on a hero or journey and then so the game is built around
here rating that hit journey, but also the Vikings will be a
hero and also it reminds you of storytelling as a whole.
(41:37):
Any type of storytelling, whether it's a pitch shutter at
work, whether you're trying to sell your company, you are
trying to serve A wish right. You are trying to tell a
journey. You're trying to say hey, oh, I
just kicked my desk. You're trying to say, hey, my
app or this thing that work or this business is going to
fulfill this wish, whether it's to get all these people to use
(41:59):
this app and make you money. I'm trying to fulfill the wish
of making you money by fulfilling our customers wish of
doing this. So I think it's it's a good
story time tenant of like, OK, what wish are you trying to
fulfill to your audience and howare you going to get them there
through your story? Yeah, for someone who has played
(42:21):
all three of the Spider Man games on PlayStation, I can
honestly say that that of your game franchise next to Spider
Verse has been my favorite way of experiencing the Spider Man
story. There's something irreplaceable
about being actively engaging inthe world, traversing through
New York City, shooting webs as we control it.
(42:44):
So it's such a pleasure to be able to talk to one of the minds
that helped put these games together and deliver those into
the world. This has been another great
episode of the Linen Student Plastic type podcast.
If you like our show, make sure to subscribe and follow us
wherever you listen or watch. Leave us a comment and a review.
(43:05):
Let us know how we can do betterand follow us on Instagram,
Tiktok at LSPT Pod, LinkedIn. Lenin suit on plastic tie.
We appreciate you, although I recently found out Kevin cuts
most of these. We, we appreciate you.
Thank you for listening and thank you for dedicating
(43:26):
yourself to becoming a better storyteller because we are
species of storytellers and that's how we get better and
that's how society progresses. I'm Gorv.
And I'm Kevin, and that was concise, so I'll leave it in
this time. I feel like this episode was so
many good bloopers for our adventure Blooper wheel, which
now will be on video. We'll see you next time.
Chow Chow, welcome. Welcome to the Linen Suit and
Plastic Tie Podcast. This is the podcast where we
dissect and analyze the epic, the amazing, the cool, the
impossible, the awesome, the notactually impossible power of
story time and learn how to harness that power in our
everyday life. That word was lives by the way,
(00:29):
just in case I'm Gov. And I'm Kevin.
Kevin, before you start, and I know I told you in the intro,
I'm do this real quick. One thing, one thing I'm
noticing, but one, I'm back in my LA apartment, lots of stuff
happening again. We're going to get into it in a
later episode. But one thing I'm noticing is
because because I've been movingaround a lot, we've been doing
(00:50):
the intros and the main episodeskind of disjointedly.
So the best part of me is when Iwatch them back, now that we're
using YouTube, we're noticing stuff like you give me shit all
the time because you know, I'm ahand movement guy.
So that comes on camera. Everything we're doing is coming
on camera. But one thing that's really
noticeable is how my beard changes depending on when we
film. So like I haven't shaved since
(01:13):
before we filmed this episode but you'll see the beard looks
different just in a little bit of time.
But in our last episode we had recorded the intro a couple
weeks after the main episode andit goes from LON beard to clean
shaven. Yeah, I mean, we're literally
going from no visual of anythingto having to watch every little
(01:33):
movement on it. And that is a really interesting
point brought up actually, because another thing I noticed
from the editing side of things is for both of us, what we start
to do when we're not talking. And when it's in audio, if
you're not talking, you just don't show up in the episode.
But when you have video, that's a little different because the
(01:56):
camera is still on you. You're being recorded every
single second, and for us who are not completely used to it
right now, it's really interesting to start picking up
like moments of disengagement almost.
Yeah, you probably laugh becauseI just did it.
It's so weird because I am a fidgety person.
(02:17):
It's one of the biggest reasons I take notes in classes I'm in
at school. Not because I'm going to go read
them later, God no. Because like, it keeps me
engaged. That's why I take notes at work,
right? But that was the other thing
though, because we both got intothe habit of taking notes as we
were talking to our guests. But when it shows up on camera,
it's the moment we stop talking,the moment we finish a question,
(02:41):
we immediately look down on the camera.
But the audience can't see what we're actually doing.
So it just looks like we got immediately disengaged.
So this is for the record, that we are both actually taking
those into actively listening when you saw us disengaged.
But another thing that was really interesting, Gaurav, is
(03:04):
recently we got you exploring a new format of storytelling.
You're starting to try this new video game that we are the two
of us are playing together called Split Fiction.
So just a little context is Kevin's a pretty big gamer and
I'm not, so I'm like exploring this with him almost like the
first time besides little games I've played in the past and
(03:27):
Duolingo. Yeah, and we'll get into that
probably in a little episode as well.
But what's interesting from US playing this dual player video
game together though, is that for the same exact content, we
get both the player and the non conventional player points of
(03:47):
view. And something I noticed you
doing though, that was really interesting is the moment we get
out of the like interactive playing segment of the game and
gets into the cutscenes where there's just dialogues and kind
of scripted play almost. You would actually drop the
(04:09):
controller and start scrolling through your phone.
I don't know if you'd notice yourself doing that.
I really was trying. I've really tried not to and
like I I was, I was worried that's where you were going and
I was like, no, he's not becauseI thought I was being pretty
good at not he was moments. I mean, oh, we've been playing a
while. I haven't like not having
checked my phone. I'm I'm going to do this
justification mode. I can see myself being like,
(04:31):
listen, let me prove to you why I use my key.
Yeah, but but that's that is notthe point.
I'm the what I'm trying to raisehere, though, is part of your
experience understanding this new storytelling format is that
in your brain, you probably recognize that the moment the
interactive segment stops is themoment you need to stop.
(04:55):
You can stop engaging, whereas that that is not the entire
video gaming experience. The story actually is is still
continuing in a good games, the interactive and the cutscene
segments actually seamlessly flow in and out of each other
where even if it stopped pressing the button doesn't,
(05:16):
that doesn't mean you stop experiencing the story.
Whereas for me, I'm more used tothis format now.
I know to stay engaged, but it'sreally interesting for me to
watch you try to get used to this new format and it's kind of
a quirk almost from what you typically the type of stories
that you typically consume. Yeah, when I watch a movie at
(05:39):
home, I really try not to use myphone, but I struggle with it
sometimes not to be fully engaged because, you know, we're
so used to having that ability or my anxiety a lot of times
pulls me to my phone to check things.
But you're right, in the cutscenes, that's a moment where
you know, you don't have to be engaged.
You can pay attention, understand, while doing other
things. So it's the same, right.
OK, break, put down the controller, pick up my phone.
(06:01):
And that's where you see, oh, This is why gaming's so
interesting, because they can combat the second screen
problem. Yeah.
And to help us understand this unique storytelling medium
better, this week we are talkingto a storyteller who is so
acknowledged in this medium. Eric Monicelli is the expert
(06:26):
storyteller for today's episode.If you know anything about video
games, Eric's profiles should beextremely fascinating to you
because he started off working at 2K, working on some of the
MLB games and their marketing. And then he went around some
(06:47):
pretty well known video game studios such as Naughty Dogs,
which is where The Last of Us inUncharted came from.
Infinity War, he worked on Call of Duty, Capcom, and most
recently he is executive producer at Marvel Games.
So if you've heard about Spider Man games on PlayStation, Black
(07:07):
Panther, and the most recent hitgame Marvel's Rivals, that all
falls under the umbrella of Marvel games that Eric and his
team help work on at market. So this is fascinating
conversation to understand all the insurance and outs about
designing and marketing video games and interesting career and
(07:31):
life journey in itself. So let's get into it.
Hello, how do you do? Sit down, gather round.
We've got stories about stories that'll make you a drink of
wonder. Amnesty because life can be.
Dried at a dress for the time with the Lin min suit and fly
(07:56):
stick tie Lin min suit and fly stick light Now here's Gore
Riven, Gavin. Eric, to start us off, can you
tell us a little bit about yourself?
Was this your story? Yeah, so man, this goes, my
(08:17):
story is pretty long, but I grewup in a very small rural town
called Sheridan, NY. So it was about man 2000 people
total. I had a, a father who was super,
super into computers, entertainment and, and Atari and
all this stuff. And so that sort of peaked my
curiosity and, and gave me this love and respect for just code,
(08:41):
I guess, and, and video games. And then as I got older, I got
really, really into music and arts and fashion and sports.
And I think the intersection of all those really informed my
love of entertainment and my love of proving that video games
are an art form, which is the driving function of my entire
career. Amazing.
(09:02):
We're very similar in the sense that we explore story time as an
art form and understand the different formats and different
variations. We've had a couple video game
people on the show. We've had a lot of comic book
people because I'm a big comic book nerd.
I have been my entire life, and they're just such interesting
forms of story time. So I love people who understand
that, but we also know that you weren't always planning on
(09:24):
getting into video games, right?You went to Colombia.
I think you're pretty mad. I want to get this right.
Primary psychiatry on PMS this for this.
Yes, yes. Something disorder.
Tell us about that. Oh.
Man, so I originally, I mean rewinding it way back, music was
(09:44):
the driving force of everything I did.
I didn't go to college right away.
I went to SUNY Fredonia, which actually is a pretty well known
SUNY school for music. And so I was going just for
English. I would like to write and that
sort of thing. All the people told me I was a
good writer. I was like, sure, whatever, that
sort of thing. It really didn't interest me.
But after my music career reallydidn't pan out, I really needed
(10:06):
to branch out from the small town that I was in.
And so I transferred into NYU. I ended up getting an honors BA.
When I graduated with my BA in literature, I was like, what am
I going to do with my life? I could teach.
My mom was a teacher. I love teaching.
Taught middle school for a year.I actually was working with the
student who had a lot of developmental issues and he he
(10:31):
piqued my curiosity in psychiatry.
Then I applied to Columbia. The program I was in wasn't a
good fit for who I was and I dropped out of Columbia.
But the one thing I did do to get into Columbia is the a woman
I was living with while I was teaching middle school.
Her husband was a professor and he wrote on primary psychiatry
about dysphoric disorder. And I was a good writer at the
(10:53):
time. So I made it pretty and I
published it in this journal andhe gave me a second author
credit on it. And so that's how I got that
published. You know, I dropped out after a
while. And then I was like, what am I
going to do? And I was applying to this is to
work. But the woman I was interviewing
with told me, hey, I hear you talking a lot about how you love
(11:14):
video games. I don't think I'm going to hire
you for this job. Wow.
But I have this friend who's friends with like Kadeo Kojima,
and it's from Japan, and she runs this company called New
York Tokyo. I think you should talk to her.
And so that was my very first job in gaming.
(11:37):
It was how I got started. It was a very happenstance,
fortunate series of events, speaking loudly about my
passions to the right person at the right time.
And that's that's sort of where it all started.
We love a good pivot on the show, right?
This is a big thing where we askwhat's your story?
And a lot of people say, well, my story is more windy than
most. Everyone will say this and it's
(11:58):
funny 'cause there's no straightline, right?
We love a good pivot because it's someone who said, you know
what? This isn't working even though
I've been thinking about it for X years.
I'm going to try something else.Yeah, definitely not a straight
line. Like there's no, there's nothing
in life that's worth it that will ever be a straight A to B,
right? I learned that the hard way.
I probably made a little too many pivots, like music to
(12:19):
teaching to psychiatry to video games.
But you know, it got me where I am and I'm unfortunate for all
the learning. You know, so I am curious about
that too, because if a little bit of music and a little bit of
psychiatry, a little bit of art,a little bit of literature, how
do these elements help you forward your path?
They are the wrapper and the framework for how I think about
(12:42):
the work I do in gaming. And ultimately what I think
about gaming is we're in the business of building virtual
worlds. No matter what aspect you are
in, if you're a designer, if you're a publisher, if you're a
product manager, producer, artist, coder, you're basically
living in this virtual world that's modeled oftentimes upon
(13:04):
the real world. And I also think of games as
these digital artifacts that arecreated.
And when you're creating these digital artifacts, you got to be
very thoughtful around what kindof curation you put into what
kind of he put into the game in this little virtual world you're
building. So while I was at NYUI, actually
was a museum studies research assistant.
(13:26):
So museology is a fancy word forit.
And I noticed that there's this intersection between museum
curation and how you want a player experience to work.
For me, the best sort of player contentment for video games is
this sort of very, very itative wheel of like creating the the
perfect exhibit space for peopleto play in that can be viewed
(13:50):
and revisited and make some curious and interested.
So that's one example, literature, psychiatry, pretty
straightforward. It's like play is a
psychological state and understanding how people like to
play, you need to understand psychology.
Fashion, I look to a lot that's for like character design.
So I, I love it. I take all aspects of life and
(14:12):
it all fundamentally. I know that sounds very
discursive, but it really gets back to the fact that we're
making these virtual worlds based on the real world.
And when you do that, you have to take all elements of the real
world in and see what fits in this little virtual world that
you're creating and curating as a digital artifact.
I really love this idea you brought up about building the
(14:34):
virtual world that is essential to what video games do.
On that point though, I think there are obviously a lot of
different storytelling formats that kind of do the same effect
effect, especially in a fictional sense, especially in
what you do right now between Marvel games.
You have all these IPS that are coming from other storytelling
(14:55):
mediums. They originally started from
comic books. And of course there's the
cinematic universe and those arefictional story worlds that have
attracted a huge and loyal fan base overtime.
But with your understanding in the video game industry though,
how do you think storytelling invideo game is unique compared to
(15:16):
these other mediums in terms of building a virtual world and
telling a compelling story? Yeah, I mean, video games have
always had the benefit of they fully immerse the player in a
very active way. It's not passive participation.
With movies, even books, you sort of sit back, you sit back,
you're you're engaging in a verypassive way.
(15:37):
Video games are sort of a lean forward entertainment, right?
It forces the player to engage. It forces the player to have
their own sense of control and agency and, you know, trigger
those reward centers and those responses that you want.
It's a feedback thing. So like, you know, personally
for me, I play a lot of baseballgames, as you probably noticed
(15:58):
by the hat I'm wearing and the Jackie Robinson painting behind
me and the Pawnee glove over there.
I love baseball and I wished I became a baseball player.
That was my that was my my number one goal.
I wanted to be a shortstopper pitcher for the New York Mets.
Did that happen? Absolutely not.
But you know, I think that's something video games can do.
They have their sense of wish fulfillment.
I might not be able to do this in the real world, but I can do
(16:19):
it in this game and feel super strong or powerful or proud or
or mighty or or even sad. Different emotions.
Like one of my favorite games inthe past few years is Grease,
and that game is exceptionally sad, but it just helps the
processing loneliness and emotions.
And so I think games have this power to do that that no other
medium has in a very, very active way.
(16:42):
Totally, I've played through both Spider Man and Spider Man 2
myself and PS5 and absolutely itjust feels different when you
actively get to control Peter Parker.
Morale is swinging around New York City.
I'd also love to know how would you describe your current role
(17:03):
as executive producer in video games?
What exactly does an executive producer do in your capacity?
I had a longer title which was senior director of product and
franchise development, which I think was a very good descriptor
of what I do. I think of games as a product
and also as franchises, and I try and develop them.
(17:26):
That's very simplistic, but alsoI have this personal thing that
video games are two things. They're a game and they're a
product. The product is the thing you're
selling, and you want people to buy the unique selling points,
the consumer promise. And then the game is the craft
and the artistry and the work that all the developers put into
it. And part of my job being an IP
(17:47):
holder and working on license game is I work with both sides
to make sure everybody's happy and all the things are working
in concert. This is what the developers are
going to care about from the artand craft side.
This is what the publishers are going to care about from the
business of selling the game. How do we make it sing?
So an audio, it resonates with an audience in a psychologically
meaningful way. And that's kind of the middle I
(18:09):
feel and what I've been doing atmy job.
So that's the highfalutin philosophical way of what I do.
What I do day-to-day is I'm on alot of emails, I read a lot of
scripts, I play some builds, I talk to a lot of people.
I am therapist for a lot of creatives and that's pretty much
it, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's, it's it's
amazing. It's an interesting role because
(18:29):
you write, you're balancing a lot of things.
And also the game industry is ina really interesting place in
the media landscape because one,not enough people know how big
the gaming industry is. And then two, well, a lot of the
rest of the media is struggling with this second screen issue
where people aren't engaging as much in like television movies
because they're on their phones.That's harder to do in the
gaming industry, right? The whole point is to fully
(18:51):
immerse someone. So I think it's such an
interesting time to be working on like major IPS and in this
industry where storytelling is really exploding and you've
worked on major IPS like The Last of Us, Capcom, Marvel, Call
of Duty. How do you go about
understanding these worlds as you do it?
How do you go about understanding the different
mediums? I think every game I've
(19:13):
approached in a different psychological aspect, and it all
gets back to the matter of like,hey, what wish is this game
fulfilling for the player? Some of them are very simple,
like Call of Duty. You get to feel like a soldier.
Cool. What does that mean?
How do you sell that? How do you make it unique and
new? You know, if you take Spider
Man, for instance, it's like swinging through Marvel's New
York. That is the fantasy.
(19:34):
You want to swing, you want to shoot, you want to crawl, web,
zip, do all these things that are that make you feel like
Spider Man and make you feel like you are the protector and
the friendly neighborhood hero of New York.
And so digging into how would I feel as a player?
How what would what would be good?
And sometimes there's some gamesthat I'm like, OK, I don't play
(19:56):
these kind of games, but let me understand how the players think
and what they can do. You know, a good example of that
was I worked on this game calledwhen I was a Capcom called
Sengoku Basara, which was a Dynasty Warrior style anime
game. Not really my thing, not
something I love to play, but like understanding.
(20:17):
Cool. You want to feel like you're so
powerful you can take on an armyby yourself.
Right, like getting into those mindsets and understanding that
psychological promises. The key to helping people
understand why they want to playthem?
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the most important tenants of
storytelling we talked about in the show that understanding your
audience, taking the time to understand what are they trying
(20:38):
to do. And I love this idea of wish
fulfillment. Like, OK, how can this game
fulfill the wish that no other medium has been able to in the
past, right? It's not about recreating
something. It's about fulfilling that wish,
that promise that the other media of a stories kind of have
already made. How do you feel that in your
way? Yeah, yeah.
And like I said, it's the difference between the immersion
(21:00):
and the active versus passive participation.
But I also think movies are likean hour and a half to three
hours Max 3 1/2. If you're going too long, a
vision can be anywhere from 10 minute, 10 minute YouTube video
to a 30 minute sitcom to an hourlong drama.
I think video games because you're trying to give people
(21:22):
this wish fulfillment that you hope will last infinite hours.
Honestly, you know, like my biggest goal is I want
everything I work on to become timeless.
You know, my, my ultimate goal working on the Marvel stuff is
like some person who plays it intheir 20s when they have a kid,
when they're 30 or 40 or 50, they're like your spider man's
cool, but mine was the coolest. Let me show you, right?
(21:46):
And that's the Spider Man that they go play.
They take them back to Marvel Spider Man and Marvel Spider Man
2 or, you know, the Guardians ofthe Galaxy games or any of our
other games, right? So that's what I aim for.
Just try and have some storytelling that's timeless and
meaningful. What are the key principles you
follow then, when you think about keeping players engaged
and coming back to play your games and making your
(22:08):
storytelling timeless, how do you approach that?
I think part of it is understanding the thematic,
overarching themes of the story and then the foundational
pillars of like, okay, mentorship, whatever it is,
right? You know, Marvel has its own
brand pillars that like we always go back to and like,
obviously one is being heroic, right?
(22:29):
And so you need to go back to relatability, right?
Complexity, intensity. This moment's intense, but could
we ratchet it up to 11? How do we get get there and and
show really just a depth and of emotional weight and complexity
to it. So making sure we have key
things that we're always drivingback to store.
You can. People call them different
pillars, North Stars, creative strategy, whatever keeps you
(22:52):
coming back to that story and telling it in a engaging way.
I think that's true of every game.
You can select every video game and be like, what was this game
really about? What were they trying to do?
Yeah, you know, I love that. I think it's it's so important
to have these guiding principlesto be able to approach it in
this kind larger than life way. And I love the design thinking
(23:12):
elements. Can you tell us a little bit you
know Marvel, I've had a great year, a few years in video games
and movies and comments and TV. I'm a big Marvel guy.
Tell us a bit about what makes Marvel storytelling unique.
What is kind of the Marvel Way Marvel method in the gaming
industry? Well, First off, thank you for
being a fan and supporting us. It's always, always good.
(23:34):
We love that. And I think for me personally
and how how I approach it, I think Marvel is just, it has
these aspects to it. It's open, it's complex, it's
relatable, it's heroic, these things.
There's some levity and humor toit, right?
Like things that are just like way back in the day and, and
when Jack Kirby and Stan Lee andall the folks were working on
(23:54):
it, they always called it the world outside your window.
And that that holds true. I think what they're what's been
evolved nowadays is there's thisfluidity to marvel that it sort
of goes along and sort of understands cultural relevancy
and trends and what's going on through people's minds and sort
of adapts things. And one of the stories that I
like to tell, and you know, people may not always think
(24:16):
about this or realize this, You know, if you think about where
Steve Rogers came from, it was World War Two.
He was punching Hitler in the face.
He was punching Nazis. Great, cool, right?
Like that's Captain America. That's what you want.
The Hulk, gamma radiation. There was a lot of concern when
it when he was invented over theatom bomb.
If you look at the Punisher, probably one of the more clear
(24:38):
examples, when he first came out, he was a vet from the
Vietnam War. If you look at the Netflix
series, he's a vet from the Iraqi war.
So they sort of shift the timeline to sort of create this
sort of cultural relevancy. And it keeps the brand fresh, it
keeps the brand fluid, it keeps the brand relatable.
And when you think about those two wars, when you think about
the Vietnam War versus the Iraqiwar, there's different kind of
(24:59):
warfare and different sort of psychological outcomes of people
who engaged in them. And so now the character's
personality shift a little bit because of that.
And so in the comics, you would see the Punisher in one way and
now in the Netflix, so you see them written another way because
it is reflective of what their experience was.
And so I think that sort of stuff and that sort of
(25:21):
storytelling is critical and really, really gets into it.
So like, I love character BIOS, I love history, I love seeing
the lore. I love seeing what shaped this
character for who they are, right.
And and you know, when we have conversations about what story
treatment is going to be look looking like character BIOS are
a big part of it. You know, the story treatment
(25:42):
itself obviously is a big part, but you know, it starts with the
pillars and the themes and it goes from there.
And I think Marvels exceptionally good at being
fluid with their brand, where they don't get too rigid, they
don't get too caught up in, hey,our characters have to be this
certain way and behave this certain way is like, hey, does
this work? Does this tell a good story?
(26:03):
Let's mix it up, let's change itup.
And I think that keeps things fresh.
And that's really the magic. Of Marvel, has there been any
characters you've bought on thatyou learned something new about
while creating? And how did that process kind of
go? Yeah, I mean, I worked on it
with something new. I think all the creative teams
(26:23):
we work with, especially the games that we have good success
with, they bring a new fresh take and spin on these
characters. And I tend to learn something
new about how I viewed the characters or how they interact
with the world or what what it means for them.
It's an obvious 1, You know, I didn't work directly on the
game. Danny Q's the executive producer
(26:45):
on it. But Marvel Rivals has Jeff the
Landshark in it. I knew a little bit about Jeff.
I like read some of them in the comics, but like just seeing how
they made him so adorable, how they made him have such
personality and just sort of be like everybody's favorite mascot
in a game like Marvel Rivals. Is it really made me learn about
(27:06):
like, Oh yeah, cool. This is what this character is
capable of, right? Like, you know, you see it
initially, you're like, OK, it'sjust a sidekick.
But like, no, it could be a mascot.
It actually could carry, you know, the flag for a whole game
if you if you phrased it the right way.
So you learn, you learn things like that.
You know, I've worked on Spider Man for about 10 years now.
When I first got to Marvel, Spider Man definitely wasn't
(27:28):
even in my top ten favorite superheroes.
But working on the Insomniac version of Spider Man,
definitely one of my favorite superheroes, right?
Insomniac was able to make a very unique take on the hero
that I find highly relatable. You know, for for me, growing
up, when I saw Spider Man comics, it was like, oh, he's a
teenager that somehow ends up with Mary Jane and is a genius,
(27:51):
but I always messes up. And I was like, OK, how could
all these things happening if you're super smart and you get
the Super pretty girl? Like it just doesn't make sense
in my head, in my head, right? And so when Insomniac aged him
up a little bit, gave him some more 20 year old problems, let's
say, it just clicked for me. I was just like, I get it.
I get this character. I understand why it's so
(28:12):
relatable and universally loved and one of people's favorite
superheroes of all time. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the
most important parts about Spider Man and kind of these
Marvel heroes like Stan Lee wanted him to be a teenager with
teenage problems, to relate and build that empathy with their
readers, right. So it's one of the most
important thing is that they have real problems that they
aren't invincible. They aren't these things that
(28:33):
make some large than life. You kind of have to build back
to core principles. What is that like when you're
kind of working and you're seeing the impact of the
audience playing these games, You're seeing kids and they're
learning lessons. How do you go about telling a
great story but also making surethe right lessons are imparted
with your audience? Yeah, I mean, you're always
showing the human side of the superhuman, right?
(28:55):
That's what we talked about quite a bit too.
And that human side is honestly what makes these heroes so
memorable and relatable and noteworthy.
And, you know, beyond the the fluidity that Marvel has in
terms of like how it treats its characters, it is that human
element that really makes it superheroes connect with people,
I think. And we say often when Spider Man
(29:16):
succeeds, Peter Parker fails. When Peter Parker feeds, Spider
Man fails, right? Like there's that dichotomy and
that tension all the time. And, you know, we all feel that
in our personal, personal and professional lives, right?
Like you could have a really bigwin at work, but then you get
home, get yelled at by your partner and you're like, oh, no,
right. So it's like, or vice versa,
(29:36):
right? So, you know, I think that's the
thing that really, really makes Marvel heroes different from a
lot of the superheroes out thereand and makes them unique.
One of my favorite superhero comics of all time was the Matt
Fraction David Aja any Wu run onHawkeye.
And that is the most human St. level version of the superhero
(29:57):
ever. And he's just protecting his
building in Brooklyn with Lucky the Pizza Dog, which I love
Lucky, I love Hawkeye, I love Kate Bishop.
And so I think that story is really what got me back into
comics. Honestly, when that came out, I
was like, this is amazing. And so I think those sort of
things really just resonate withme and it connected with like
(30:19):
some of my own personal experiences in life.
I'm not like protecting a block in Brooklyn, but I lived in
Brooklyn and I did have sort of the same sort of like
neighborhood vibes and and that sense of like pride for my
community. Yeah, love those insight.
And a huge part of your career in this industry is dedicating
is dedicated to marketing obviously the games and the
(30:42):
studios and you have worked across such a wide range of
genre of games and different types of studios.
So I'd love to understand from you, you know, how do you think
about the differences between these different audiences?
Let's say Naughty Dog, where thethe studio itself has a pretty
(31:02):
strong brand image. People have certain expectation
or, you know, Call of Duty from Infinity War.
That's like, you know, a subset of this video game franchise IP
that's very well known versus now where you're in Marvel games
where I think people are obviously way more aware of the
same IPS but in different mediums.
(31:23):
How do you approach your marketing and understand your
audience differently? Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's
getting to the the principles ofwhat each studio is about,
believe it or not. One of the things that Naughty
Dog for me, when I worked there 2011 through 2015, I thought
Naughty Dog was underappreciated.
And they kind of were because they were just a video game
(31:44):
studio at the time. The HBO show hadn't come out,
the Uncharted movie hadn't come out.
They were a video game studio in2014 that had been around 30
years. And if you got in a Lyft or an
Uber and told somebody that you worked at Naughty Dog, they
immediately thought you worked for a dog food company or a porn
girl and think you worked for a video game company, right.
(32:06):
And I think part of what my goalthere was, and I, I had the idea
to do the 30th anniversary celebration for Naughty Dog.
I did a lot of work around that to just sort of lift the studio
brand up to get it more into thezeitgeist, especially after we
had the critical success of Lastof Us that we did on the on the
game level. That's what you got to recognize
and that's what you need to do. You know, a lot of my career has
(32:28):
been seeing where the gaps in the holes are in an organization
and what they're not doing. You know, and what Naughty Dog
had not done to that point was been really good at promoting
their studio brand, but now they're great at it.
You know, with Infinity Ward, I did a similar thing when I
joined there. I wanted to sort of refactor
their image a little bit. I wanted to modernize it, make
(32:49):
it a little more sleek. I worked on a space game.
So my brother worked at NASA or does work in NASA.
So I was like, yo, I want to work on a space thing.
Maybe I get to work with my brother.
I got to work with some of his colleagues, but not him.
And so we got to do some cool stuff around that.
And so, you know, you all approach it from a different
perspective and just kind of make the best of what you can
(33:10):
for each, for each studio and each place you're at and think
about what those, what those brand missions are, what the
brand values are, how they want to talk to people and sort of
get that out there. And I'm curious, how does that
work in kind of a bigger or likeDisney as a whole and Marvels or
how do you work with how does the story time process work?
(33:30):
How do you stay nimble? How do you kind of learn from
different Disney games or different Marvel departments or
different things going on? How do you go about approaching
a bigger studio? It's a lot of finding out who is
passionate organization about what you're doing right.
Like if you reach out to people,you're like, all right, do you
love Marvel? Do you really love Marvel?
(33:51):
Do you love video games? OK, cool.
Like all right, like what can wedo together, right?
And so you, you find that going on.
You also when you join a place, you, you want to make sure that
they respect the medium, you know, and I, I think Disney, as
evidenced by what they're doing in video games now, has
definitely learned like, yo, video games are where it's at.
When I first joined, they were kind of catching up.
(34:13):
And now I think the work we did and the work Lucas did and a lot
of other teams, Pixar, 20 Century Fox, all our Disney
games, sort of have elevated gaming in the eyes of the org
itself. And that was the big, big goal
of mine when I joined Disney because I was, we're going to
Call of Duty, I was we're going to Naughty Dog.
I was working on some of the biggest games out there.
(34:36):
And I didn't want to join another licensing team and just
make license games, slap a logo on there.
I wanted to make games that weregoing to be timeless and lasting
and also change the perspective of people on like what games
could be. It always gets back to, for me,
proving out games are their own art form, their own technical
achievement, their own high level of craftsmanship and
(34:59):
creating this amazing digital artifact that people can see
preserved in some form for hopefully, you know, the rest of
their their life and talk about it and experience it and go back
to it when they need to feel something or escape from
something or do do whatever theyneed.
So, you know, like I always try and look for the people that
want to support that ultimate objective.
(35:31):
And Eric, we have learned so many great stories and insights
from you today. And for final closing question,
we call it suspenders. This is where we ask you a fun
random thing. It's unrelated and you can give
us any answer. You feel like the question of
the day is if you had to go backto school for something
unrelated to your career, what would it be and why?
(35:57):
Unrelated to my career, it's hard to say because as I said, I
think everything can connect to video games in some way.
But my dad was sold tractors andI grew up around a lot of
mechanics and I was a mechanic for a little while when I was
18, but I didn't really and respect it.
(36:18):
I didn't get into it enough, right?
Like the trade and the craftsmanship of it, because
everybody where I grew up was that they had a trade, they had
a skill. And so now, you know, I'm in a
house now and, and doing stuff and living in a house and things
like that. I was like, man, I wish I was
more handy, right? So I probably go back to school
to, to have some sort of tradingskill or, or that sort of thing.
(36:42):
Also getting better at music. I did study a little music, but
I, I think learning a trade like, you know, home repair,
plumbing, something that really,really gets into the, the nitty
gritty of it would be a nice skill to to have.
I love it. Well, thank you so much for
joining us. This is amazing.
Yes. Thank you.
I appreciate your time. Welcome to Top Hat.
(37:16):
This is the part of the episode where we dissect and analyze
some of the cool, epic and amazing insights we got from
this week's expert storyteller. And this week we had the amazing
Eric Monicelli from Marvel Gamesand Kev.
It was the perfect marriage of some of our favorite favorite
things, comic book fan, Marvel fan, plus your video game
expertise and fandom. So it was great because we got
(37:37):
to kind of combine these and talk to someone about such not
only a powerful spawn storytelling, but also one of
the most fast growing sectors ofthe industry.
Yeah, and he's so well versed inall those aspects too, because
we obviously talked about video games and video game designs and
storytellings, but he was also very well knowledge in what
(37:59):
makes Marvel storytelling worse.So it's such a fascinating
conversation with someone who really understand all facets of
the storytelling that he works on.
And that's the thing about building your careers.
You're not just talking about your last thing, right?
You're talking about the whole journey.
So one, I love it when we talkedto someone like Eric where we
(38:19):
love a pivot. He grew up in this rural town.
He didn't grow up a huge gamer. He thought he was going to do
one thing, then he thought he was going to do another thing.
Then he started doing cool things in medicine, right?
And then he's like, you know what?
Gaming and every single one of those career choices, those
pivots, those experiences, the fact that he was really into
different forms of storytelling like literature and music, every
(38:41):
single thing fed into his career.
Like if it wasn't for his love for music, if it wasn't for his
medical career, he wouldn't havethese tools in his toolkit that
helped him be a unique gamer. Having outside perspective,
outside experiences, being able to think about something
differently is really what sets you apart in any industry.
It reminds me a lot about our conversation with Andy Pearson
(39:03):
when we asked him, well, what other marketers do you look at?
Because there's other amazing marketing firms that are doing
different things like Duolingo, like Doctor Squatch.
And he said none of them. No offense to them, but I get my
inspiration from SNL and music. So it's the reminder that not
only is speed bumps and twists and turns parts of life, not
only are they stuff to celebratebecause it teaches you lessons,
(39:24):
but it's stuff that makes you more unique and it gives you the
skills to approach a problem differently.
It gives you the skills to say, even though I modeled my career
after these five people, becauseI went through these unique
things, I can build my own life.It's not about following a path.
It's about forging one that's fully unique and honors your
whole experience. And that's just storytelling.
(39:45):
It's about telling you that I'm not trying to do someone else's
story, I'm trying to build my own.
Yeah. And what's important is
embracing the fact that your story is going to be non linear
and multifaceted and being able to embrace the diversity of your
own experience fully that allowsyou to draw inspiration from all
the little twists and turns. And 1 great example that Eric
(40:10):
shared with us is. How his love for art and
studying museums. Museology specifically helped
him understand game design, and he sees good game design as a
successful curation of these digital artifacts.
And that is in turn what motivates players to keep coming
(40:32):
back to interact with the game, the story, the world.
He takes so much inspiration from the diverse background that
he came from, and that is what allows him to excel.
And something else Eric talks about that was really
interesting is there's this wishfulfillment aspect in every
video game. Because what's unique about
(40:54):
gaming as a format is you are actively engaging, interacting
in the world, in the story you're playing, the protagonist.
So the story you experience in avideo game is the story you
created. So when it comes to marketing,
what wish does this game fulfillfor the players?
And if you're able to effectively communicate that to
(41:16):
your audience, that's how you'reable to successfully market your
game, your product to your fan. Base I loved when he talked
about like the pillars of Marvelentertainment is we want to take
you on a hero or journey and then so the game is built around
here rating that hit journey, but also the Vikings will be a
hero and also it reminds you of storytelling as a whole.
(41:37):
Any type of storytelling, whether it's a pitch shutter at
work, whether you're trying to sell your company, you are
trying to serve A wish right. You are trying to tell a
journey. You're trying to say hey, oh, I
just kicked my desk. You're trying to say, hey, my
app or this thing that work or this business is going to
fulfill this wish, whether it's to get all these people to use
(41:59):
this app and make you money. I'm trying to fulfill the wish
of making you money by fulfilling our customers wish of
doing this. So I think it's it's a good
story time tenant of like, OK, what wish are you trying to
fulfill to your audience and howare you going to get them there
through your story? Yeah, for someone who has played
(42:21):
all three of the Spider Man games on PlayStation, I can
honestly say that that of your game franchise next to Spider
Verse has been my favorite way of experiencing the Spider Man
story. There's something irreplaceable
about being actively engaging inthe world, traversing through
New York City, shooting webs as we control it.
(42:44):
So it's such a pleasure to be able to talk to one of the minds
that helped put these games together and deliver those into
the world. This has been another great
episode of the Linen Student Plastic type podcast.
If you like our show, make sure to subscribe and follow us
wherever you listen or watch. Leave us a comment and a review.
(43:05):
Let us know how we can do betterand follow us on Instagram,
Tiktok at LSPT Pod, LinkedIn. Lenin suit on plastic tie.
We appreciate you, although I recently found out Kevin cuts
most of these. We, we appreciate you.
Thank you for listening and thank you for dedicating
(43:26):
yourself to becoming a better storyteller because we are
species of storytellers and that's how we get better and
that's how society progresses. I'm Gorv.
And I'm Kevin, and that was concise, so I'll leave it in
this time. I feel like this episode was so
many good bloopers for our adventure Blooper wheel, which
now will be on video. We'll see you next time.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.