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August 15, 2022 114 mins

Episode 38 features Claude Jerome, a Lead Gameplay Designer for Firewalk Studios part of the Probably Monsters family. Claude’s experience has led him from Vicarious Visions, 1st Playable, to Microsoft on Project Spark, and Bungie on Destiny to where he is today. We talk about how he got where he is, where he’s trying to go, and everything in between. 

Chapters:
  1. (00:00) John’s Life Notes
  2. (2:56) Who is Claude Jerome? 
  3. (17:23) Island Mates
  4. (24:26) Firewalk Studios & Probably Monsters
  5. (46:08) Building Culture
  6. (50:18) Bungie
  7. (01:09:32) Project Spark at Microsoft
  8. (01:19:45) East Coast Dev
  9. (01:27:33) Origin
  10. (01:38:07) Final Round
  11. (01:49:19) John’s Outro
Links:

Claude’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Claude_Jerome

Claude’s LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudejerome/

Game Devs of Color Expo 2020: Advanced Game Feel: https://youtu.be/EABa8X3lEPM

Project Spark E3 Demo: https://youtu.be/m37sVEgJrOA

Connect with the host: http://elkingpin.com 

Come On The Show: https://outofplayarea.com 

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/out-of-play-area/id1550421307 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Da0qLAOBi6rV6ccSzx1gX?si=043f4ec5a6034bf0

Follow @outofplayarea & @elkingpin on Twitter

Check out Descript using my affiliate url: http://descript.com?lmref=john@outofplayarea.com

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John (00:00):
What's good people.
Damn.
You know, this new born parentinglife is something special.
I'm easily ranking it up there with someof the hardest things I've ever had to do.
Right.
I've done seal fit slash Navyseal hell week type of things
over a weekend, and, you know,sleep deprived for like 24 hours.

(00:21):
I've done marathons, Spartan races.
Tough.
Mudders.
I've crunched on a project andsacrifice my personal life for
what felt like a year or more.
definitely been in an emotionally taxingrelationships and things like this.
And this is up there.
It just takes the cake for sure.
I didn't think I'd ever get thisepisode out, you know, at some
point the nights blur together andwe'll fall proper REM or deep sleep.

(00:45):
These moments don't get a chance to savefrom my ramp to my hard drive in my head.
all the time I usually have to work ona podcast is typically spend with my
baby boy or catching up on sleep or, youknow, helping Catherine with something.
Add the fact that I'm trying to bank mypaternity leave for the end of Katherine's
maternity when she's back at work.

(01:05):
So hopefully she canstretch out her leave.
Then take advantage of Washington.
State's FMLA stretch thatout to the end of the year.
So that by the time I'm spendingall the time with him, he will
be around five or six months old.
And it should be the time togetherwhere it'll be more worthwhile, right.
He'll be a bit more developedand cognizant of the things

(01:26):
we're doing together.
Right now, honestly, I'mjust in survival mode, right.
Trying to keep my householdit's alive and functioning.
And.
And from turning into like a pigsty.
the epic summer break was fantastic.
And then I took an extra weekoff that's when my boy was born.
And now I'm back at workand that's been challenging.
You know, the, the team hasbeen super accommodating for

(01:46):
the hours that I'm putting in.
And being flexible with them.
And I kind of cherish and valuehaving something to go through.
Outside of speaking baby andhousehold day in and day out.
I think it helps with the balance.
Right.
But still like anything, a balancing act.
A huge, thank you and appreciation andlove to everybody with their loving

(02:07):
messages, congratulating me and offeringparental insight, resources, books,
tips, and even sending clothing and toys.
Super appreciative that.
So.
Episode 38 is officially one weeklate, which makes two back-to-back
late episodes, both taking threeweeks instead of the usual two.

(02:27):
So while I'm adapting to my newpermit change, life has a dead.
I'm still looking to seehow to fit in the podcast.
Editing.
But I'm here to promise youthis show will keep going.
I've got way too many gueststhat have been nominated.
Plus people who have committed to meor told me that they wanted to come on.
So at the very minimum, I'll atleast get those episodes done before
throwing in the towel word is bond.

(02:48):
You know, we don't, we don'tquit around these parts.
So now with all of that, outof the way, let's get it.
On episode 38 of the gamedevelopers podcast out of play area.
We sit down with Claude Jerome, a leadgameplay designer for firewalk studios.
They're part of the probablymonsters umbrella operating
out of Bellevue Washington.

(03:09):
If you haven't heard of them.
Firewalk studios and probably monsters.
So reading a little bit aboutthem from their website.
It's a new category of game companythat builds sustainable game studios
through a people first culture.
Firewall studios is a AAA studiofocused on delivering world-class
multiplayer experiences.
And they've entered into an agreementwith Sony interacting with the team

(03:30):
as the exclusive publishing partnerfor its inaugural multiplayer game.
Firewalk was founded in 2018, ledby Tony SU studio, head of MGM
and SEP of destiny and Activision.
Ryan Ellis came director previouslycreative director at blingy.
Elena Siegman as they couldproduce a previous yeah.
Harmonics rational bunting.

(03:51):
So it seems to be a bunchof ex bungee people.
With a lot of experience inall those F P S N huge worlds.
Claude himself has been all overfrom destiny at Bungie project
spark at Microsoft worked atfirst playable, Vicarious visions.
He's worked on Skylanders who knows.
He may have overlapped the ChrisCole from episode 37 when he

(04:13):
worked at those two studios.
I connected with Claudiaroam from game Dez of color.
And so please welcome representingnew Jerusalem, a New Jersey
proudly representing hisHaitian American heritage.
Into game to please welcome.
Claude Jerome.
previously recorded on June the 28th.

(04:33):
Less full the fuck out.

Catherine (04:37):
bienvenido Bienvenue Welcome to the out of play area podcast, a
show by video game devs for game devs,where the guests open up one-on-one
about their journey, their experiences,their views, and their ideas.
No ads, no bullshit.
Join us as we venture far outof the play area with your host
seasoned game designer, John Diaz

John (05:00):
I saw screenshots of, 3 43 is like halo, forged thing that they got going on.
And so that, you know, it's just

Claude J (05:07):
yep.
U GC man.
It's there's a lot of power

John (05:10):
this is it, man.
Core is the thing.

= Claude J (05:13):
My buddy went over there.
He was our lead designer.
He went over there as a big exec dude.

John (05:17):
that might be the next

Claude J (05:19):
We'll see it always feels like it

John (05:22):
You know, like I see all my buddies moving up to like
principal and director and I'mlike, yeah, but then I say this now.
Right?
I don't want to get into thatposition where I'm all hands off,

Claude J (05:32):
yep.
Same here, man.
Same here.
It's always delicate dance, trying tofind the right balance of, I wanna,
bring my experience to the table andshape what we're doing, but yeah.
I also wanna make
stuff.

John (05:41):
Cause you're in new leadership

Claude J (05:42):
Yep.
It's the highest level I've been in

John (05:45):
is it hybrid management where you're like managing and
icing or is it strictly management?

Claude J (05:50):
yeah, Bunia is something similar.
Uh, Bunge is a lead gameplayabilities designer, and now
I'm a lead gameplay designer.
So thinking more about the whole, right.
Not just the characters andwhat they can do, but just like
the whole gameplay sandbox.
that's definitely taking up more thatlike leadership management kind of time,
but, I still get to do hands on stuffactually to kind of figure out like
the core feel and, you know, figure outsome of these big relationships and, and

(06:13):
like the really, really core teaming.
So yeah.

John (06:16):
So does that tend to come when it's kind of unknown territory?
Right?
It's just like, I need to get themmachete and go trailblazer, a path before
being able to lay a groundwork or layer
or direction.

Claude J (06:29):
A little bit, right?
Like it's, you know, we're working onsomething from the ground up, never
built before a new team everybody'scoming different experiences.
We're trying to find our space inbetween other games of our genre.
Right.
And so like, there issome unknown territory.
And so like the leads tackle that fromdifferent perspectives of gameplay,
thinking about like, okay, what is,what are gonna be the, the tenets
of our gameplay that set us aside.

(06:50):
But also what are the tenetsthat are like the, the rock solid
foundation that everybody kind ofcomes to expect from the genre?
Um, you know, and that's the samething, you know, art looking at it
from their lens of like, how do wemake something that feels different
than they've ever seen before?
So everybody's trying to find that space.
and then also in the way thatunifies the whole project, like
a Voltron kind of thing, right.

John (07:08):
yeah,
both try.
I love that analogy.

Claude J (07:10):
yeah.
You can't just like find an artstyle that no one's done before.
If it doesn't make sensefor everything else.
Right.
Everything has to be in alignment,like sort of up and down the project.
so that's hard, super hard.
And that's where.
If the job comes out ofin the weeds doing stuff.
And it's a lot of talking to people andit's a lot of like vision management,
you know, like trying to like helpeverybody see the same picture.

(07:30):
And that takes literal years

John (07:33):
Yo literal years.
Thank you for calling that out.
Claude, because I don't thinkenough people stepping into this
type of role realize that, right.
They think it's just like a one anddone, or whenever new people join
the team, Hey, just go read the Wiki,
whatever.
But like, it's a never ending joband I'm, bad with this, right?
Like, I, I struggle with repetitionand I I think you need to just make

(07:54):
it a part of your like daily routine.
Right?
Repeat the things you said Monday that yousaid last month that you said last year,
that you said last summer kind of thing.
It never, it never loses value.

Claude J (08:06):
what's interesting about that.
Yeah.
It's super on, on it.
Like, you know, we've,that's where pillars come in.
Right?
Like having like things that the team canput on a board or, you know, virtually
in a doc or whatever, or like pin it toslack or something where everybody can
see it and talk about it at the same time.
But like, you also need to be ableto let go of those things as you
discover what works, what doesn't work.
Right.
And that's been another big part ofthis journey of doing it from scratch.

(08:28):
It's like figuring out what we wantsometimes is different than what we
thought it was and adapting, the productdesign as a whole to things that we've
discovered and like the, minute tominute or like the flow of the game
or what people are resonating with.
Right.
And so you gotta adapt.
Right.
And like, it's hard to do thatwith it, especially like we're
getting used to working remote.

(08:48):
so learning how to communicate thatway has been really ch challenging.

John (08:50):
have you learned anything juicy over the pandemic and having to transition
to this kind of remote work life?

Claude J (08:58):
yeah, I mean, personally.
my journey of fantastic.
Everybody's got a journey, I

John (09:02):
Yeah.

Claude J (09:02):
now it's like, I thought I was, I was gonna hate it for a long time.
Like, you know, I had a toddlerat home, so it was really hard
before she was in daycare.
It was really hard.
Cause like in and out hard tofigure out how to focus had to
get the time, but my dad's can all

John (09:14):
You, you were already a parent
before the pandemic

Claude J (09:17):
yeah, and so trying to figure out to do that and work and
being able to contribute while allthat's happening, but also being
able to be a good father right.
Like trying to do this.
Right.
That's a big deal.
but as she got to daycare is we gotkind of settled into communication
patterns and tools and stuff.
And I got my desk like kind ofset up and, you know, I started
to feel more comfortable.
Um, I like it.

(09:37):
Like I get to focus a littlebit more when I'm really in
those like hard, hard problems.
And, you know, in terms of like howwe've adapted as a, as a whole, like
what kind of Jesus secrets we've learned?
I think the one piece that standsout to me the most is we get to
hire more broadly, which is great.
so we get to hire people indifferent states, different people
of different, you know, in somedifferent countries and stuff.
We get to figure outlogistically how that works.

(09:57):
I think still, but like,

John (09:59):
you're not limited in the talent that you can go after now.

Claude J (10:02):
It's amazing.
So it lessens the, the ability to makethat excuse of like, oh, the pool's
small, if people that wanna moveout to Seattle or whatever, right.
It's like, Nope, we got a bigger pool now.

John (10:10):
talent is not so limited or, you know, the, the Merry go
round of the musical chairs inthis city as, as crazy as that

Claude J (10:15):
America round.
So real, so real.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah, so we get to, yeah.
You get to break that up andyou know, it gives us an extra
edge on diversity, right?
Like when we're trying to hiremore diverse candidates, like
a lot of people, like you.
I went out to game devs of color few yearsago, multiple times back in New York.
And it was the most diverse groupof the game devs I've ever seen,
but a lot of 'em don't really feellike they wanna move outta the area

(10:38):
for a bunch of good valid reasons.

John (10:40):
Mm-hmm

Claude J (10:41):
and so this is, you know, good way again, opening a door and
saying like, you don't have to,like, Seattle's not for everybody.

John (10:46):
Totally.
Yeah.
Especially if you're aNortheastern or east coaster.
Absolutely.
Right.
There's a differentvibe, different culture.
It's cool.
Not to have to uproot and acclimate

Claude J (10:56):
yeah.
That's a big deal.

John (10:57):
mm-hmm what do they call it, man?
Like the, the freeze or thepassive aggressiveness of whatever.

Claude J (11:02):
Seattle free.

John (11:03):
Uh

Claude J (11:04):
Yeah.
No, and I, I think like that's a bigpart of your ability to, grow and do
your work well is being comfortable.
And so if you're in that space, you'relike maybe into your family, or maybe
you just like, you know, like the areayou have, you know, someone bought a
house or something, or they like thepuppies and just wanna be home with them.
Like all that kinda stuff, likejust contributes to the comfort that
allows you to then do your best work.

(11:24):
Right.
So.

John (11:25):
heck yeah.
Yo, yo speaking of game does the color.
That was awesome.
That's where I connected with you.
I
believe right.
It was like the, the 20, 21speaking of pandemic life and
whatnot.
And.

Claude J (11:34):
the internet.
Yeah.

John (11:36):
Over the fucking internet.
You're like, yo dude, like what you about?
Let's talk, let's chat.
And I'm like, yo, I love your shit, bro.
Like you came, you did one of myfavorite presentations that you're really
talking about, destiny game feel, right?
Like, I don't know if it was, youknow, making a grenade or just

Claude J (11:50):
yeah.
All that kind of stuff.

John (11:52):
dude.
It was awesome.
I was super jealous after I saw yours.
Cause it was like, you had so muchtangible game examples and you know
the topic of the talk, you wouldbe shooting yourself in the foot
if you didn't set it up that way.
But I was like, damn man, I wishI had more, more gifts and more
comp more examples of, yeah, for

Claude J (12:08):
I appreciate that, man.
It was a ton more work thanI thought it was gonna be.
I enjoyed every second of it though.
It was like, except for theseconds leading up to, I
was really nervous, but but.
But like in terms of piecing ittogether, like it was helping me
like crystallize some of the stuffthat I learned working on that stuff.
Like, I, I, you know, explainingsomething sometimes is a good
way of teaching it to yourself.

(12:29):
Right.
Like, you're kind of thinkingabout how you're gonna translate
the things that are in your head.
And sometimes that makes you like,sort of crystallized the way you
think about it a little differently.
like a lot of growth came from that.
and yeah, I just, I remember when Iwas in college, like thinking about
game design, like for the first timeand stuff, like I was able to look at
some PVC talks that got into reallyinto detail, like, Jamie Green's Greers
talks, From his halo days, you know, hehad a series called design and detail.

(12:53):
and he got really in the weedsabout how they balanced weapons
about how they built stuff.
and I remember looking at that assomeone who barely has made a game
before and just thinking about likeall the stuff that I had thought
about, I was like open my mind up andit was because it was in the weeds.
And so I'm always inspired by talkslike that or websites like that.
You like blogs or Twitter posts orwhatever, where it's like, this is
exactly why we set up the way this enemyrotates every frame or whatever, right?

(13:16):
Like just like little things, cuz bigimpacts on little things, add up to making
the whole game feel totally different.

John (13:22):
Say that again.
It's like big things.

Claude J (13:24):
Big.
It's like, you know, likea, a, like a, a destiny.
We talked about it as like athousand cuts, you know, to
make something really good.
Like if you keep making, you know,little adjustments here and there,
like you add up, like, you don't reallynotice each individual adjustment.
Um, and so the way I think aboutit's like, you can make a really
big impact on a small thing.
And if you do that enough, thewhole product such, such to feel
different in the way people, peoplecan't even like, describe it.

(13:45):
They're just like, itjust feels different.
And that's what, like, you know, alot of that game field, talk was based
on stuff like how the ADE bounceswhen you hit it at different things,
or like, um, some of the performancethat like helps communicate what it's
gonna be there or how the enemiesreact to the performance before or
after, during all that kind stuff.
Just little, little thingshere and there it's all add up.
yeah.

John (14:05):
and, you know, it's totally different ends of the spectrum, right?
There's people that are moremacros people that are more

Claude J (14:09):
Mm-hmm

John (14:10):
where would you classify yourself?
I, I would say listen to your talk,you know, I would've put you more
micro, but I think over the pastfew years, I wonder if, if where
do you classify yourself on that

Claude J (14:19):
Yeah.
Uh, I would say definitelymore on the micro side.
Um, I mean, as I grow, I'mthinking more of the macro,

John (14:26):
thinking

Claude J (14:27):
yeah.
You know, like, uh, like I think a lotabout how like, at the micro level I'm
affecting things at the macro level.
And the things that I tend to thinkabout at the macro level are, you know,
I work on like competitive games a lot.
And as a game where I play a lotof like fighting games and stuff.
And so I think a lot about theback and forth between people.
so to me, those micro, the focus onthe micro, the focus on like frame

(14:48):
data, or like, you know, acceleration,returning whatever, like all that
stuff communicates your intent.
And then when your opponent can seeyour intent, they're reacting to your
intent and they're a giving intent.
And so there's this back and forth.
That's like effectively a conversationso like at the macro level of a fighting
game or a shooter or whatever, Peoplehaving in conversation with each other,

(15:08):
they're like learning about each other,like, okay, you moved left and right.
You're jumping this way.
You're gonna come aroundthe corner this way.
You're gonna crouch.
You're gonna do you're chart.
You're charging me this when I do this.
And you're learning, you'reliterally learning about each
other and reacting to that.
And that's like in a lot of ways, like,you know, for myself, and I know a lot
of other gamers, like super introverted,that's the way we talk to people too.
Like, it's like, it's, , it's you know,so I think a lot about like the story at

(15:30):
the macro level, the way people talk toeach other way, like, you know, how are
we setting up that expression to be deepenough that like you yourself come across
in the way you make choices in the game?
I think about both, like, I positionmyself as a micro designer, but I am
thinking about the like big picture still

John (15:46):
it really resonates and it it hits a point with me thinking about
how back in the day, even today, right?
Like no words are being exchanged.
Maybe nowadays people are more vocalbecause I don't know they're streaming
or we gotta talk over headsets.
But back in the day, like couch co-opor some said at arcades or whatever,
no words were said, but like yousaid, ton of words being said through

(16:06):
the expression

Claude J (16:07):
of stuff.
Yeah.
And it didn't even take like, youknow, getting to the level of like
fidelity that we have now with games.
Right?
Like, one genre that I love stillthat I talk to my buddies about,
he works song like gotta wearingstuff, uh, is beat 'em up genre, like
the sides scrolling, beat 'em ups.
Right?
Like those are super simple.
They're kind of coming back rightnow with like, you know, new TMN T

John (16:26):
Shredders.
Revenge.

Claude J (16:27):
shred his event.
So good.
and like, remember him tellingme about like, you know, cause we
worked on a game like that in collegeand we talked about like the big
brother little brother experience.
And I had that when I was growingup playing my older brother
in those kind of games and.
Again, like, you know, we're differentages thinking about things differently,
but when we're playing that game,we're communicating about everything.
Like who's going, where who's doing, what,like, who tends to be the guy who beats

(16:50):
up these guys who tends to be the guy whoeats the pizza when he has full health?
Who, you know what I mean?
Like

John (16:55):
who's more

Claude J (16:56):
things, like, Yeah.
And so you get to know each other,even though you're just sitting
down and playing a game, nottalking to each other, like you're
actually talking to each other.
It's like, and so they hadsomething magical about that.
That comes from the mechanics,um, that I still love.
Think about.
Yeah.
I can talk about that forever though.

John (17:11):
Hey man.
I think that's okay if we kind of venturethis entire episode into that realm.
I, no, nobody will bemad at that for sure.
Hell yeah.
Mm-hmm
taking a step back talking, youknow, we're talking about academics
where you came up, what have youfound navigating your career?
Claude?
I know our ancestors or, or, or ourfamily members are island mates.

(17:33):
Uh, you know, the island of east ESP.
I'm on the east coast, you're on the west

Claude J (17:38):
that's right.

John (17:39):
and, I honestly can't tell you that I know another Dominican that I've worked
alongside of on the team, maybe, youknow, across sister studios or something.
But I couldn't tell you that I, you know,shipped the game with another Dominican
person on the team, in the trenches.
Right.
I I'm curious how, howyour experience has been.

Claude J (17:58):
Yeah.
I, I feel the same way.
I don't think I've ever met someonewho was Haitian, who makes video games.

John (18:04):
Mm

Claude J (18:05):
I actually, you know what I guess, Reggie, Reggie, Phil, um,
uh, yeah, if I don't know him.
Right.
So I guess I
, John: Yeah, he's in the game.
He's more biz dev, I guess.
Yeah.

John (18:15):
Mm-hmm

Claude J (18:16):
But yeah, like I like it's rare, man.
Like it just, It's crazy.
Like even just, you know, people ofcolor in, in our jobs and stuff like
you at max, I work with maybe like threeor four other black game that was in
the same studio, like ever , know, likethat's like I was at Bunge, I guess we
had a little bit more than that, butit was like, you know, we had at the
time and I had like 700 people and likestill, probably a single digit number of,

(18:40):
of, you know, folks that look like me.
Um, so pretty nuts.
Like it's, it's rare.
It's hard being tokenizedin that sense too.
You know, it's hard both externallyand internally, you know, just like
being in that position, thinking aboutwhat people are thinking about, um, the
expectations that come with that, uh, likeyou said, our journey isn't easy either.
until we got a lot that'swriting on it, right.

John (19:02):
yeah, man.
I know for myself, I kind of.
I just kind of put the blinders on.
Right.
I was just like, Hey, going throughmy, going through my program, right.
I was doing engineering compi.
I already kind of saw the same vibe.
You know, it, it was only so manythat kind of made it through and were
interested in that, in that field forwhatever reason that you, you know, I
think were doing much better at now.

(19:22):
Right.
Just awareness and, and, programsthen, I felt like I actually grew,
being around very different cultureand, and speaking and, and, and
music and all and food, right.
Like I was like, oh, this is awesome.
But I, I, I felt likethe reverse is also true.
Like, I, I never got to reallykind of share what I was about

(19:44):
and kind of put that forward on ateam in like Austin, Texas, or San
Diego, California, or whatever.

Claude J (19:51):
yeah, no, I have a similar feeling, man.
I, I feel like, you know, like you comefrom a place that is your own and no
one else can totally know that unlessthey're in that sort of experience.
So, you know, being a Haiti American,like even like just growing up, I didn't.
Think about my Haitian heritage thatmuch, uh, because I was trying to
assimilate with sort of like whatblack American culture was like,
what my friends were like, you know?

(20:12):
And then in college, you know,trying to get into like the tech
places and stuff, like there'seven less of people look like me.
And so I could, I could barely even sortof, you know, find that who I was before
I was putting all the energy towardslike a, that assimilation kind of feel.
Um, and so now I was, you know, I'mgrowing up, like I'm trying to grow
into like, figuring out more of what Isaid earlier, even honestly, like how to

(20:33):
put myself into the game, like how to,
like, how do I put myself into mywork, the people around me and stuff.
And so I'm trying to embracemore of like all that.
as I grow up and stuff, especially,you know, thinking about my kids,
like, I want them to like see whothey are and all that kind of stuff.
but yeah, like I think it's justa lot of pressure to fit in.
And like, you know, you come into thisenvironment that feels like everything's
already kind of has a momentum.

(20:54):
And so you just kind of wanna like, youknow, figure out how you slot into that,
as opposed to thinking about, Expressingyourself and bringing off the table.
Cause it feels honestly a lot of timesdisruptive in a way that's dangerous.
Like, it shouldn't feel disruptive, but it
is, yeah.
You know, it's like, you know, if you'rein a meeting and you're talking about,
you know, some character representationor not even representation, just

(21:14):
like a character and you wanna bringup something about representation,
it, and it, and the momentum's alreadygoing in the direction of what's normal.
Right?
Like they're just talking about,grizzly white dude holding the
gun and you wanna like talk abouta little bit something different.
Like you're automatically disrupting.
It's a good thing to disrupting, but itfeels bad because you're the only one.
Right.
And so it puts that likesort of that pressure on you.
That's why I said likeexternally and internally.

(21:36):
and so, you know, if my own growthhas been trying to let go of some
of that internal pressure to justsay like, you know what, fuck it.
I'm here.
I'm this is who I am.
If you don't like that,that's your problem.
That's not my problem.

John (21:45):
Yeah, dude, I like that.
I like that.
Right.
Like just, just making it a thing,bringing it up to, to, to the surface
where it's like, I can empathize.
Right.
I've been in those, what it feelslike to be in a meeting where, you
know, we've been blocked for so long.
We, and we've finally reachingconsensus and everybody's rocking
the type of person I am would hate tokind of hold on, man, let's check out
this off ramp, but pump the brakes.

(22:06):
We, we haven't even kindof explored other avenues.
Like, yeah, this is awesome.
But you know, what, if we kindof apply some other things like,

Claude J (22:14):
mm-hmm

John (22:15):
you

Claude J (22:15):
you bring different music into the picture, whatever.
Yeah.
Like, you know, it justfeels, and if you're the only
one, it feels weird that it

John (22:21):
it feels
weird.

Claude J (22:23):
and suddenly you're responsible for and explaining what that is either.
Right.
And so it's like, you can't even,you know what that, the depth
of that cultural pieces are.
Right.
And so you don't wannamisrepresent that either.
So you don't wanna, nobody wants tobe one person representing anything.

John (22:36):
that's tough, right?
Yeah.
Going back to like being able to bringmore people into the fold, right.
To, to help offloadthat, that weight, right.
It is a weight and, and also like to,push each other to bite the bullet for
the sake of being the only people presentin the room that can, can speak to it.
Right.
And, and I'd be curious to see what,how other people have arrived at that.

(22:59):
But it, it is awesome the seldomopportunities that do arise, where some
teammate takes the time to questionor some producer, you know, it's
like, Hey, let let's table it here.
Let's pause this.
Let's think about this.
Let's come back to it.
Let's let's explore.
Brainstorm.

Claude J (23:15):
Yeah.
I mean, I think about it too, aslike, you know, I look at it with
like social progress lens in generalof like someone's always sacrificing
and having a harder time than theperson that's subsequent from them.
And that's just a that's progress.
Right.
It's like, you're gonna havea hard time so that someone
else has needs easier time.
And so I think about like, youknow, like you said, I had a horse
blinders kind of perspective as wellof just like, try to get my work

(23:36):
done, try to be the best I can be.
So my work speaks for itself and noone's questioning my identity where
I'm coming from or anything like that.
Like if I have the best workI have the best work period.
And so I spent that kind of efforton everything, such that it got
me to the position I am in whereI'm more in leadership position.
I have more, impact andinfluence of what we're making.
And I'm just there . So like someonewho's like looking at, like, I always

(23:59):
try to get as many opportunities as I canto like, be present as a leader in the
game industry so that someone can see me
and say like, that is possible.
Right.
Cause that's, I didn'tsee that, like I saw.
You know, pretty uniform viewof what a lead looks like.

John (24:12):
indeed.
That's huge, bro.
So I love that you coming onto theshow, being able to feature you, right.
Being able to say, look at whatthe leadership looks like these
days, right?
it's possible.
Maybe it's possible.
Fantastic.
So talk to me about where you are today.
You are in Seattle, you're in Bellevue.

(24:32):
Where, where are you and where you working

Claude J (24:35):
yeah.
So Seattle greater Seattle area,I'm living up in Kirkland right now.
Um, weirdly I've been here for 10 yearsnow, but I still think about my, yeah.
I still think about, I got from Jersey, soI, I don't really, I, every time someone
asks, I'm like, oh, I'm from Jersey,but I've been here for like 10 years.
So it's pretty weird.
Uh, but yeah, now I'm at probablymonsters, um, which is, you

(24:55):
know, a family of studios.
And so within probably monstersI'm at firework studios,
making, making stuff happen.
Been here for about three years since thevery beginning, not super, very beginning,
like since really early fire walk, like,and really early probably monsters,
like sub 30 employees , you know,
like pretty small.

John (25:16):
Ground floor, man.

Claude J (25:17):
yeah.
Which was really cool to be partof like, you know, uh, working
at bungee was really cool.
Being part of a legacy was reallycool, but being able to start a
legacy that felt like somethingI would have to do at some point.
Right.
And

John (25:30):
That's that's destiny.
Right?
When you talk about legacy,you're talking about the

Claude J (25:33):
Yeah, exactly.
Like being at bungee, working ondestiny, which is like, you know,
spiritual sort of connection to haloand, and their roots and everything.
And I loved halo growing up.
Like I
played, I played all the games, butread all the books, like, you know,
hundreds of hours is one of my favoritegames of all time tale to, um, and
so just being able to be part of thatlegacy was amazing and learn from that.
But I like having opportunity todo that from scratch also amazing.

John (25:56):
Yeah.

Claude J (25:57):
really excited about that.
Yeah.

John (25:59):
What was it like?
Was it like people just at Bunge werekind of talking about this in, in
secret, in, in secret meetings and thenis like, all right, we're doing this
and we are jumping and we all jumpedat the same time or was just kinda

Claude J (26:11):
So a little bit, like it was you, everybody had different reasons
for going like it, you know, I'll behonest and say like, working on destiny
was a rollercoaster to put it lightly.
like,

John (26:23):
is this destiny one or destiny?

Claude J (26:25):
both.
I started on taking king for destinyone, which was like one of the bigger
expansions, um, and you know, tryingto figure out how to support a big ass
game with a super high quality bar.
Um, you know, with a really hungry,you know, user base that just is
constantly looking for something new.
Um, and you know, we didn't likethe way we innovated on, on what

(26:49):
people were looking forward tolike, you know, subsequent releases
and stuff was never like, like wenever wanted to make it purely.
Expected, you know, statisticaloutcomes, like, oh, you gotta plus
a hundred, this, this release.
Or like, we changed the colorfrom green to blue or whatever.
Right.
Like we wanted to like, tryto make things you could hold,
plays your hand, play your hands.
That like, felt like they had personalitythat felt like they were completely

(27:10):
different things that you could think of.
And so it was always, it's like heavycreative burden to make the next
thing and like, and it never stops.
Right.
It's like, you're makingthe next thing it's out.
But before it's out, you'realready on the next thing.
And so you gotta be thinking aboutthe next thing before you're making
this cur like it's, it's crazy.
So
it's, it's a lot, livegames are super hard.
Um, and Bunge was doing it for thefirst time in a really ambitious way.

(27:32):
Um, and it took several iterations ofthat game to figure out a good rhythm.
And I, and people, you know, didn't allstick around from a ride myself included.
Like I stuck around for a while.
I was there for four years.
But it, it just took a toll.
So I just, I felt like I needed somespace to like, do my own, you know, do
something on my own that like, felt likeI could let go some of the, like the, you

(27:54):
know, negativity that built up with me.
Um,

John (27:57):
it's nice to reset, man.
And

Claude J (27:59):
yeah.
Yeah.
And that was, you know, that wasbefore, that was right before I
was able to have my first kid.
And so I was really thinkingabout my whole self , you know,
like, what do I, what do I want?
And, you know, thisopportunity presents itself.
So that was great.
Like, you know, uh, probably monsterswas started by, uh, former Buny
people as well in a lot of ways.
And so I knew some of 'em and soI could kind of talk about things
and, um, I was looking at some otheropportunities too, but that one really

(28:21):
stuck out to me cuz it was like people,I, I knew that I could trust their
sense of values and sensibilitiesand you know, Feel like I was part
of something that I, I knew a littlebit too, so it wasn't the full risk.
Um, so yeah, jumped over, tried that out.
Amazing.
immediately like,
yeah.
Going from a 700 person team tolike we had like on fire walk, you

(28:44):
know, something like 15, 16 people.
Um, so it was just tight.
We were just moving fast, like justtrying stuff out was really cool.
Um,

John (28:52):
Had you, Had you, ever had that before in your career that, that small,
tight, super high velocity, super agile

Claude J (29:00):
mm-hmm yeah, a little bit, but you know, never
with that quality bar, right.
Like, cause I, I, I worked on likesmall teams, you know, in college
and small games when I was in my,you know, my first job was at a place
that made intended DS games for kids.
And so like, you know, I actuallythought our quality bar was high
for what we were building for kids.
But like in terms

John (29:19):
That was first playable.

Claude J (29:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
First playable, um, amazingexperience, a bunch of reasons.
Um, and like I said, like, Ithink what we were making for,
cause we play tested with kids.
We kind of knew like the impactit had on them and stuff.
Um, and so yeah, I think about that, butlike as like a positive thing, but you
know, when I think about the like sortof quality bar quote, unquote of a triple
a, you know, big, big thing, like bigflagship kind of product, like I never

(29:44):
had a small team with that ambition.
And so it was interesting tohave a little bit of both, right.
It's like, how do we getthere with the smallish team?
Like, you know, team's muchbigger than 15 now, but

John (29:52):
yeah.
Yeah.

Claude J (29:54):
yeah.
So yeah, it was interesting and it wasgood to like flex those skills again.
Right?
Like going from a big studio with apipeline that's already kind of set up
to like, you know, start startingfrom scratch, learning a new engine,
learning how to like set up, you know,pipelines and stuff for the stuff
we're gonna build, like writing specsfor systems that didn't exist yet as
opposed to like specs for extensionson systems, you know, like, yeah.

John (30:17):
dude, I I'm hyped to finally have someone from probably monsters on the show
because I, I, the little bit I understoodof how it's set up was super interesting.
And I don't know if any otherplace is set up the same.
Right.
Is it, is it kind of like,

Claude J (30:33):
it's pretty unique.
I think there's like, um, there'sone more in California that I forget
the name of that's sort of similar,but yeah, like the way we're set
up is, is really interesting.
It's um, probably monsters is, like Isaid, it's like a family of studios.
And so the, the structure of it, the coreof it is supportive of all the studios.
And so I, I like to think about themetaphor as like, uh, the NBA where

(30:54):
like the NBA is an organizationthat has teams, which have their
own individual management, um, youknow, franchises, like, you know,
culture, even players obviously.
Um, and they get to operate allindividually on their own, but
they're all part of this big umbrella.
And so that's kind of probablymonsters is where the benefit of
that is that the structure thatyou always need for any studio.

(31:16):
HR, you know, system like, you know,uh, backend systems, um, you know,
literally desks, like getting space,you know, AUR, all the stuff that
you're gonna need for the sort of peopleoriented aspect of game development.
Yeah.
That's like kind of set up already.
And so the studios can basicallyfocus on their creative ambitions, how
they're gonna set up their culture,how their teams are gonna work.

(31:36):
Right.
And so it just gets you immediatelygoing on what you wanna build as opposed
to like, sort of the overhead, right?

John (31:43):
with a nice safety net.
I imagine.
So you have the HR, I guess youhave like it resources, like,
you know, getting your computerset up, network issues.
Um, I guess source control management

Claude J (31:55):
Yeah.
Like to help us with all that stuff,like it's, it's pretty amazing.
Like, cuz again, it helps you feelsmaller and the sense that you get to
focus on the thing you want and thepeople that you're talking to on a day
to day basis are all focused on that.
But once you need the help forstructural changes or, you know,
whatever that's already being handledby, someone else is just focused on.
So it's pretty nice.
Right.
And, and as Lu studio, as each, youknow, as we get more studios built

(32:19):
in, then our overall structure grows.
Our overall capacity grows, ouroverall capabilities grow, right?

John (32:25):
Yeah.

Claude J (32:25):
better structures get better.
Like we get, you know, all this kindof stuff gets better for everybody.
It's

John (32:31):
do do you, so, so then you have the individual studios under
the probably monsters association.
Then do you guys get to collaborateor share resources or assets, or is it
really kind of essentially thinking aboutit like completely individual studios,
but you share those, those shit thatshared pool of resources up one layer.

Claude J (32:54):
It's a little unclear still it's it's developing.
I think there's some of that, right?
Like as a, as the entire association, weget, you know, all hands or we get to hang
out or like talk about the feature of acompany and we get, we used to have like
some design syncs, even across studios,
um,
that.

John (33:11):
cool.
I

Claude J (33:12):
Yeah, it's hard because each studio, like I said, is independent.
Well, for sure, on the logistical side,but even on the like legal side, right?
Like each studio is individual in thesense of being able to sign up with
different publishers and have a different,
you know, projects of different,you know, even hardware or whatever.
Right.
And so like, there's some sense ofsecurity there that the like partners

(33:33):
will wanna know about, of like, Hey,like this can't get out, whatever.
Right.
And so there's some walls for sure.
And I think we're trying to stillevolve, like, you know, where those
walls stop us, where don't they?
Like, how, how much can we share tech?
How much can we share knowledgeabout, you know, when different teams
are working on unreal or whatever?
Like how much can we say?
Like, Hey, don't do that.

John (33:52):
Yeah, yeah.
Warn them, right?
Like, yeah, like I'm curious whatprob like what's the stake of
ownership from the studio levelto the probably monsters level.
And do you, do you have accessto each other via slack?
You know, do you have all this?
All right.
That's all right.
So that,

Claude J (34:06):
like it's let's yeah.
Like we have like a shared networkto be able to talk and stuff and,
and we have a shared building.
So once we're, you know, occupying thatand stuff, like second floor has X studio.
Third floor is whatever studioslike they're around each other.
So it is, it is, it is connectedfeeling, you know, but there's
just some areas that of gray oflike, yeah, like don't touch that.
But like, we could talk about like,Hey, I tried doing this in Unreal's

(34:29):
localization system or whatever.
So like I learned this lessons, um,

John (34:33):
Cause that's public knowledge, right?

Claude J (34:35):
Mm-hmm yeah, just kind of we're devs in the same room kind of makes stuff.
So

John (34:40):
cooler
conversations.

Claude J (34:42):
Like there's, there's a connection for sure.

John (34:45):
Can you talk about a moment where it felt like, oh, wow, this is really a
powerful setup compared to kind of thetraditional single studio, know, whatever.

Claude J (34:55):
Yeah, I think, I mean, honestly, work from home transition.
Like that was, that would've been, I mean,that has been a nightmare for everybody.
Right.
Like trying to figure outhow to do that outta nowhere.
Um, logistically isjust super challenging.
And so having a whole organizationset up to focus on that, right?
Like they got set up machines, likethey got our network security set up.
They did all this stuff beforeeverybody was even thinking about it.

(35:16):
We're all thinking aboutour families and stuff.
Right.
Like
and so that's, that's awesomethat we can actually do that.
Um, you know, with the, with thereliance on that, on that core.
Yeah.

John (35:27):
Cool, cool.
And just like that, it's been what,like three years you've been over there.

Claude J (35:31):
Yeah.
Which is longer work from home thanit was in person, which is pretty wild

John (35:36):
Crazy crazy.
How has been, how has been the growthof the team throughout that time?
Like you said, you probablygrown more, more than the size
it was when you were there.

Claude J (35:47):
yeah.
Yeah.
Our team's grown, um, We're about alittle over a hundred now, um, trying
to figure out what our, our Target'sgonna be, trying to figure out what that
means for, you know, our capabilities.
Like we're trying to figureout our game basically, right?
Like it's, they can't say much,but we're kind multiply game.
So, you know, it's like trying to figurethat out for the first time as a studio,
um, while we're building a team whilewe're learning how to work from home.

(36:09):
Well, you know, while we're making anew IP and all this kinda stuff, right.
It's pretty wild.

John (36:13):
indeed, indeed.
There are people that you would askto say, you know, Hey, Hey, if I could
do it differently, I would've onlybit off one or two of those things as

Claude J (36:22):
yeah, it's a lot.
We didn't get the, do got a choice.
Right.
We got a lot of that.
Just everybody did too.
So, um, but it's been interesting,like I think for myself, like going
again from when I got here, you know,10, 15 people trying to make a thing,
just prototyping stuff really quicklynow, like over a hundred, trying
to figure out our team shape howwe communicate, how we build stuff.
Um, so that's been a huge journey,especially for me just learning how

(36:45):
to be more of a leader than I've everbeen before, figuring out like what.
Where I can step in and where I shouldn't.
Um, yeah, like I've beenthinking a lot about like, yeah.
Keep using sports, but I'll use it again.
Uh

John (36:58):
I love sports analogies

Claude J (36:59):
yeah.
Like I think a lot about like a coachand how a good league is kind of
like a good coach in the sense of,you know, a coach isn't out in the
field, like doing the, doing the work.
Like he's not the one, like run the plays.
He's not the one like, like runthe fast breaks or whatever, right?
Like he's the one looking at thebigger picture, sort of thinking
about what everybody can be doingdifferently, um, to, to sort of get

(37:21):
towards the goal a little bit better.
And so he understands the, you know,they understand the capabilities
of each member of their team.
They understand the strengths, theweaknesses, but they're looking at the
bigger picture and helping them guidetheir work to meet that, you know, vision.
Um, and so a lot of that translatesdown to like, I used to be down,
like I said, in the weeds, thinkingabout like how everything fits
together, how I'm gonna PE.

(37:42):
Do you like, how am I gonna tunethis grenade or how I'm gonna
tune this weapon or whatever.
Um, and now I still think aboutthat, but I'm thinking about like the
person doing that work and how it'sgonna, what's gonna motivate them.
Like what, what are they concerned about?
Like, what are, what, whatare they interested in?
Right.
And, um, so again, bigger picture,I'm trying to figure it out for
myself cuz you know, it's a,it's a growing pattern for sure.
Yeah.

John (38:03):
that's fantastic.
Curious about any mechanisms that youfound or adopted that work well, in terms
of learning the people on your team,their talents, the way they like to work
and and then latching on and being like,okay, this is, I'm gonna, this works
with you, but not with this other person.
Right.

Claude J (38:21):
Yeah.
I think, um, some of the stuff thatlike is top of mind for me, I guess
in this regard is like, I there'sa lot of sensibilities that like
everybody has their own sensibilities.
And so like trying to create aculture and an environment where
it feels like you can bring it upto the table is most important.
So really it's just aboutlike earlier, like comfort.

(38:42):
Um, and so we're trying tolike break down the walls.
Anytime.
It feels like something is attackingyou personally, if that makes sense.
cause that kind of helps

John (38:51):
word, right.
That, that becomes more of likea, I don't know, man fight or
flight response, triggering thing.
Right?
Like, hold on.
We're not even talking about work.
I, I gotta like defend my honor
or been disrespected or something.

Claude J (39:03):
It's hard.
Especially like if you're likealone coming to a new studio,
you'll know anybody, like every,everything kind of feels like it
could be held against you sometimes.
And so we wanna like breakdown those walls first.
Like that's kind of one thing I've pickedup from both bungee and firewall time.
Um, and so that kind of translatesdown to like, um, having a culture
of understanding people of who theyare, not just what the work they do.

(39:25):
So talk about games, talking aboutwhether people are into you or families,
all that, like just kinda like tryingto be a little bit more connected about
like understanding someone's personalambitions, who they are and bring.
Forefront a little bit more insharing that yourself, as well as not
forcing outta people, um, kinda likesetting a standard of like, Hey, look,
we all kind of talked about this.
We're all a little bit vulnerable.
Like none of us, you know,have made this game before.

(39:47):
Like, let's, like, you know what I mean?
Like let's, let's try andlike take down those walls.
And so that's just a lot of like,you know, group up and stuff.
The other thing, um, that translates tois like the way we talk about our content.
Um, and so at bungee, we had thisreally good habit of like, you know,
getting together as a design group.
And, you know, the, in the case thatI was in, it was like within the
sandbox team or the game play team,um, we'd get together every week, you

(40:11):
know, multiple times a week sometimes.
But like really just like, let's just talkabout what problems we're all working on.
And someone would share like,okay, I'm working on this.
I'm kind of, I can't figure this out.
Or like, I'm stuck here.
Or like, here's an idea I have,I'm kind of running run by people.
And that was everybody.
And so including the leads, including thepeople who were there for a while, and so
that, you know, exposes some vulnerabilityof like, if you see someone who's been

(40:32):
doing it for a while, talk about thingsthat are hard for that, or, you know,
Bringing stories to the table of like,oh, this reminds me of this other time.
That was hard for me or whatever.
Right.
That starts to like, createa little bit of a space.
Um, and then I think still like tryingto create the expectation that it's
not all on one person as a team effort.
And so if you are stuck, it's notlike a reflection of your own problems

(40:53):
or your ego or anything like that.
It's just like, how dowe all get past this?
Cause this is all our, thisis all our game, right?
Like there's no, likethis is your section.
It's my section.
Um, so yeah, I mean that again,like just, and, and that sort of
connects back to thinking aboutthe whole person of like, is this
something that motivates this person?
Should they be working on this?
Like, is this something that like,uh, are they, you know, is there

(41:15):
sort of brain sort of more lenditself to this other type of problem?
Like, can we move people around?
Can we help other people out this way?
Like I just think, yeah.
Think about the whole picture.
Even sometimes changing the designof the game to meet the, the sort
of strengths of the team you have

John (41:29):
Interesting.
I, I guess you, you, you, you guys,that's a luxury you have because of
the, the, the area you're in withkind of defining something from the
ground up

Claude J (41:40):
Yeah.
Yeah.
You get some opportunities to do that.
Like, it's, it's definitely a hard loveto pull, but like it's something that
I think can be a superpower, right?
If you like, if you can really identifya strength of your team or a person
that's working on a thing and adjustits needs and its goals for them,
then they can just do more of whothey are and bring that to the table.
And then I feel like the more youcan bring yourself into the game, the

(42:02):
more, it feels like a unique thing.

John (42:05):
totally,

Claude J (42:06):
we're all unique people, right?
So

John (42:07):
totally.
Yeah.
Like that's a huge thing to leverage yourpersonnel is not everybody, you know, not
your team doesn't exist anywhere else.
And if you make it a product that isbuilt to off the strengths of that team,
that's a huge competitive edge, right?
Like I, to, to put a dumbexample around it, right?

(42:29):
If you have a team of people who arereally sharp at, I don't know, super high
fidelity, ultra realistic type setups.
And you're trying to make likea very kind of loosey cartoony,
uh, Nintendo switch game.
Right.
That's you're not really usingthem as effectively as you can,

Claude J (42:50):
And I think, I mean, I it's, that's a, you know, big example of like a
big sort of directional shift of the game.
I, I think it comes downto little stuff too.
Like, um, you know, the example for me,or, or the cases for me are when it really
comes down to the way you give feedback,actually, for me, at least like it's, it's
easy to fall into the trap of looking atsomeone's work, seeing them, you know, in

(43:14):
a position where they're looking for howto get to the next step or their stuck or
not working well and see a vision of howyou could imagine it coming together and
give feedback towards that as opposed to.
Imagining understanding moreof what their ambitions are
and helping them get to that.
It's a super subtle difference, right?
It's like if you're playing a boardgame and you're like giving years,
like, oh, I wish it was like, youI'm playing a resource game where

(43:36):
it's like, I'm doing this and that.
It's like, I wish I wasmore action in this game.
And then these cards would feelmore interesting because I could
do X, Y, and Z, but it's like,that's not the game you're playing.
Like if it's a resource game, like how doyou make it more interesting in the ways
that it was supposed to be interesting?
And I think like sometimes understandingthat difference helps somebody along
the things that, you know, alreadycame from who they are, because

(43:56):
their vision comes from who they are.
And so it's subtle, but it, again, I thinkit, it it's shown up for me in a, in a
bunch of cases of like, you know, pausinga little bit before I say something,
thinking like, that's how I would makethis, what are they trying to make?
What are they trying to accomplish?
Like how do I help themget to that vision?
It's super tricky, super subtle,but that's something I've
been growing towards as well.

John (44:16):
Yeah, I could really definitely hear the experience
and growth coming through there.
You know, where you are stepping awayfrom the way you wanna see things or solve
the way you would approach a solutionand taking a step back, recognizing that.
Right.
And then thinking about it, processingit, and then creating a an opportunity
to, give your reports or your teammate,

(44:40):
the floor to bring somethingto the, to the table.
Right.
And then, and then kind of gellingon that cuz as designers, right?
We're always, we're used to constraints.
I think we love constraints.
We, we seek them out.
Ravenously to be like, what, whatworld, what genre, what console, how
many players, you know, whatever.

(45:00):
And, and it's really cool to.
continue using those muscles forthe betterment of the project in
a lot of different ways, right.
To be like this type of game,but this person wants to bring
an action element to a game thatdoesn't really have it this way.
How can we kind of

Claude J (45:16):
Yeah.
And like I said, it's hard.
It's not always an opportunity,
but I just think, even thinkingabout that changes your
relationship with somebody, right?
Like, and I, and that's like, oneof my buddies says it all the time,
like relationships make games.
And so it's really important, right.
To just be thinking about who someoneis that you're working with, not
just the work you're doing, um, justlike in that sports metaphor, right.

(45:37):
It's like, or analogy or whatever.
Like if your team's a bunch of big dudesin basketball, like you should not be
running plays to keep the outside safe.
So you're like, what are you doing?
Like get in there again.

John (45:46):
yeah, yeah, no, that's a good point, man.
It shouldn't make 'em all shoot threes.
Right?
You
gotta get down on the,

Claude J (45:50):
do you

John (45:50):
the block.

Claude J (45:51):
yeah, it's been a good time there.
Like, like I said, we're, I can't talktoo much about what we're working on.
but we're trying to figure out how toboth make a statement about who our
company, where our company is, what ourvalues are, what the size of this game
is gonna be and all that kind of stuff.
So it's really interesting to be partof this from this, from the ground up.

John (46:06):
I hear you talking about building a culture and, making it a
place that's welcoming to people tobe open and, and say things, right.
I, I, this, this is the pointyou made me think about was, I
remember when I started, it waslike, Ooh, I just wanna work on.
You know, a God war or aGTA or something like that.
Right.

(46:26):
And it didn't matter whereit was, what I had to do.
That's all I cared or a street fighteror a Batman or something like that.
And then as you go on and you do thislong enough, then it, it becomes more
about the people you're building the gamewith and, and the type of game you're
building, doesn't really matter that much.
Right.
It's just the chance to kindof bring it to light with this
specific group of individuals.
Right?

Claude J (46:45):
Yeah, two things I'll say there is like, building culture
has been really interesting, uh,again, from the ground up, like
thinking about what affects culture.
and so we, we, you know, some things likewe play test the game every day, like
sometimes twice a day for an hour a piece.
and so we try and get this placewhere we always talking about the, the
game, trying to talk with the nuance,trying to show like, Hey, this is what
we think about on the people level.

(47:05):
You know, when it comes tohiring, like we try to mix up
all the different interviewers.
So it's showing like, Hey, this isour, this is the breadth of our team's
diversity, as much as we can show.
we don't only talk about the game.
We talk about culture, talk aboutlike, Hey, like what are like things
that you value from different placesyou've been and try to understand the
person that their whole level, whenit comes to recruiting, like we try
and look as many places as possible.
We try to make sure that, we're talking torecruiting if we're not meeting our needs.

(47:28):
and so like, what can we do to kindof change that up, reaching out to
different groups and stuff like thatgame depths of color being one of them.
and then I think it just comes down tolike, being really hard about the lines.
And so if people cross the line, ifpeople, someone says something in the
play test, it's not okay, call it outright away, make sure our leads are
the ones like, you know, setting theexample and calling those things out.
So people don't feel like theyhave to do that from the bottom up.

(47:49):
but they can, right?
Like, it's just trying to protect thatculture over time is like you have to
be vigilant about it the entire time.
And when it comes to making harddecisions, you have to do it.
It's really hard.
Like we've had multiple cases of likeproblems coming up with someone or
someone saying, some people shouldn'tsay, you just have to have no tolerance.
And it's really hard when it's a smallteam and everybody has an impact.
And you're just, you have to like,of somebody for doing something that

(48:12):
they shouldn't have done or sayingsomething that like implies that
they, they can't, you know, be aroundsomeone else and that's not okay.
Like we've had to do that.
And it's been really impressiveto be a part of a thing where
we've decided to do that.
It kind of like puts your money where yourmouth is when it comes to saying where
people first, like we have to do that.
We have to protect people.

John (48:30):
That's crazy.
Yeah.
On a small team whereevery resource is huge

Claude J (48:34):
yep.
Can't lose somebodysometimes yet, but we did it

John (48:38):
man.
Yeah.
Cuz you see that in some of thesebigger places that have been
around for many years, right?
Like I'll just say an act, a blizzard or
something like that.
Right.
And so you have peoplewho are very senior.
Very powerful, kind of get to get awaywith things that you wouldn't normally be

(49:00):
able to get away with.
Right.
And, and you could, you could makethe claim that it is, Hey, their
value to the project or the companyor the team is just that significant.
Right.
And, and for you and the culture,probably monsters to be, Hey,
people come first over the, the,the business and the product.
that's a big differencein and hard to deliver on.

Claude J (49:21):
we can't let people feel like they're not safe.
Right.
And so if anything is harmingsomeone's perception of their
safety, it's a big deal.
And it's, like I said, I've happeneda couple times where we had to like,
make a decision and they've done it.
And I think everyone's sort oflike, it's hard to even believe that
sometimes because , it's like I'vefound myself like, do we really do it?
Holy shit.
Like we did it.

(49:43):
and it's hard again, cause it impactsthe team and everybody's kind feeling
it, but it feels for the right reasons.
Yeah So it keeps you on yourti a little bit too as a team.

John (49:50):
now you're on a smaller team, more agile, more kind of blue sky opportunity,
getting to define culture, definestandards and practices coming from
bungee for the time you were there andsuch as large team and you know, a huge
franchise and you could argue, right.
Destiny being a new franchise.

(50:11):
It was still kind of builtby the people who built halo.
So you can, you can see a lot of
the,

Claude J (50:15):
a lot of the
roots.
Yeah.

John (50:17):
mm-hmm
Talk to me about yourtime at Bunge, right?
And some of the differences that you,you experienced now and, and what
it was back then and things you missthings, things you happy have been
able to change or things that youpurposefully like look to change.
Things like that.

Claude J (50:31):
yeah, my journey there was interesting, cuz I went there with
the goal sort of, I had a few goals.
Like I was coming from project sparkwhere like I really loved the project to
put everything I could into it, you know?
and I felt like I was able to growin so many areas, but I always felt
like I couldn't push the qualityin that sort of triple a sense.
As far as I was starting to learn,I was starting to understand.

(50:53):
So, you know, I wasworking on combat systems.
I was working on, you know, core systemsfor progressions and stuff like that.
And I was thinking a lotabout these problems that I
haven't thought about before.
Like you know how to make this Malayfeel really good, how to make the
target for the Malay feel really good.
How to make, performance on both sidesof the interaction of of an impact event.
Feel like they're super gratifying in away that like, you know, it's rewarding.
You're still all the stuff.
I was starting to think about it forthe first time in a professional setting

(51:16):
where I could go really deep, but Ialways feel like it could get to like.
70 80% before we had to move onto the next thing, it was hard.
Right.
Like I was like starting to finallysee the like, opportunity to grow.
Kinda like if you're like a painteror something, and you're like
starting to understand SHA a littlebetter while you're on one piece.

John (51:30):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great one.

Claude J (51:32):
yeah.
And so I was starting to see thatand I just never felt like I had
the time to get all the way there.
And so when I was looking at bungee andwas talking to people on the loop, I
was picking up on this culture of designdriven quality, such that it wasn't
just like, it looks high fidelity.
It was like, this meets theexpectations as a player.
This is like super deep in away that you can keep exploring
and getting better at for.

(51:53):
and I just kept feeling that and thepeople I was talking to in interviews
and the test, the test is insane.
spent forever on it.

John (52:01):
Bro, hold on, hold on.
I took the bungee test, man, what wouldthis, this would probably have been like,
I don't know, 2010 or something like that.
And I don't know it wasbefore I got to rockstar.
It was that, that era of, of unemployment.
I'm curious if it changed.
I knew of some other buddies that tookit, but I'm curious how it changed.

(52:22):
I remember, awesome design questions,like really awesome design questions
and super open ended, right.
To see like, Your sensibilities of how you
approach things

Claude J (52:31):
open ended.
Yeah,

John (52:32):
build, me a gun, right.
Or how will we go into buildinga gun or like, Hey, kind of talk
to like prefab or level layout.
Um, just, I remember having towrite like an essay on like,
feel

Claude J (52:45):
short.

John (52:45):
game feel

Claude J (52:47):
It's not a short test.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I dunno.
I dunno how much has changedthroughout the years, but when, um,
it is different per discipline too.
So like, you know,
or activity design, all havedifferent tests and stuff, which
each department can kind figure out.
but it was, there was some sharedquestions and there was a shared Sort
of, I guess, look for CRI like, youknow, criteria for quality of like,
we're trying to look for people who arereally thinking with these problems.

(53:08):
And again, like when I was lookingfor that, like extra 20, 30%, and I
saw these tests that implied that kindof like rigor, I was like, holy shit.
Like, I haven't even, I haven'teven thought this deep, let me think
about this, this deep, let me sitdown and like really get into this.
Cause they're clearly puttingthis out there for me.
Right.
yeah, my, my wife was mygirlfriend at the time.
Like I was gonna crazy.
She saw me like, yeah, I was like spendingevery hour ahead of home working on it.

(53:32):
Like I remember getting really closeto being done and throwing it all away.
And so it was all trash.
Like I'm not
of a, you know, it was like, I time hadsuch a hard time with a, like, it was,
it was tough and it was open ended.
So I wanted to be able to likehit the bar and then go above.
Right.

John (53:46):
absolutely.

Claude J (53:47):
but yeah, in, in terms of detail there, like, when I was interviewing
at some places before that, you know,you get a design question, that's
like, what do you think of this game?
Or like, how would you changethis mechanic or something?
And it was, it was interesting.
It was definitely open endedto have a conversation.
The tests I was going through for bungeewas stuff like, you know, rank stack,
rank, every input on a controller.
That was one of my favorite ones.
specifically for a first personshooter, I was thinking about that and

(54:08):
I was like, okay, how do I get there?

John (54:10):
It's like every face button and every

Claude J (54:11):
everything on the
controller.
And like, I remember having a conversationabout that in my job, but we never
got a chance to get really into it.
And so that was a good exampleof like, man, this is it.
I can get like all theway into this as much as I
want.

John (54:23):
Geek out to

Claude J (54:24):
yeah.
Super geek out.
yeah.
And that, that vibe, thegeek out vibe is important.
Right.
Cause it felt like I am in aplace that appreciates that.
Right.
Like I don't have to feel likethis is me getting, thinking
too much about something.
I didn't have to feel likethat kind of fear was there.
I could just thinkingtoo much was our job.
Cause like you're supposed,you're the designer you're
thinking about this too much.
That's your job

John (54:45):
That's why
we hired

Claude J (54:46):
right.
So that's awesome.
yeah, so I went throughthe test loop was amazing.
Uh, met a lot people.
It definitely felt like itwas a good place to grow.

John (54:54):
oh, you already in Seattle at the
time,

Claude J (54:56):
Cause I was at Microsoft.

John (54:58):
but like, had you been in the office before to like the

Claude J (55:01):
so no, and so it was like, you know, like I said, I'm a huge fanboy.
So I was like, oh
man, this is, this is, it.
I'm in the door.
Like I watched these Vioxwhen I was in high school and
college and all that stuff.

John (55:11):
yo, the ducks

Claude J (55:12):
yeah.
man, that was it.
Like I was talking with peopleI worked with were in those
Viox, which was nuts too.
Um,

John (55:18):
you see the, recognize the

Claude J (55:20):
yeah, trying to like stay calm, like, oh yeah.
You, whatever this, like,I'm like, oh, what kind

John (55:26):
Play.
Cool.

Claude J (55:28):
yeah.
Which I still, like, I still work withpeople from those mad and I I'm still
in awe cause they're amazing people.

John (55:33):
seemed like a place that you learned a lot at, right.

Claude J (55:36):
yeah, again, like.
it was, it was ups and downs of termsof like what we were doing, how we were
doing it, but in terms of what I'velearned strict up, like, I just feel
like I grew a hundredfold as a designerthere to get into like how, cause I
feel like, you know, sometimes I wannalike share, not just like, this is neat
experience, but like, you know, how Iwas able to like take the experience and
get the most, most out of it, you know?
which I, you know, try to like sharewith even people in, in my job now.

(55:58):
Like it's like I got there and youwanna observe, I'm gonna listen.
You gonna learn as muchas you can right away.
I felt like so much pressure on myselfto like, to show some, to like show
off and be like, I saw the problem.
No one else has solved in realitythat wasn't as important as just
learning so like, um, you know,taking what you have and like really

(56:19):
spending time understanding it.
so like, for example, I got there andI was working on a couple of abilities.
so I was looking at the tools, tryingto figure out how the abilities worked.
And I remember being overwhelmedby that, wanted to ask questions
on those kind of stuff.
And I spent time instead of sort oftrying to figure out, like, how am I
gonna make the thing that's super unique.
and I'm, superly thankfulthat I had this realization.
I was like, I just wannaunderstand how they make anything.

(56:40):
I wanna understand, likehow deep does his legacy go.
So I remember looking at allthe tools and trying to ask
questions about like everything.
cause it was really easy tolike look at something and be
like, oh, don't touch that.
It's really complicated.
And so the good example of that,this is actually in my, game, field
talk was the grenade directory stuff.
Like how I was lookingat like the bounces.
And I was like, what, whatis all this crazy stuff?
What are all these curveswith all these like different
tools.

(57:00):
Yeah.
And I tried to take my best stabat understanding it on my own.
I like read all therelationships I could detect.
I was like, okay, this is like, thisis looking at angle of incidents.
And that, that data comes fromthis other file and this file
looks all this other stuff.
And like, what does that,where does that come from?
I remember having anotebook or drew out every.
System and file that waslooking at each other.
And I was trying to like, look atthat a high level and just like,

(57:20):
what are these relationships?
And then I would turn to somebodyand ask question eventually and they
would throw out everything I wrote.
Cause it was all wrong.
what I
trying.

John (57:28):
I wanna, I wanna take a step back on
that one, cuz that's valuable.
Right?
trying to reverse engineersomething on your own.
Right?
Cause you're gonna find thingsthat you would never have found
otherwise that you maybe can utilizeor maybe understand something else
about the game that you wouldn't
have otherwise come across.
But depending on where youare in a production cycle,

(57:50):
there's that other side to it,
right.
Is the, like the,
Of the time you're spending.
And if you're, if you're taking morethan 10, 15 minutes on something,
and you could ask someoneelse who can save you

Claude J (58:03):
mm-hmm

John (58:04):
amount of time.
Right.
Like, is
that

Claude J (58:06):
no, that's the thing, man.
I, I think that's the skill
learning when, when, to ask is a skill.
I think everybody feels that pressure.
Sometimes it's easy to feelembarrassed by that pressure of like,
you know, you're stuck in it andyou're like, I can't figure it out.
I'm such a loser.
I gotta ask somebody.
Right.
Like super easy to feel that way.
It's not a real thing.
Tools are all bad.

John (58:25):
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's no

Claude J (58:27):
there's perfect tool.
Everybody's

John (58:29):
suck.

Claude J (58:30):
yeah.
for different

John (58:32):
they, if, if you got to build it yeah, for sure.
You get to build it from the groundlife, it'd be a hundred times better.
We all feel that we all believe that

Claude J (58:40):
It's never real.
Yeah.
So like everybody struggles withstuff like it's okay to, to get
to ask questions, but it's good.
Like you said, it ishelpful to try to dig in.
So I always feel like everybody'sgotta figure out their own
ratio of like how much I spenddigging in versus how much I ask.
Cuz it just, it's different foreach person asking respectfully with
detail is helpful to your right.

(59:00):
Of like, I need to know thisspecific thing, please help me.
And you know, not being it withurgency, like trying to give
somebody an opportunity to help you.

John (59:07):
yeah, I do like people coming to me with some amount of homework,
right?
Like, like, Hey, I looked at thesepoke these here's my Debu, you know,
here's here's a test

Claude J (59:17):
Yeah,
Yeah.
Yeah.
yeah.
And it just kinda shows someonelike they spent the time.
Maybe I should, you know,share that time with them too.
and yeah, like I think, One ofthe strengths that designers have
to build eventually over time,like I think is learning tools.
right.
Like, Like, I tell that to likecollege kids I talk to and stuff now
is like, you know, spend time jumpingaround all the different tool sets.

(59:38):
Even if it's not the one you'regonna use, because learning how
to jump into a new tool set andunderstand their relationships,
understand patterns and stuff.
That's hard as fuck.
And it never gets

John (59:46):
Yeah, you're not really taught that other you, that's something you have to
go put the time in yourself individually.
And, and there's so many out there now,
which is I, I

Claude J (59:56):
Yeah.

John (59:57):
to have had that problem when I

Claude J (59:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember looking for like, Ieven used like little, big planet
and I used like the dragon agemod tool and stuff like that.
I was just trying different stuff.
Cause I wanted to think about Tuesdayproblems, um, that were a little different
between, you know, games and stuff.
Um, which is cool.
Cuz that's what, that's what I'm saying.
It's like every game's gonna be different.
Every tool set's gonnabe made for that game.

(01:00:18):
And so you can't really master any giventool necessarily, especially if you're.
Like in it at one company orsomething you're jumping around,
you're trying to find your way inlearning a bunch of different tools
is actually a really good skill.
Um, so yeah, like I said, so spentmy time early on trying to dig into
those tools, understand how they, youknow, how they were able to make stuff
with such expression, how they wereable, like what they valued, right?

(01:00:40):
Like, you know, some tool sets are metfor like data table sort of queries or
some tool sets are set up for like, like,you know, really specific frame data
for like fighting games or whatever.
Right.
Um, everything's different.
And so like, you know, some peopleput all that data on like animation.
Some people do it allin like a spreadsheet.
Some people like it's just kind of showsyou what the values of companies are.

(01:01:01):
So spending that time ishelpful in that regard to you.
Um, and it helps you ask more questions.
So, yeah, so that was one bigarea I kind of spent time on.
And then the other one, just to kind ofget more out of it was like play tests
and feedback was such a huge learningvector more than I ever expected.
Yeah, more than I ever expected itto be like, cuz prior, like I hadn't

(01:01:25):
worked on a multiplier game that youcould play test every day and get like
a holistic view of what the thing was.
Um, and so, so that wasn't like aculture I was used to and at Bunge
and at fire walk, we have dailyplay tests where everybody's playing
every was good hands controller.
Everybody's talking about stuffon a mic or in the same room.
Um, and so you get to this placewhere you're playing so much that

(01:01:47):
the nuance becomes the conversation.
Whereas like if you're playingthe first time, it's big feedback.
Like man, I wish therewas more abilities, man.
I wish there was more guns, man.
I wish there was more
enemies.
Right?

John (01:01:57):
the typical stuff

Claude J (01:01:58):
yeah.
I wish there is helpful actually.
Right?
Cause you want that firstfresh eyes perspective.
But when you're playing a hundred timesin, you're talking about like, man,
like the like rhythm of these attacks,if I go like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
The last one feels really rewarding.
Whereas in this other combo it feels alittle off like rhythm wise or like I
wish it matched this other rhythm better.
Or you're talking about theselittle like tiny things about like.

(01:02:19):
Weapon recoil and the way youmanage that, or like, sight lines
on a map or something, right.
how they come across at different angles.
Or like when you're in acertain fight or something like
you start to pick up on that.
And then what I think is amazing is thateveryone's doing that at the same time.
Everyone's picking up on differentnuances, cuz they're all different
people with different eyes andyou're all talking out loud.

(01:02:39):
You get to learn from one another too.
Right.
And so like, you're maybe like,you know, I remember I never worked
on a multiplayer shooter before.
And so I never thought aboutlevel design to the degree.
I heard people think like talk about it.
Right.
And so I'm like in the room,I'm giving notes on stuff.
I know.
And people are talking about all thestuff around the way to make decisions
around the maps or the way things imply.

(01:03:00):
There there's a room in acertain space when you walk
into like lighting wise, right?
Or like, um, how many factors youhave to consider when you walk into
a room that are dangerous to call'em threat factors or whatever.
I'm hearing that for the firsttime I can ask questions like, oh,
can you expand on that feedback?
Some, maybe someone has anargument with them, whatever.
Right.
And then you can hear two sides of it.
And so the whole group gets morereps in thinking about the game

(01:03:23):
from different perspectives too.
Uh, so that was incrediblelearning experience.

John (01:03:28):
Dude.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
I think the first time I got intothat, that type of culture was I
had to get to like Montreal, right?
Like we got to, to see that culturenext, you know, you be soft,
uh, roots and things like that.
One thing I had to learnwas how to be vocal, right?
Like I, I usually kind,I live in my head a lot.
Right.
And so I'm playing the game and I'm justdoing things and I let other people talk,

(01:03:51):
you know, and I'll bring up things hereor there, I'll just kind of keep mashing
into a wall and be, Hey, look at this.
but the more you do it and the better youget it, it, the the most valuable skill
is, I guess speaking your thoughts, right?
Being

Claude J (01:04:02):
Yeah.

John (01:04:03):
about every little.

Claude J (01:04:05):
Agreed.
And there's one more skill beforethat, which is like, the skill of
being sure of yourself to some degree
like, it's
like, yeah.
Dismissing your own imposter syndrome.
Cuz I think a lot of timesso say like you're gonna play
test, you have these thoughts.
You're like, you know,you're doing your own thing.
You're like thinking aboutsomething you're playing and
someone else says that note like,ah, man, I guess I wasn't crazy.
Like that moment where likeyou could have said it too.

John (01:04:27):
Yeah.

Claude J (01:04:27):
it's just kind of, there's like these moments are validate
that like these thoughts in yourhead aren't, you're not alone.
And it's always worth saying thembasically because there's likely
someone else who feels that way.
so we always said like, for any givenfeedback, no, even if it's the one
person in the room they're probablyrepresenting, especially at the scale
of destiny and stuff, like they'reprobably representing 30, 40,000.
So never feel like, oh, thiswas just some weird thing I did

(01:04:50):
until we always say that.

John (01:04:51):
I definitely.
Circle back to the point you madeabout the value of creating a culture
where people are not intimidated tospeak up or, or are comfortable, right.
That it becomes second nature.
It becomes as natural as beinglike, yo, I need some water

Claude J (01:05:05):
Yeah.

John (01:05:05):
or, making a joke or laughing

Claude J (01:05:06):
Agreed.
Yeah.
Cuz that's what lets that nuancecome through is if you don't
have to feel like you have togo through a little mental gate.
Right.
And so some of what contributesto that, in that feedback culture
specifically is This is my thing.
I say it's myself at least is likefeedback is one directional it's like
someone says how they feel and that's it.
you don't argue with that feedback.
There's no challenging it.
You can ask questions to understandmore of what they're describing,

(01:05:28):
but like it's not a back and forth.
And, and similarly, if you givefeedback, you should not expect it to.
Be a change that you're demanding, right.
Or whatever.
Like, it's not like, oh, I gave thisnote when I play the should be different.
It's you give
feedback, trust the
team
to understand and make the best decisions.

John (01:05:44):
Hell.
Yeah, dude, this sound like somethinga therapist might have told me, man, is
like manage your expectations and youcan't argue with someone's feelings.
You can't try to

Claude J (01:05:53):
mean,

John (01:05:54):
validate them or say they're right or wrong.
Right.
You gotta just it, like
listen

Claude J (01:05:59):
you say it that way too, because that's I don't have any time
these days, but if I were have timeto deal there, game devs of color
talk or talk or whatever, it'd be thatlike the things that I learned to be
a better designer from therapy, andsome of that is, is kind of the way I
process feedback the way I even thinkabout my own, reactions to things I'm
playing and how do I express that ina way that, you know, isn't combative.

(01:06:22):
It's just like the way I,I feel about something.
And so like a good example of thatis like, there's this framework
called for, nonviolent communicationner, which is acronyms observation
feeling, need request basic.
Yeah.
And so basically it's likea little, flow, right?
You go through what you'retrying to express in that manner

(01:06:43):
of like, what am I observing?
How does it make me feel?
What does that make me feel like I need?
And then formulate all thatIntel request singular.
So like singular observation
leads into a singular request.
and that's really important becauseit's easy to be like game sucks.
I need to be better, make it better.
or like this big ass you enemy suckthere's enough enemies, whatever.

(01:07:05):
Like, if you're really
specific.
Yeah.
Uh, it helps.
And that sort of like disarmsanyone from feeling like you're
attacking their person or their ego.
It's just kind of describing.
Here's what I saw andhere's having me feel right.
And so yeah, that, I think that feedbackkind of back and forth, gets better
when you're, it'll have to be perfectabout that format or any given format.
I think it just works better whenit's about the game and it's,

(01:07:28):
emotional feedback is valuable.
Like if you're angry,like, fuck this game sucks.
Like, or I got, I got this enemy islike really frustrating or whatever,
like that's valuable, but if you canalso follow that through with like,
okay, let me calm down for a second.
I'm working with the people making this,this isn't just the game of playing.
talked through how I got here.
Right?

John (01:07:47):
which it's still cool that we get to be that way, right?
Like, there's value to that to beinga, a normal gamer, as opposed to what
I always remind designers or aspiringdesigners to be like, Hey man, you
gotta develop your critical eye.
You gotta keep that notebook right nextto you to write down everything that
you're feeling you're running into and beable to kind of critically dissect it and

Claude J (01:08:07):
mm-hmm

John (01:08:07):
Like, why did it feel bad?
How would you
improve

Claude J (01:08:10):
In value, what you're writing down, right.
Like is it's really easy tobe like, ah, this is, this is
obvious, but like, it may not be.
And even

John (01:08:16):
Were.

Claude J (01:08:17):
like, it just means you're clueing into something real.
Right.
So

John (01:08:20):
Mm-hmm I like that.
I like that.
don't uh, undervalue something

Claude J (01:08:23):
mm-hmm

John (01:08:23):
it as, as obvious
or egregious.

Claude J (01:08:26):
And again, like everybody represents somebody.
and so it's importantto just get that out.
Uh, and then it's equallyimportant to create an environment
where it's, it feels like okay.
To say something.
Right.

John (01:08:36):
Mm-hmm mm-hmm what is one thing you miss about working at Bunge?

Claude J (01:08:42):
it's just a lot of people I really appreciate working with actually.
I mean, that's pretty much it Ithink that's everywhere, right?
Like, and I think about firstplayable, I think about project spark.
I think about, I workedon Skyland for a bit.
It always comes down to people.
Like I even tell myself, like, I'veworked on games now that have touched
like millions of lives and like,

John (01:08:57):
Yeah.

Claude J (01:08:58):
big budget, all this kind of crazy stuff.
But the thing I, when I think backto my favorite moments, it's always
around in the pit with somebodyworking on something or like something
coming together that we all saw.
So I think that's always what comeslike, even just as you said that I
was thinking through like my timethere and it's just faces, it's
like, just like such someone's laugh.
Someone's like, you know, attitude whenthey brought something to the table or

(01:09:20):
something I learned from someone else.
It's

John (01:09:22):
yeah.
what's something you shipped, somethingthat shipped that you had hand in that
you were like super proud of or justwent through hell to get it out there.

Claude J (01:09:32):
of mind, with destiny.
So I'll say somethingabout spark real quick,

John (01:09:35):
I'm happy to move over to spark
actually, because in thisday and age of user generated
content, being all the rave.
and I thought about this when Iwas coming into this cloud is how
Microsoft tends to either be likesuper ahead of its time or super in
the back catching up at the horrible
time.
Right.
And, and when I look at project spark,man, I think they were super ahead of

(01:09:58):
the, curve there and, and they didn't, Idunno, I guess they bought Minecraft and
they're like, all, we just need Minecraft,
but I
like spark man.

Claude J (01:10:05):
I'll never know the full business insight story of it and yeah.
And like, maybe it was toolate when it's too early.
Who knows?
Like, I think for me it wasprobably the game that was
like still closest to my heart.
Okay.
And for
anyone who doesn't totally knowthe whole picture, it's like

John (01:10:19):
Yeah.

Claude J (01:10:19):
made to

John (01:10:19):
project

Claude J (01:10:20):
game make game.
So game's no longer availablething, unfortunately.
Um, it is a game about making games.
So it was built off of the base ofcode, which is Microsoft's first,
one of their first, like make codingaccessible by making like a really
simple game, really possible script withlike, you know, this, the structure of
it was like, you'd go into any objectand you can give it instructions of

(01:10:41):
when something happened, do something.
And that was the basic scripting languageeven, but it was all represented with like
big, chunky, friendly icons that lookedlike jump or punch or walk or whatever.
Right.
the project spark was expanding on thatto make like even more gains, even more
expressive and all that kind of stuff.
and the reason it so close to my heartwas cause like, by the time we started
interacting with the community, thattime, it was big enough and worked
well enough that we could give it topeople in like a beta form or whatever.

(01:11:04):
Like it changed people.
It was so cool to be a part of it.
Like you could see, like therewere people who legitly became
game developers because of it.

John (01:11:13):
wow.

Claude J (01:11:13):
People who had relationships, people who got
married, people who like became likebest friends looked, it was insane.
It was so cool to be like that closeand have that much of an impact from
the work that you do on people's lives.
and then, you know, like I love makinggames cuz I love making things come alive.
And I love making things that agroup of people can see together,
become real together, right.

(01:11:34):
Vision.
And you spend like, you know, months oryears or whatever, putting it together
and you get there that moment andseeing people in our community do that.
Right.
Of like,

John (01:11:42):
yeah.

Claude J (01:11:43):
ideas, sharing code, sharing art together, and just like
figuring out how to get it together.
Amazing experience.
So the reason I'm too proud of is cuzlike, yeah, like a couple things, like
I was on the brain team, which wasthe team, like building all the stuff
that you could use to build games.
Right.
So I was thinking a lot about all games.
thinking a lot aboutlike, what do you need?
in any game, what tools do you need?
Like how do we make that simplerfor someone to understand, like,

(01:12:05):
what is the essence of a race cast?
You know what I mean?
Like , it's

John (01:12:08):
Yeah.
Yeah,

Claude J (01:12:10):
a simpler

John (01:12:11):
So is that, is that an example of a brain?
Like, it's like, Raycast like, let
me know what you collide with
and

Claude J (01:12:16):
could be anything a
brain Yeah.
Like a brain could be like a rockthat says when the player touches,
it explode, something like that.
And so there's simple tiles like explodetiles for like the name of each piece.
And so there's simple tiles that couldsay like one touch or one do explode or
something, but they, they could break itdown to say like when C and that would

(01:12:36):
do some similar kind of Ray cast stuff.
then you could go into that andget some options and stuff and
see when C a player with a sword.
Attack or something.
Right.
so now you can like keep expanding it.
If someone got really

John (01:12:49):
operated the same way,

Claude J (01:12:50):
EV anything could be AI, all of a sudden, right.
You could put a brain on anything.
And so it could be as simple as yeah.
When a do jump, uh, or it could beas complicated as like, when a figure
out the distance between this orthat and apply a force and do that.
Like, you could get Freddyinto it if you wanted to.
Right?

John (01:13:08):
you had like full access to all conditionals

Claude J (01:13:10):
Like we, we let you we let you basically expand anything to get
into, like this place where you'realmost writing, just like regular code.
you can just crazy stuff.
So like, know, for example, likeour E three demo, um, my buddy

John (01:13:23):
Which year

Claude J (01:13:24):
man,
2013.
2013.

John (01:13:26):
E three spark 2013.

Claude J (01:13:28):
in that demo, my buddy, like, so we built like this whole sequence
of events, like a giant cut sea and abunch of cool player abilities and stuff.
But like the shining star, that thing isthis me that my buddy built, he was an
engineer on the project and it was a methat was like, he wrote like I K into the
way that the movement of the arms and legsactually performed when you moved around.

(01:13:48):
So you could animate it andstuff like, and that was

John (01:13:50):
Oh

Claude J (01:13:51):
with the actual tiles of the game.
Like everything in that demo, we builtwith the actual stuff in the game.

John (01:13:55):
I K you could R together with,

Claude J (01:13:58):
he, like wrote the logic for the, okay.
It wasn't like, there was like a tilefor like, I, he just did all the stuff
yeah.

John (01:14:05):
a, like a, a typical user.
Couldn't do that

Claude J (01:14:07):
Uh, I mean, technically you could.
Right.
And so that was the thing that wasamazing was like, you could, if you saw
a project, like, cuz we could share themup to the cloud and stuff, you could
look at them, play them if you playedsomething and you're like, man, that's
a really cool, SF Fox clone, right?
Like I really love SFOXhow do I make SF Fox?
You could download it, open it up andthen mess with anything inside of it.
And so you could look at howthey built the plane or how they

(01:14:27):
built the pickups or whatever.
Right.
Um, and so again, it was super coolcommunity cuz everybody could share their
logic and it was something that eventhe games industry doesn't have right.
Of like I've made athing that's really cool.
Here is hot works.
Learn from that.
You don't have to copy it.
You could start from that and changesomething and then everybody got better.
so again, just seeing thatmomentum was really incredible.
and I was, I was literallypart of that, right.

(01:14:49):
Was like helping make all thosepieces, looking at people,
amaz seeing what they needed.
yeah, pretty amazing
project to be on

John (01:14:56):
it resonates deeply with me is that building block, right.
Being the designer on the, kind ofthe building blocks of the brains,
like how do you bring fire fromthe mountains to the use creators,
right.
To go crazy with.
and you told me.
that they would go crazywith like nesting things,
so many different layers, deepand producing some insane logic.

Claude J (01:15:18):
yeah.
And like it started simple, right?
Like someone would saylike, I wanna mix Zelda.
And so they made, you know, topdown camera with like rooms.
And so when you went into a room,the camera would transition to
another camera and there was like,and it was like crate and stuff.
You could break and then wan like stuffand you inventory tools and stuff.
It was like pretty simple.
And someone would take that, copy it,start to change it, make another game

(01:15:38):
that was a little bit more expressive.
And that kept happening back and forth.
Like with, you know, tons of people,like thousands of people at once.
and so you just keep seeingthe like community evolve and
then they had a website, theystart sharing libraries, right?
Like it was nuts.

John (01:15:51):
Ha.
Okay.
So I think that's, that's wheresome of these other things like
roadblocks, or even what we
were doing at Fortnite falls, alittle short is like, there's a
big part of letting people graband open up and dissect projects.
Right.
And like

Claude J (01:16:03):
Yeah.

John (01:16:04):
off of them.

Claude J (01:16:05):
And the game industry doesn't have that.
Like, we don't get to share ourfinal products and how that worked.
Right.
Like we get GDC and stuff like that tokind of talk it through, but then, you
know, not every talk's in the detail.
And so maybe not whatyou're interested in.

John (01:16:18):
When that matrix demo came out, right.
Showing off you E five,
it was like, oh shit, cool.
I can play it.
But like, I wanna open it up.
And then it took, I don't know howit took like twice the same amount of
time just to clean it up and make it
like parable and, andreadable by an outside world.
but, but it's out there now, so there'svalue in that, but yeah, I I can see the
difference of like, Building somethingjust to make it work and then building

(01:16:40):
something so that it's crackableand, and digestible and people could

Claude J (01:16:43):
But what was cool was like, they didn't have that limitation.
They didn't care if it wasn'tclean, they just shared their stuff.
and then like internally, which issomething I've never gotten to do again,
this is something that we did as astudio, which is like every milestone.
We'd basically have a game jam daywhere we'd used as the tools we've made
to make games all day, likeeverybody offline from what you're

(01:17:03):
doing and just make stuff.
and that was really cool to see,like, you know, just what we
can make as devs using dev tools

John (01:17:10):
Yeah.

Claude J (01:17:10):
that we would share some of that stuff with the community.

John (01:17:12):
Especially from, with your stuff, right?
Like, Hey, I built this thing,this, this is in the build now.
And then

Claude J (01:17:17):
yep.

John (01:17:17):
the craziness people could do with it.

Claude J (01:17:19):
And it gave disciplines an opportunity to play with other
disciplines, you know, of likeartists wanted to program a program,
wanna do some art, and then.
as a designer like that, wasn'tour only day to make games.
Like we had often make gamesjust to, expand our tools and
understand where our bugs are even.
I was like, you know, juniorto mid-level at the time.
And so I was able to make games ofall kinds of genres, like just trying
stuff, just to test things out.

(01:17:40):
But then I was not just testing.
I was thinking about like, okay,like what does make a good platform
or what does make a good brawler?
What does make a good, bullet hellwhat does make a good adventure game?
Like I was just trying all thisdifferent stuff and I got to learn so
much in such a short period of time.
I didn't even think about at the time.
Like, I, I think back nowI grew a lot there too,
because of that, like I was just,you know, so I, when I tell people

(01:18:01):
who are trying to get in, like,just go make a game, it doesn't

John (01:18:04):
yeah,

Claude J (01:18:05):
It doesn't have to be
in unity.
You can, you can
find you're gonna learn, just try stuff.
And it, and it helps you think aboutwhat other people are thinking about.
Um, helps think about things that likeyou wouldn't think you have to think
about, you just gotta make stuff.
Yeah.

John (01:18:18):
just makes stuff.
Yeah, totally.
Cause there's so much value in, in allthe things we take for granted, right?
Like, oh, the timing at the rate ofwhich this moves so that it lines
up when the players here, or how doI detect that they collided or took
damage or hit this trigger, right?
Like that shit is universal.
Figure out how it happens in one place.
And then you can kind of go from there.
often I have felt in a way thatI wish the place I'm working

(01:18:43):
at allowed for more game jams.
Right.
I wish we had the culture that we cando a monthly thing or a weekly thing.
And it's also when you're working ina game that is essentially an editor.
That that's part of the job, right?
It's like, yo, you gotta use your tools
and,

Claude J (01:18:57):
part of the job.
Yeah.

John (01:18:59):
every week or every month that forces this.

Claude J (01:19:01):
I bring it up as something that I, I wish we had more of in
the industry, cuz even before spark,uh, at first playable, we also
had game games pretty regularly.
It wasn't, we didn'tmake game development.
They didn't make like tools, you know,for making games, we just were developers.
And every so often we'd have a moralevent where we basically all game jammed.
And so it was usually a day, sometimesa little bit longer or whatever,

(01:19:22):
but it was like self-made teams,people just trying stuff and game
maker or whatever at the time.
And like, and it was also, itwas great for the same reasons.
Like you get to try newstuff they ever tried before.
Uh, you get to bond at people and itwas such a good just team builder.
Um, and sometimes as games eventurned to things that we were
interested in for like long term

John (01:19:40):
Mm-hmm

Claude J (01:19:41):
but that was never the goal.
Right.
It was just like try stuff.
It's fine.
You know, have fun.

John (01:19:44):
Yeah.
So before you migrated to the west coast,

Claude J (01:19:49):
Mm.

John (01:19:49):
You did your damnest to check out all the places that existed
your home on the east coast.
And you actually got in on thisbubble, that was what, like
toys to life kind of thing.
And I thought, that was a hugegenre man that had like all the
promise in the world at the time.
And
you were on yeah, dude,
like, cause Disney, you know,once, once Disney tried to jump

(01:20:11):
in, I was like, oh yeah, there's
there's gonna be a war here.
Right.
This is it.
You know, sky was gigantic,

Claude J (01:20:17):
yeah.

John (01:20:18):
so much money for

Claude J (01:20:19):
Yeah.
I was, that was so thrilledto be on that game.
That game was the game thatmade me know I wanted to.
Combat and abilities forever.

John (01:20:27):
Yeah.

Claude J (01:20:28):
you know, I grew up watching dumb ass cartoons, way too long.

John (01:20:32):
Like

Claude J (01:20:33):
Like nineties was all about like animals, attitude, like, you
know, there's turtles, obviously guard

John (01:20:39):
yeah.
Oh, gargoyles.

Claude J (01:20:41):
Like all that stuff, man.
Like I loved
that's

John (01:20:45):
Street sharks.
There's the one with theselike squirrel chipmunk bear

Claude J (01:20:49):
yeah.

John (01:20:49):
man.
They were like half cyborg.

Claude J (01:20:52):
Oh my God.
Yes.
I'm blanking on the name, but yeah,it was also, uh, Dyna writers.
It was like all this dumb ass shit.
Like people just Like
yeah, people just like jammedideas together and it was like,
it was just best and so on.
Skyliners like I remember beforethey had names like before
the characters had names like.
we just had the code namesof what their fantasy were.
So like he had like rock dragonor like cyber dragon or whatever.

(01:21:13):
or like, ninja lobster or some shit and itwas literally just like ridiculous fantasy
kind of ideas just jammed together.
And it was like, we just kind oftalked about what could, what could
they do and just put that together.
And it was fucking, it was amazing.
It was just like super dope to just havea team kinda become children a little bit
pick ideas and kinda put things together.
And it was also lucky.
It was like, you know, so toys for Bobwas working in the primary Skylander

(01:21:37):
skew, where Vicari versions, where I gotto work was working on the 3d S version.
And so that was likereleasing at the same time.
But what we found was like,they were making more of a top
down kind of di style game.
Like no jumping, you know, justkinda like a lot of the abilities
and time in multiplayer and stuff.
and ours was more refined.
To like action and platforming.

(01:21:57):
So, and it was 3d, so we didn't doeverything they were doing anyway.
And so we kind of figure outwhat our strengths were gonna be.
and so it was like we did havejumping, we had double jumping, we
had all these air attacks we had,like, our combat was just different.
I felt like it was a littlebit more expressive, even,
just having the extra vector.
and so like, basically I was on the,on the team that was able to like,
look at those high level fantasiesof like stealth L or whatever.

(01:22:17):
And instead of just building the sameexact thing they did on the console
version, we got to figure out like, howdo we translate the like fantasy, the core
verbs of that character into somethingthat makes sense for a platformer with
this kind of different combat model.
And so we did get to think at thatground level still of like, how
do we bring this fantasy to life?
I got super lucky cuz like I hadno idea what they were working on.
It just was like an intern and I gotthe Jeff audit, uh, which is great.

(01:22:41):
And.
You know, I got to work on thecore parts of the character.
So I, I feel like I helpedout with everything.
You know, I was re scripting stuff.
I was putting together systems.
and then the lead of characters,he gave me the opportunity to
work on a couple, which is my own.

John (01:22:55):
Mm-hmm

Claude J (01:22:55):
I still looked at that as like this big lift moment, confidence wise of
like someone trusting me with this thing.
like, yeah.
And I was like, you know, Iearned that, you know, and
like, got to learn trying it.
And I, I still feel like that waslike the nudge to like, Hey man,
this is your thing you could
do this.

John (01:23:13):
you know, go crazy with it.

Claude J (01:23:14):
yeah.
And it just gave me the nudgetowards like believing in myself
that I could build stuff like that,that I loved already helping with.
Right.
So again was amazing.
And then, like, I remember, it wasearly enough that like, we didn't
have, you know, all the final modelson the toys, the physical toys,
they
were gray and

John (01:23:30):
Yeah.
How was that they give you kindof like paper designs or mockups.
I was like, Hey, it's gonnabe this type of animal.

Claude J (01:23:35):
Yeah, it depends on like each character's like production time.
Right.
And like, so sometimes we'dget stuff that was more done.
Sometimes we'd get stuff thatwas literally like a clay kind
of thing and not done yet.
but like the concept was there and theywere doing focus testing with the kids.
And so I remember like this likeuncolored thing that looked like a dragon
put in front of the kid and with thegame, it says you can play that dragon.
And they were losing their shitwith toy before they even played.

(01:23:57):
I liken this is

John (01:24:02):
hell yeah.
Aw man,

Claude J (01:24:05):
That was thing.
Work on that.

John (01:24:07):
it just screams printing money for
sure.
I guess, I guess iPad wasn't out.
And now

Claude J (01:24:12):
yeah,

John (01:24:12):
of killed everything, like I'm sure.

Claude J (01:24:14):
yeah Of

John (01:24:15):
even Lego got in on it.
Right.
And, and that, that's another onethat just makes so much sense.
Right?
Like build the thing, spend thetime to build the thing and then

Claude J (01:24:23):
see it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
People love to create man.
Like, yeah.
So, there's one more part of it that Ilearned a lesson that stuck with me too
for my whole design career, which islike, sometimes things feel really dire
when you're making a game, especially

John (01:24:37):
Then don't end in sight.

Claude J (01:24:39):
yeah, but it's like, you know, some of you discover some problem
that is just like the, you feel theeclipse show up and everybody's like,
oh shit, what do we gotta fucking do?
like, this is it.
And I remember for,
yep.
I was gonna say it was a hardware thing.
Like we, you know, cause thepromise of skying was like, you
take any of your toys, put 'emon the pad you play 'em right.

(01:24:59):
And DS did not have that kind of memory.
And so it was like, what am I gonna do?
We can't let you swap anybody in time.
and I don't actually remember exactlyhow we got here, but I do remember
that we discovered, this other vector,this other way of playing it, which
is super interesting in a differentway, which is basically like, what
if you can't load anybody time?
But what if you, whenyou start a level, you.
pick two, you have asquad more or less, right?

(01:25:21):
You say these are my dudes and then youload 'em up and you see them together.
And they're like littletag team buddies basically.
And so you jump into a leveland at any time at all, like mid
combo, you can press a button swap.
And so you swap heroes, you just,boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And so you can do that whenever you want.
And you, it was an interesting wayof adding depths to all the kits
and all the stuff you could do.
Um, and it didn't feel like limitation.

(01:25:41):
All of a sudden it felt like this waslike part of the identity of the game.
And, um, I remember game director atthe time always talked about like,
okay, if we do that, then we get moreof that magic moment in the beginning
where you pick your characters.
And so we make that this, like this,this really memorable magic moment,
and that became like a mantra wekept saying to ourselves, right.
figured out how to make that, likethis really interesting experience

(01:26:02):
3d S had that like early AR kindof experience too, with the camera.
And so you'd put the characteron the toy and you'd see it on
the, on the platform rather.
And you see it on your camera,on the D 3d ass, and then they
jump into the game.

John (01:26:17):
oh

Claude J (01:26:18):
it was, it was fucking dip.
It was
way ahead, his time too.
yeah,
so that that was the game.
Yeah.
And so the lesson, like I said, is like,sometimes these dire moments that feel
like you're absolutely like, just likedrowning and fear and doubt and despair.
And it feels like, well,I guess this is it.
Like, sometimes there's like a nuggetof like twisting your constraints or

(01:26:38):
thinking a little bit more carefullyafter just living in that dread for a
little bit, that lets you Flo float backup you're always gonna flip back up,

John (01:26:45):
always gonna flip back up.
I like
that

Claude J (01:26:46):
bungee had a value, they call buoyancy, which is the same concept.
Right.
It was like, you gotta build that, forcein yourself of like, even when time's
darkest, you're gonna float back up.
It's gonna be okay.
Like just keep thinking hard figure,you're gonna figure this out and you're
gonna float back up to the surface.
And
so that stuck with me.

John (01:27:01):
I love that that experience shining through right, is you've
been in the trenches in the darkness
long enough, and you'regone through ebbs and flow.
It's gonna be alright.
And in fact, recognize it, right.
They were like, oh shit,
we're in that moment.
we don't know how longit's gonna take us to

Claude J (01:27:15):
Yeah.
And it's okay to be
in that

John (01:27:17):
this.
It's okay.

Claude J (01:27:18):
real.
Just gotta trust each other.

John (01:27:22):
suck it in breathe.
Yeah.
You know, you're gonna comeout with something awesome.
On
the other end.
Trust yourself.
Hell yeah,
we're almost at the, kind of the origin,
right?

Claude J (01:27:36):
you're going backwards.
Yeah.

John (01:27:37):
yeah.
The, place that you first gotyour break was first playable
and.
feel free to talk about whatever, but Ithought what was cool is the fact that
you got to hone in on something thatus as designers don't probably use as
much as we should from our tool bag.
Right.
And it's like the power of like paperdesigning, you know, we, we kind
are be held to thesewonderful 3d tools that

(01:27:57):
we have and how fast it is to prototype

Claude J (01:28:00):
yeah,

John (01:28:00):
that we forget this other super useful,

Claude J (01:28:03):
It's cheap.
in college.
I had a few classes where we got, andI was in the game development program.
I was at RochesterInstitute of technology.
Pretty dope.
yeah.
Upstate New York cause early program.
and we got a couple of reps that likedoing paper prototypes for board games.
Um, so I had some familiarity and thenin my first gig, like I said, the first
play ball, we were working on kids'games and one of our projects working

(01:28:24):
with Disney, it was for club penguin
so I got to on was huge.
Yeah.
in that game is all about mini games.
It was a weird concept still
to me, it.

John (01:28:34):
Roblox before Roblox

Claude J (01:28:35):
A little bit, but it's, it's like, there's this weird thing.
I'll still never graph, which islike, it's an island full of penguins.
They just party all day.
Like, I don't know where that came from,but it's stuck with people so I I'll ever
get it, but it was pretty, it was huge.
So, and the game is all about like,like I said, they party all day.
So you walk around the island,you go to a different place,
you play a thing with people.
It's a mini game usually.

(01:28:57):
and that's it.
And so like when we were making our game,we were always pitching new mini games.
So the cheap way of doing that wasprototyping either through game maker.
So we literally used game maker tomake a bunch of really fast rapper
prototypes and send that over.

John (01:29:08):
thought it was flash.
That's interesting.

Claude J (01:29:10):
I think at the time it was kind of back and forth between the two.
and then we also the paper prototypesdepending on the complexity of the game.
Right.
And so, like I remember one projectI was on, Disney wanted to see it.
It was a paper prototype.
And so what we did was we gotlike a kid to come in to play it.
And so I was setting up the paperprototype, but the other designer
we spent like forever, like we madecards at a little piece of paper.
We like made rules.

(01:29:31):
We had all this stuff, we had Legosrepresenting the different pieces and
they were gonna be all things that wecould plan to put into 3d in the game.
Right.
it made all sense.
Like this game is pretty fun.
It's simple.
I brought this kid in, I think he was like
five or six.
Yeah.

John (01:29:44):
Five, six.

Claude J (01:29:45):
So it was real.
Like, I was not used toworking with that audience yet.
So in my head, I was like, this is dope.
This is gonna be a sweet game.
This kid's gonna love it.
It makes all the sense in theworld came in and immediately
he was bored immediately.
Didn't even, and hear what I had to say.
I was playing with the, like, I wasjumping around, do stuff and it was
such a valuable, humbling moment oflike, you have to think like players,

(01:30:07):
you're not making this for yourself.
and so a lot of the stuff I learnedfrom games like that and I think
this still translates to adults.
It's like,
Feedback, like not just feedback,like, you know, I pressed the
button and it told me what I did.
It's like feedback as much as possible.
Like if I do something,show that it has an impact.
If I like move my hand ormove my cursor on the DS, like
something is always reacting.

(01:30:29):
Something is always teachingyou something constantly.
And it just helps any levelof brain development engage.
Right.
Cause you're like noticingthat's how humans work.
It's like you touch a rock, you feelit's texture, you teaches you something.
Right.
And so you're making decisionsabout that all of a sudden.
and so like if you have to set upall these rules first that are like
abstract and there's not like ametaphor that someone's connecting to.

(01:30:49):
And like, there's not like aconstant source of feedback teaching
them, it's gonna be harder forthem to engage and participate.
Right.
And so that kid was like, I don'tunderstand what you want me to
participate with, but I see this toy.
And if I move it in my head, there'sa vision of what's happening.
And so that's what I'm doing.

John (01:31:04):
Okay.

Claude J (01:31:04):
as opposed to like being set up, like move this toy anywhere you want.
And then the board willreact to you, right?
Like something like that.
So I learned a whole bunch on thosekind of games, super humbling to work
with little kids who do not hold back.
They'll tell you it's garbage.
If it's garbage, they'll tell you.
They don't like it.
They're bored,
they do not hold back.

John (01:31:22):
Talk about valuable timing to learn that right.
To, for that, to be the first place
that early in your career tolearn that that's super vital.

Claude J (01:31:30):
Super humbling.

John (01:31:31):
don't get there.
Yeah.
A

Claude J (01:31:32):
Mm-hmm

John (01:31:32):
us don't get there until much later.
So

Claude J (01:31:33):
yeah.
And, and like, you know, working withyour tester, your feedback group in
person with high reps, rare, super rare.
I didn't realize it was rare at the time,I value that, place so much I learned a

John (01:31:47):
sure

Claude J (01:31:47):
great people.
one of the most diversestudios I've ever been at too.
It's
just great.

John (01:31:51):
on top of that, huh?
it's funny how, you know, some placesthat you start out at, kinda see
things, you take it for granted.
Oh yeah.
Every place I
work at is gonna be the same way.
And it's like, nah,
man.

Claude J (01:32:01):
I just didn't
wanna stay enough.
Date, New York,

John (01:32:04):
Yeah.
It's you missed that snow, huh?

Claude J (01:32:07):
not miss

John (01:32:10):
but

Claude J (01:32:10):
out there.

John (01:32:12):
man, yeah.
I could imagine, you know, havinglike plan ahead for your meals and
and all that on the weekends
mm-hmm dude.
Uh, yeah, yeah.
yeah.
Um, R I, that, that is a, isa, one of those, one of those,
one of those tech schools.
Um, and, and I feel like notthat many were doing game dev

(01:32:35):
at that time, so that's even
makes it more special in, in that area.
And yeah.
What, any memories you have going to

Claude J (01:32:44):
Yeah.

John (01:32:44):
to the program?
Like, did you know you weregonna go straight into games

Claude J (01:32:48):
Yeah.
Sorry.
yeah.
The short story is I was aterrible high school student.
I was, I was one of those kidsthat was smart, but like didn't.
Really engaged.
And so I
didn't really like, Yeah.
I just, I didn't plan very well.
So I only applied to one place causeit's the only place that I wanted to go.
It was
like, yeah.
Cause I went to visit I T andI saw their games lab and it
was like this early thing.

(01:33:08):
And I, I had done some programmingclasses in high school that I did
real well at and I really enjoyed it.
And I was like, if people program things,someone probably programs, video games.
And then I saw this program that did that
and so I gotta visit it.
And I was like, you know what,this is where I wanna go.
And
thankfully I got in so I wentthere and then yeah, like
it's, it was early programs.

(01:33:30):
So like, I think they're still, theywere still learning a lot and the
teachers knew that and it was good.
It felt like, you know,shared kind of experience.
It was frustrating a lotof times too, obviously.
Cause it's new.
and it was hard.
Like a lot of peopledropped out and stuff.
but what I really valuedabout it was yeah, like.
That sort of humility from nothaving this be like a formal,
everything is done program.
It's like, they're kindof adapting as they go.

(01:33:50):
and that's how games works, right?
Like nobody's
an expert until they're become an expert.
and the other part of it wasthe T-shaped aspect of teaching.
So like the T-shaped meaning,like, you know, you touch all
the different things, right?
Like, instead of just being one, likethey were definitely more heavy on
programming, cuz it was a CS like computerscience kind of built, you know, college.
but when they started doinggames, they taught everybody

(01:34:12):
2d, animation, 3d animation,how models and rigs work, about.
The super programming side, for sure.
A little bit on design side.
Like I said, we did likepaper prototypes or stuff.
We talked about production.
We talked about the differentphilosophies and stuff.
Like, it was just enoughto kind of be aware.
And at the time I didn't, Ididn't master any of that stuff.
I didn't even know it.
I knew any of it until I wasin my internships and people

(01:34:33):
were talking about stuff and Iwas like, oh, I know that word.
I know that works.
I can appreciate what you're doinga little bit more than I would if
I had no idea how rigging works.
Right.
so that was really valuable.
That's tell people if like opportunityto touch every tool, just do it.

John (01:34:46):
that's a great point.
you know, no matter how you feelcoming outta school, whatever type of
student you are, eventually you findthe thing that really clicks with

Claude J (01:34:54):
mm-hmm

John (01:34:55):
comes at you fast

Claude J (01:34:57):
Yeah.
Cause we had that right.
We had like, you know, a lot of peoplecame through it and they were programmers.
That's like I said, it's like thefoundation of that college, but people
came out material artists or, you know,3d artists or writers, you know, whatever.
Like just people found their,their thing that they like.
Um, and then what I, the last thingI really appreciated was like to,
to graduate, you needed to havesome amount of time doing co-ops,

(01:35:19):
which were basically internships.
And so you'd have to find an internship.
You'd have to find a gigin the game industry.
And that was where you come back.
Like people who came back the summerafter whatever, they're like gods they're
like, I learned all the stuff, man.
I'd be like, I know how everything works.
They're don't really,God's, they're a genius.
Right.
But they felt like it they're like,I just, all of a sudden, like the
learning made sense, they were moremotivated to come back and try something.

(01:35:42):
Like I came back from mine likeI wanna make something I made,
I, I worked with some friends, wejust made something like, it we

John (01:35:48):
yeah,

Claude J (01:35:49):
more confident, all of a sudden, you know,

John (01:35:50):
dude

Claude J (01:35:51):
So that was

John (01:35:51):
man.

Claude J (01:35:52):
piece.
It's hard to tell toget those internships.
It's a rare thing in our industry.
I think it's go, it'sgrowing more, you know

John (01:35:59):
yeah.
These days

Claude J (01:36:00):
yeah.
But even if you can't just make something

John (01:36:03):
there's no excuse man.
Make something, share it online.
Jumping at the community in a discord.
Throw it on YouTube,

Claude J (01:36:09):
Yeah,

John (01:36:09):
man.
The, yes, just yesterday this thingcame across my lap where it was like
some person brought in the Simpsons hitand run world into five or whatever.
I was like, oh shit.

Claude J (01:36:20):
yeah.
And then when you're applyingsomewhere, right, like whenever I
get like a resume, for a game playdesigner and like I'm looking at the
stuff, like I'm trying to drive asbest as I can from the experience,
but as soon as I see a link,
I click that shit right away.
And if I see anything I can play, it'simmediately seared into my brain and
if I can play it and it makes somesense, that's already major points
if it's fucking cool, even moreobviously, but like even to just trying

(01:36:42):
to do stuff, it shows that drive.
Show they're trying to learn.
I'll just say, this is a tip sometimeswhen people will share, I did this too.
Like here's my project and notjust a project, but here's the
learning I had alongside of it.
This is what I was trying to do.
This is what I

John (01:36:55):
Word.

Claude J (01:36:56):
that stuff is amazing.
Cuz it gives you insightinto how they think,

John (01:37:00):
Yeah.
I love that.
Yeah.
They exactly, that saves abunch of time on the interview.
Right?
Cause that's the, a lot of thosequestions, the type of questions
you would try to bring out in them.
So going back to the, keeping thatnotebook, not only for when you're playing
something, but when you're developing
something
and
and

Claude J (01:37:14):
yeah.

John (01:37:15):
a little blog, right?
Like a little journal diary

Claude J (01:37:17):
Yep.

John (01:37:18):
maybe you won't share, but maybe you will.
that's the
type of shit
we like to

Claude J (01:37:22):
for sure.
Like, yeah.
I had one, that was like mybuddy and I would take games.
We were playing and just writespecs for features they had.
That was one thing we shared.
Um, we were both like trying to come up.
Um, and then one I've seen recent thatreally blew my mind and some of the
other guys I work with, like there'ssomeone who applied and she had.
plays a ton of Overwatch.
She loves it and like had all thislike analysis on her blog basically.

(01:37:44):
And so like, we were a watcher readingthat and we're like super interesting,
like she's super smart about this stuff.
And then she built like thistool that basically, you could
build weapons inside of it.
And so it was like tuneablefor any weapon to have.
And so it was like her kind of likebreaking down Overwatch and kind
of thinking about like, how wouldI make a weapon in this kinda game?
And it was just an experiment

John (01:38:03):
Geez.

Claude J (01:38:05):
to like being interested in the higher, so

John (01:38:07):
Yo, my friend, we are coming up on that time and from one
fighting game fan to another, Igotta invite you to the final are

Claude J (01:38:16):
Bring

John (01:38:18):
brother.

Claude J (01:38:19):
saved up.
I'm ready.
ready.
Wake up.
Go.
let's
go.

John (01:38:26):
the last game that you finished saw the credits role.

Claude J (01:38:30):
It was probably an refugee.
Oh, cyber punk, I guess.
Is it really that

John (01:38:34):
Oh, you finished apple punk.
Damn.

Claude J (01:38:35):
finished it like
twice, so I guess that's why I,
my head

John (01:38:39):
You like that theme?
You like that world or youjust like, CD project, red

Claude J (01:38:43):
no, I love cyber punks.
Yeah.
The world, like I played tabletopRGS as well, some buddies and we
did a cyber punk campaign and it wasawesome or shadow on campaign rather.
that was awesome.
So I'm always interested in that stuff.
I can't believe that'sthe last one in my head.
I'm playing through, uh, acouple different things now
that I think I'll finish.
So

John (01:38:59):
What are you playing through?
What's the last
thing you touched.

Claude J (01:39:02):
I'm playing a plagues tale, which is you.
I don't usually like the slower pacekind of stealth games, but this is a
really good job of sort of keeping.
an element of it isdifferent each encounter.
And so I'm always engageda little bit differently.
So their pacing's really good.
And they, they have the bestrat tech in video games.
their rats

John (01:39:19):
okay.

Claude J (01:39:20):
I've never seen anything like it.

John (01:39:21):
Oh man.
I saying a lot,

Claude J (01:39:22):
yeah,

John (01:39:23):
since you hitting on like the dishonored and the fears and
stuff like that, Igotta go check this out.

Claude J (01:39:28):
all video games is

John (01:39:29):
I got, I gotta check this out, man.

Claude J (01:39:31):
yeah.

John (01:39:31):
still to me more.
what's the last book you read?

Claude J (01:39:35):
Uh, I'm reading through, uh, Octavia Butler's books now.
Um, specifically I finishedwild seeds, so I'm in her.
Uh, I think it's a Patternist series.
The whole thing is called,I think it's four books.
And so I usually don'tactually read a ton of fiction.
I've finished kinda gettingback into it recently.
Um, I usually read a ton ofcomics and then I usually
read non-fiction.
And so it's kind of likeweird for me to go in this in

(01:39:55):
between, but it's been great.
Like her stuff is mind blowingly justahead of anything I've ever seen.
Sci-fi um, and it's like, it does thisreally good job of like creating an
analog way of thinking about thingsthat we have in our world that, uh,
like, um, like gender identity comesup in that, but without sort of like

(01:40:16):
talking about gender identity, it'ssort of talking about the nature of
like the psychological self almost.
And then wrapping that up in a waythat like you could interpret as
something about gender identity.
It's

John (01:40:26):
Mm-hmm.

Claude J (01:40:26):
It is fascinating.
Super good book.
I think they're making ashow out of it someday, so

John (01:40:31):
Okay.
Okay.
haven't asked this question and youanswered it already, so I just wanna
make sure that we manifest it here

Claude J (01:40:37):
Mm-hmm

John (01:40:38):
what other GC or game color expo talks would you give?

Claude J (01:40:44):
uh, yeah.
So I guess what I wanna do for sure is,um, how therapy makes me better designer

John (01:40:50):
Hell I'm

Claude J (01:40:51):
uh, or has made me, yeah.

John (01:40:53):
fund it.
I'll fund it, bro.

Claude J (01:40:55):
I definitely wanna do it part two to game feel.
I think there's a wholething about controls.
I never got to talk about, um,yeah, I think, I think those
are the two big ones right now.
I mean, maybe there's something about thecommunication metaphor we talked about,
like earlier of like, you know, goodcombat feels like good communication.

John (01:41:15):
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Cause it's like, you guys saying a lot

Claude J (01:41:17):
Yeah,

John (01:41:18):
without really kind of saying anything.
Yeah.

Claude J (01:41:20):
something there.
And then there's something about,combat and, dance that I wanna kinda
expand.
Like
there's a couple like connections betweenlike what we appreciate about good dancing
and like rhythm and of body control
the way we think about like combat.
It's really interesting.
Something there.

John (01:41:36):
a absolutely man.
I mean, you know, I don't knowwhat your retirement plans are,
but I would say you're probably atthe midway point in your career.
And so there's a lot of opportunityhere to, see those come to light.
So I'm, I'm super excited
to, to see those kind of come out.

Claude J (01:41:50):
I am now not excited to think about being old.
So

John (01:41:56):
in halftime.
We're about to start thatthird quarter, my friend.

Claude J (01:42:00):
that's the magic though.

John (01:42:01):
Yeah.
Oh yes, absolutely.
Everything, you know, you alreadykind of got like, alright, this
is how we're gonna, this is howwe're gonna crush em on this end.
you have.
kind of a blank check two yearrunway, whatever tool set,

Claude J (01:42:15):
Mm-hmm mm-hmm

John (01:42:16):
you wanna dig out of, what will you build?

Claude J (01:42:19):
I've thought about this a lot.
man, ever since I watchedblack Panther it change, like
switched something inside of me.
I was like, I knew I have, I have to dosomething that inspires me the way or
finds other people the way this movieinspired me half to something that feels.
True to who I am as in every way.
Right.
As a Haitian American, as black American,as person that grew up playing games,

(01:42:39):
person who didn't have a lot of friendsand this like all that kinda stuff,
wanna bring to the table with otherpeople who are bring that to the table.
And so, like, I think it turnsinto basically I wanna totally
build an environment one day.
That's like, you know, a bunch of peoplewho don't feel like they fit in, in terms
of diversity, like bringing people to thetable who can truly be themselves in a,
in a place and be safe and make somethingthat is truly authentic to who they are.

(01:43:02):
I think what that brings down to in likegame sort of sense is like, It's funny.
Cause I don't have like a game Iwanna make as much as I have an
environment I wanna make wherepeople can make whatever they want.
But if it were the, the type of mechanicsI would want to at least work on in that
kind of environment, I think it would belike bringing, the gameplay mastery stuff.
I've had to spend my time on, andbringing that into narrative expression.

(01:43:24):
So like bringing the way, youknow, games are telling stories
into a way more interactive way.
Like my controls matter the wayI'm using my character and moving
around and, and interacting withstuff like is less like fixed.
And it's more like the way I canexpress myself actually shows up
in the story, super vague, youknow, but I'm thinking about a lot.

John (01:43:43):
No.

Claude J (01:43:45):
I just wanna, I wanna tell more stories through gameplay basically.
and I want those stories to belike reflective of the people.
Who they are in a way that we don'tget to see, like, I wanna see like
black and brown people tell stories.
I wanna see, you know, PacificIslanders bring new stories

John (01:43:59):
Mm-hmm

Claude J (01:43:59):
that never, never get to see.
I wanna see everybody cometo the table change things.
Yeah.

John (01:44:04):
that's wonderful.
Claude.
Absolutely.
Right.
These are the types of things thatonly you yourself can tell and,

Claude J (01:44:09):
mm-hmm,

John (01:44:09):
able to bring other people together to, to create that platform.
that's the type of shit I'm talking about.

Claude J (01:44:15):
someday, man.
We're gonna make it happen.

John (01:44:17):
Hey.
Yeah.
three dinner guests, dead or alive,

Claude J (01:44:22):
oh shit.
that's hard.
three dinner guests, tired, alive.
Top of mind is, I mean, justthinking about black Panther
theory, I'm thinking about Chadwick.
Like

John (01:44:30):
Oh man.
Yeah.

Claude J (01:44:32):
me and I just, and him working through that pain to tell something that
really mattered to people, I would loveto let 'em know how that mattered to me.

John (01:44:38):
Great
human

Claude J (01:44:39):
music's a big part of my life, but it's hard to pick
an artist that would, I would
wanna sit down and talk to.
Yeah,

John (01:44:46):
I, heard you mention like, you know, dance and fighting, so that that's

Claude J (01:44:49):
yeah, I feel like it's gonna be hard to be on the same level
at any given artist I'm thinkingabout, but like, I would love to just
understand more the way Kendrick thinks

John (01:44:57):
word, word, His last album made me have to look up a bunch of shit for

Claude J (01:45:02):
I had to sit down.
I was listening to it,
man.
It was too much.
Um, and like
what that,

John (01:45:06):
out and shit.

Claude J (01:45:08):
what his work has done to me, I guess, is thinking about how.
trying to create a lot ofstuff for high quality.
Isn't just about having goodideas come from nowhere.
He usually has some kind ofstructure or story he's trying
to tell that's really personal.
That then inspires the music.
Right.
And so that's, that's when we thinka lot about my, my own creative stuff
of like, you know, is gonna drive the,the creativity, like, it's, it, can't

(01:45:30):
just be like, I'm sitting down andthinking, like I thought of an idea.
No one's ever thought of before.
It's

John (01:45:33):
mm-hmm

Claude J (01:45:34):
gonna inspire that.
Where do I get that from?
So that's been this one.

John (01:45:37):
Kendrick and Chadwick.
That's

Claude J (01:45:38):
yeah,

John (01:45:39):
And yourself,

Claude J (01:45:40):
yeah,

John (01:45:41):
you got the acting, you got the game development.

Claude J (01:45:45):
Yeah.
I don't know.
I guess like it would be someonewho has found a way to reconcile.
With the struggle of livingin this country, the finding
peace, the finding peace with that.
And so the reason I say that is like,you know, they're just thinking about
people that inspire me and stuff.
And like, this is gonna soundreally lame for a second,
but I'll just say it is like,
my mom, yeah.

(01:46:06):
my mom.
She's like, uh, patient patient came overhere and she was looking her twenties or
whatever, like figured all this stuff out.
Like she has inspired me to this degreeof like, when I think about like all the
stuff that I'm facing with, and I askher a question, think about something, or
I'm just venting it loud in front of her.
She has this like piecewith living here and living,
being that like, I really admire, I'mnot saying I wanna go dinner with her.

(01:46:29):
Cause I've done that too many times.
But like that, like thatpinnacle of like, sort of.
Rest and sort of like okayness withlike, Hey, like, you know what the
world around me is, is whatever itis, but I'm here to just do my thing.
Like, just finding that kind oflike piece that yourself, I guess
another person that kind of likeresonates with that is like, yeah.
I mean, I guess I think about likeathletes and stuff too, they kind of get

(01:46:49):
there too, cause the whole worlds on them.
Right.
Everybody's eyes are on them and they'rejust thinking about like how they're
gonna be the best, how they're gonnado the next best thing or whatever.
Um, so I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't have a good third

John (01:46:58):
All right.
Hey,

Claude J (01:47:00):
open.

John (01:47:01):
with a great,
placeholder carving for the third person.

Claude J (01:47:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Leave a seat.

John (01:47:07):
All.

Claude J (01:47:07):
okay.
Extra food.
Doesn't hurt
anybody.

John (01:47:09):
man.
what's a good place forpeople to connect the few.
See what you're up

Claude J (01:47:14):
Mm-hmm mm-hmm

John (01:47:15):
ask questions.

Claude J (01:47:16):
yeah, I mean, I'm on, I'm on Twitter.
Uh, we can put the thingin the description,
but yeah.
At quad room.
I don't do too much on therethese days, but I'm there.
If wanna reach out, I've had peoplereach out to me and ask questions, stuff.
I'm
always down to I on LinkedInand all that kind of
stuff.
I

John (01:47:30):
the knowledge.

Claude J (01:47:31):
of these days.
but yeah, no, I'm I'm,that's where I'm at mostly.
Yeah.

John (01:47:34):
Sounds good, my friend.
All right, last question.

Claude J (01:47:37):
Mm-hmm

John (01:47:38):
know.
Who would you nominatefall out the play area?

Claude J (01:47:41):
Hmm.
One person I work withvery closely now who I'm.
I feel very lucky to have workedwith the name is professor, worked
with them back at Bunge as well.
And

John (01:47:51):
professor

Claude J (01:47:53):
that's their, the ABI buyer right now.
And like, they inspire me in a bunchof different ways, like sort of way
they can, thinking about design asone thing, but sort of the way I think
about everything, um, in terms oflike, you know, perspective of Breaking
down how they experience all thingslike even watching boxing, like sort
of thinking about like TA cars we'vewalked through together and stuff too.

(01:48:13):
Like, I dunno, they just a much, a muchmore worldly live person than I am.
They bring that to the tableas a designer, which is great.
And then secondly, um, they havefibromyalgia and, and like, that's this,
you know, condition that like, you couldsay holds someone back, but they're
at the same time, still extremely,like, not just productive, but creative
and like sort of ex I guess in thatdinners conversation, like they've

(01:48:35):
come to peace with that in a bunchof ways that seem really challenging.
And, um, I'm inspired by that,just working with them every day.
So, uh,
that'd be one person for sure.
Yeah.
I can give you.
their contact stuff.

John (01:48:44):
Mm-hmm mm-hmm

Claude J (01:48:45):
yeah.
different perspective.
Come from the theater background even

John (01:48:49):
Oh, wow.
Okay.
That helps set the ground for
sure.

Claude J (01:48:53):
Yep.

John (01:48:54):
Excellent.
Excellent.
well, thank you for that nomination,Claude, man, this has been more than
what I had hoped leading into it.
Thanks for taking the time.

Claude J (01:49:03):
Yep.

John (01:49:03):
Been looking forward to this one for a minute.
Is

Claude J (01:49:05):
Absolutely.

John (01:49:06):
words you have for the audience out there?

Claude J (01:49:09):
Uh, man, just games be cool.
I don't know.
Be cool.
Each other.

John (01:49:15):
that's it bro.
Wisdom.
It's nothing but wisdom.
Yo Claude is awesome.
Point period.
Full stop.
He's been around too.
it looks like he's finally foundthe place that he can call home.
you could have argued that maybe thatwould have been bungee, but you know,
when a bunch of people leave from yourteam to spin off and start a new home,
it's always an enticing propositionthat you have to listen to and check

(01:49:38):
out if it opportunity comes your way.
Sometimes you just want to start a newteam with a new culture, because the
sad thing is sometimes the place istoo large and too set in their ways to
really make the necessary change thatthe clean slate approach might be the
quickest way to get there and get whereyou envision for yourself and your team.
Here in Claude share his love ofprojects bark and how that changed

(01:50:01):
people's lives reminds me part ofthe reason that I'm here at epic,
working on unreal editor for fortnight.
Also when you're working ontools like that, it's astounding.
How much of the team doesn'tdog food, the tools they create.
It shouldn't surprise me.
You know, we've all seenit at the game studios.
We work at that.
We have developers that don't playthe game that they're working on.
Either way.
I finally have a weekly reoccurring gamejam on my team on fortnight every Friday.

(01:50:26):
And I'll confess with you all that.
My ratio is probably closer to 5050, where I'm actually jamming versus
using the no meeting time to catchup or get ahead on a deliverable.
Point being there's a ton of valuein game jamming with your team from
exposing devs to other workflows, givingthem a chance to grow and learn, pick
up some new skills, reciprocate thatinto their role or development plans.

(01:50:49):
And definitely learn things that youdidn't even know possible or give valuable
feedback and player and user notes.
What do you sit on that wall?
Do you wish your teamjammed together more?
Is this something that you'retrying to implement or had, and
did away with for whatever reason?
Or deadlines got in the way or is theresomething else you offer in its place?
Curious, let me know more.

(01:51:09):
I've linked his game does have colorexpo talk from YouTube in the show notes.
I encourage you to check it out.
If you work in gameplay at all.
I can easily see myself invitinghim back onto the show in the future
to talk more gameplay design andto hear what firewalk is up to on
the next episode of auto play area.
We'll sit down with Jason nobler, asenior software engineer at lightning

(01:51:31):
gaming in Philly, Pennsylvania.
Always good times.
Let me get an engineer on here.
Let alone a fellow full sail alumni.
Also a fellow red, dead redemptionoutlaw, and a guy who is an awesome,
pragmatic, demeanor, and everythingthat he does, including working on his
own open source harmony game engine.
That episode should the debutinto, but let's put a safe buffer

(01:51:55):
of three weeks just to be safe.
So please make sure to follow us sothat you don't miss out on that episode.
Thank you for listening dabs.
If you found this episode informative,I simply ask that you pay a link
forward to a developer or on your socialmedia to help grow our listener base.
If you are a game developerwith a story that you think

(01:52:15):
could help a fellow dev out.
Could have saved you timewhen you were younger.
Please go out to out of playarea.com and click on the Calendly
link at the top to meet up andtalk about designing your episode.
Please make sure to get approval from yourmanager or studios PR HR team beforehand.
I had a play area.

(01:52:36):
The game developers, podcastreleases new episodes every other
Monday on all the major players,including Spotify, apple, and Google.
Please make sure to follow us, to seewhat developer falls out of the play area.
Next time.
I'm your host, John Diaz untilnext time, devs stay strong.
Stay true and stay dangerous.
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