Episode Transcript
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John (00:01):
What's good devs.
Happy father's day to allthe fathers out there.
This might be the last one, but also therealest one for me, as I can see here and
anticipate what it will be like next year.
And the long road ofdiaper changing feeding.
Living and raising a littlehuman being with everything I
(00:21):
got while still working at epic.
Being a great husband.
And still pumping out this podcast.
So father's day 2022 in the books.
2023, I will join you.
Hopefully.
As well as Juneteenth, I lookedit up and it's crazy, right?
Because the civil war ended and theemancipation proclamation was an 1862.
(00:45):
But it wasn't until June 19th, threeyears later, that word got back to Texas.
And they commemorated theemancipation of enslaved people.
So you can look at thatday, it's kind of like.
The last day officially in thiscountry of, of slave ownership.
It's my understanding, butI can always learn more.
major date celebrated this week.
(01:07):
on top of the fact that June 20this my partner Catherine's birthday.
And you know, Catherine's voicefrom the intro to this podcast.
So.
If you see her, talk to her, makesure to send her some birthday wishes.
Now with that hit my music.
(01:28):
On episode 35 of the auto playarea, the game developers podcast.
We sit down with Sean Alexander Allen.
The founder and studio, head of newchallenger and the creator of treachery
and beat down city for the PC and switch.
Before that he was a captureartist at rockstar games in N Y C.
And he's the person I owe a big heapof props for bringing me on to give
(01:52):
my first conference talk Back in 2020.
During these pandemic years onculturally aligned protagonist design.
And that would go to a lot of fireup on the me as in 2021, I would
go on to speak all over the place.
And it was actually whereI manifested this podcast.
We talk about the vision hehas for the game, Dez of color
(02:14):
expo and other expos behind it.
What it's like coming up in NYC.
What it's like having left there.
And we go deep in, on his developmentof treasury and beat down city.
And what's next for newchallenger down the road.
This was a conversationpreviously recorded March 30th.
Please welcome.
From NYC coming to usfrom Maria to Georgia.
(02:37):
Sean Alexander Allen.
Let's start the show.
Catherine (02:44):
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 (03:07):
So right now you're coming
to me from Marietta, Georgia.
Shawn A (03:11):
Yeah.
John (03:12):
when we've met, he was in NYC,
in New York, native, just like myself.
when did you make the move?
how has that been?
What do you miss
Shawn A (03:19):
Yeah.
I mean, it was, you know,it was a late 20, 20 move.
John (03:23):
in the middle of the pandemic?
Shawn A (03:25):
yeah, it was, I mean, we
like, I actually, you know, I had a kid
September, 2019, and I had found out thatmy, you know, my wife's middle sister,
so the sister closest to her, they'relike best friends basically, you and so
her and her husband and their two kids.
So yeah, my, my nephews are, They, theywere like going to move to Marietta
(03:49):
because like my wife's family of someof her mom's family lives down here.
And in 2019 we had a bookend of likemy mom dying at the beginning of 2019,
her mom dying at the end of 2019.
And we were.
I don't have family.
Really.
My family is all like mygame, my game industry people.
was
like my only blood thatI could count as family.
(04:10):
um
John (04:10):
A lot, from both of you and usually
you have one to counterbalance the other,
but in this case you were both kind ofat a big loss, losing your parents like
Shawn A (04:17):
yeah, yeah.
And I lost my dad.
Like, I mean, I've never known my dad.
I've been piecing my dad's life togetherfor the last 10 years or so now.
But like you know, trying new things.
So it's like, let me be closer to,you know, her family also, her sisters
were always like, big supporters of me.
like, my wife was like, oh,there's this guy in my life.
So like, they were all like,yeah, like we see you're so happy.
(04:38):
Like, you know, go for it, et cetera.
So they're, they're great folks.
And so I was like, yeah, I wantto be close to these people.
We have a kid, like, let's get thekids together, et cetera, et cetera.
I was actually looking at theAtlanta game space, which is bigger
than the New York one in 2019.
But then the pandemickit, you know, early 2020.
So I was like, oh, welleveryone's remote anyway.
So
(04:58):
let me see what we could do.
And no one really raised an objectionto me leaving New York because there
was no real policy at the time.
then we started looking for a house,got a house right before the housing
explosion cost-wise happened.
And
and so thankfully like, I grew up ina one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.
My mom, you know, in poverty and Inow live in like a house with a kid
(05:22):
it's very, like, I keep thinking aboutthe little shop of horrors, but where
it's like the, where they sing, likethey're in skid row and they sing that
song about somewhere that's green.
And it's like, living inthe suburbs and stuff.
And it's, it's interesting, youknow, like 38 years in New York city.
I don't know how I'd be raisinga kid in that city under
the pandemic and everything.
Like, just getting out of the house to goto the park was like a 20 minute affair.
(05:46):
Then you'd have to walk.
Thankfully we live near centralpark, which was cool, but like still
it's like 10 minute walk, hang out.
Then someone has to go use the bathroom.
So it's like go home.
Like, and then it's over.
Like, you spend like a half hourgetting there, spend 20 minutes
there, then have to spend a half hour.
So like, my kid can justgo in the backyard and we
can just hang out with her.
Or you walk around the subdivision solve.
(06:07):
Very strange to me though.
Cause like I remember just eventhe other day, like I was just
going over something in my head.
I go over a lot of things in my headwhile I'm walking and everyone's
just like, Hey Sean, what's going on?
I'm like see
Yeah.
Don't you see that?
I'm like, literally, like, I look like I'mlike upset and I'm like, and in New York
(06:27):
just don't with you.
But out here, everyone has to pass tosay, hello, you have to wave to everybody
as you're walking down the street
John (06:33):
human interaction is very special
when you're in the suburbs, right?
Like every person you see is one in,I dunno, maybe 10, 15 minutes, if
that, and people like to know theneighbors, know as opposed to New York
it's a, it's a totally different vibe.
I can empathize a hundred percent,especially in the name of family, man, you
know, like It seems like nothing but coolopportunity to bring up your child and,
Shawn A (06:57):
yeah, no it's she
loves her aunt, so much.
And I think the, her, cousins are,I think, below her aunt, like,
cause like it's funny she justloves her aunt so much and she hurt.
My wife's sister was like, it was likea music teacher for kids a lot of times.
So she has like taking care oflots of kids of different ages
It's like the kids all playwell together, which is then.
(07:18):
Yeah.
It's just, it's really nice vibe andalso just, yeah, all the outdoor time
and all that stuff is just great.
John (07:25):
Is there anything
you miss from the big city?
Shawn A (07:28):
I mean, I miss everything.
I missed, I was missing thecity during the pandemic though.
Like,
John (07:33):
You wait, what?
couldn't get out to it.
Yeah.
Shawn A (07:35):
yeah, I think about how COVID is
like this like thing that has destroyed
the ability to be people it's interesting.
Like it's like the height of New Yorkwas like museums and comedy clubs and
concerts and hanging out with friendsis on like rooftops and this and that.
And like, and then plus having a kidjust met, like me and my wife were
literally like, you know, we were talkingto someone in our building who was a
(07:58):
childcare provider for like night times.
And she was like, yeah, I'll watch yourkid at night, et cetera, et cetera.
And we, you know, had daycare set up.
They were literally on the cuspof like, you know, going on
dates again and cultural things.
And then the pandemic kids.
So like when people are like, oh,I just want to go back to normal.
I'm like, you know what screw you, man.
Like I basically, you know,it was, my kid was six months.
(08:19):
Like my kid was finally, finally hadthe immunity had the vaccinations for
other stuff that she could actuallylike be around more people B and D.
seen by a childcare provider.
And we were finally okay with it.
And then it all shut down.
So basically went from not having any, nothaving a life to not having a life again.
(08:39):
like, so we were six months intolike, not doing a whole lot.
And so when people are like, I'mtired of it, I'm like, well, I'm six
months more tired of it than you are.
And I still avoid most things.
So
John (08:51):
Have you found a space down there?
MERITO?
It's not too far from Atlanta, right?
So big city.
Not too far away.
Shawn A (08:58):
yeah, we had to go down
there for our vaccines cause there
was nothing available around here.
Which was nice.
Cause it was again like nice togo to a city and see like black
folks in fashionable clothing.
Cause the suburbs
are not are very known for very basic
John (09:12):
Yeah, it was this Swagman.
Shawn A (09:13):
there's this shaky
knees festival solid run.
The Juul is down there in a park.
And but that it's funny, causelike it could take me between a
half hour to an hour and a half toget to downtown Atlanta and that
concert was during the world series.
So it took an hour and a half to getthere because of all the traffic.
John (09:30):
you had to learn how to drive.
You didn't know how to drive.
You don't have to drive in New York.
Oh yeah.
So you don't get your licenseor you got your license of what?
Shawn A (09:39):
I accidentally have a driver's
license down here, which is funny.
but my neighbor who, has a, three kidscause again, moving from the city to
the south, that was kinda like howprogressive is this and whatever.
And him and his wife's house hadlike black lives matter and we
believe these things and likematter is the basic whatever.
(09:59):
So we were like, oh, okay.
These are people we canhang out with and chat with.
And we made friends and theyhave like three kids that are
like four, seven and nine.
So They get along with our kid.
They're very understandingof her being younger.
And because they met her before shecould really communicate like before
two, you don't really talk much.
Now she is a fountain ofwords, which we all appreciate.
(10:21):
So like we became friends and that'swhat he drove me down to Atlanta, he's
going to help me learn how to drive off.
So that was good.
John (10:27):
maybe any VR racing game simulation.
Get the pedals
Shawn A (10:33):
I've been joking
about that for a long time.
How I got trained to driveon cruise in USA, like.
John (10:37):
Yeah, that takes me back.
Absolutely.
that was always funny.
A lot of people don't believe meand it's just like, yo, my name
Europe, and a lot of these big citieswith great public transportation,
you don't really need to drive.
You're actually shooting yourselfin the foot by having to pay for
insurance and gas and all this stuff.
When public transportationgets you around just fine.
Shawn A (10:57):
Yeah, we could
have afforded a car anyway.
And who wants a carand eighties, New York.
John (11:01):
Yeah, Exactly.
Shawn A (11:02):
it would always be other people
who would drive me places, which is funny.
Cause like my mom was a taxi driver in thelate seventies, so like she knew how to
drive, but there was no reason to drive.
John (11:14):
Speaking of city, fashion,
Atlanta swag, finding it, searching it.
Talk to me about your love of sneakers.
Shawn A (11:24):
it's actually funny cause like
it's sort of born out of a hate for
sneakers at sneaker heads actually.
John (11:30):
talk to me about this.
This
Shawn A (11:32):
as a kid, I could not afford
sneakers at all, really until like high
school, like financial situation changedand I could get like one pair of sneakers
per year and I never got any of it.
Like I didn't like all the kids had like.
Jordan twelves or somethingback in high school
and like
It was the black and redJordan 12 that at 96 97.
(11:53):
yep.
John (11:54):
That was year.
That was his last bulls run, I think.
Shawn A (11:56):
That was a, and I
was just like looking at them.
I was just like, what are these?
And I'm still a little perplexed by them.
But fast forward to the future, likewhen I was with my ex and she had a kid
by way of a guy who was a sneakerheadand he wouldn't pay child support.
But I remember like when I wasat rockstar, they made them
some midnight club, air Jordans.
John (12:17):
Oh,
Shawn A (12:17):
so this guy had the gall
to be like, so, Hey Sean, like, how
do I get the midnight club Jordans?
And, you know, I'm a nice person.
So, and also, you know, you can'treally just explode on the kid who
you take care of his dad like can.
So I
like, I'll look into it for youalso, because I was curious, I didn't
really know a whole lot about it.
And then I looked into it and there wereapparently only four pairs that were made.
(12:38):
And the producer who came up with theinitiative didn't even get a pair.
So that's why I told him,but it was more like.
you know, screw you, man.
Like, how are you?
give him money, give him money so your,so that you stop hurting my own family.
Like, you know, you're supposedto be paying a couple of pairs
of Jordans per month to takecare of your kid and you don't.
So, and I wanted to actually make like,I dunno, there's this game, Cal clicker.
(13:00):
it was a, I hate Farmville type ofgame made by this guy, Ian BOGOs,
who did a lot of like, subversivegames, writing and design.
And he made this game calledcloud Cal clicker where you
could click a cow once per day.
And if you wanted to click the cowmore than once per day, you had to pay.
and people actually started paying theclick their cow more than once per day.
And he
(13:21):
was like
what?
And then eventually he waslike, I don't agree with this.
Cause this is weird.
I'm making money off of people where thegoal was to like, not get people to do it.
so then he had like, it had a Calapocalypse or something where he killed
the world or something, and people startedwriting, like, how can I get my callback?
Like what can I pay I think you canupgrade the cow and you could like,
(13:41):
you know, give a hats and stuff.
And
yeah,
John (13:44):
That's the essence of all, a lot
of monetization and games today, man.
That's crazy.
It's like through negativereinforcement, people wanted to pay
Shawn A (13:53):
Yeah, it was nagging.
Yeah.
And so I initially thoughtabout like, what would people
pay for like digital goods?
It's funny.
Cause I've been thinking aboutthis for a very long time.
John (14:02):
very on topic in this day and age
Shawn A (14:03):
yes, it's annoying to
me because like, people are going
about it in the wrong way also.
Cause they're like digital ownership andI'm like, nothing is owned on the digital
ski base, like but sent me down a pathof like thinking about wanting to make a
game that had something around sneakers.
And then I ran into the problemwhere, so I started buying sneakers
just to see what it was like.
John (14:23):
Like as research
Shawn A (14:25):
it's funny.
Cause like air Jordan ones, like, Idunno, there's like a whole thing about
like, ah, why do people all like these?
And I'm like, I've just likedhigh tops like that for time.
Like whatever brand, it was like Ihad a Paris have this weird problem
where I, this, this, this thing inmy brain that still makes me mad.
Like I was a kid.
And back when my, my mom went to astore, she bought me some high tops
(14:47):
that I thought they were beautiful.
They were like white and turquoise.
And they were by this brand, SergioTECINI Many people don't know what that
brand is, and I didn't know what thatbrand is, but I didn't really care.
I just liked
John (14:57):
Sounds Italian sounds exotic.
Yeah.
Shawn A (14:59):
And I brought them to
school and the kids just basically
laughed me out of school.
Like they were like,what is this nonsense?
These are Nike's blah, blah, blah, blah.
John (15:07):
They were against the mold.
Shawn A (15:09):
it turns out however, those
kids were all just behind the times
because like biggie where SergioTECINI and a lot of his videos,
like, because he knew and also big
in Africa Europe Yeah
John (15:21):
to travel the world.
Shawn A (15:23):
but it was also just like
a brand that was more, that was
actually just right off the side.
Like it was in New York, obviously.
It was it was just funny.
Cause I got them probably at like astore where they were not expensive
and they were a discount brand.
But like, yeah, like if you goonline right now, like all that
stuff, like tracksuits and everythingis like, it's all expensive.
That makes me mad.
Cause I was like, man, Iwas actually a trendsetter.
(15:43):
And, but everyone just, Iwas used to being bullied for
being poor and everything.
So I just, it just took me and I justtook those sneakers off and put them
in a closet and went back to my thriftstore Nike's that had holes in them.
until I got like some modal Nike's thatthere, I ended up getting like the,
Wayne Gretzky Nike's and they were great.
They were 20 bucks andthey were Bulletproof.
(16:05):
Like they were plastic on them.
That you, if you kick somebodywith it, you would hurt them.
Like tremendously.
It was, yeah.
It was like this turtle shell front.
That it was cool.
I thought they were cool too.
And yeah, nobody bothered me again.
Cause I had, new Nike's it's sostupid how like a brand like that.
but yeah.
So like I've always liked like thatkind of, that silhouette of just thin
(16:27):
high top
John (16:28):
tole.
Hi laces, all up and down.
Kind of that clear soul.
Shawn A (16:32):
Yeah.
So like, so then I started, I boughtsome AIJ one mids, not even knowing
how much everyone I've learned so muchlayers of like sneaker culture that, and
I still don't understand a lot of it.
Like, cause there's likea are they terrible?
Or are they not terrible?
People who hate the mid, like therewas a whole joke where someone was.
He's like I left three boxesof JJ, one mids in my car.
(16:54):
And when I came back, therewere 20 more and I was so sad.
Like someone broke into my car andleft some more and it was just like,
I don't, I really don't understand it.
But yeah, I bought these.
It was like a purple and likebright pink, bright blue, like
sky blue pair that were great.
And this black with like infrared,like I really love neon red, that's
(17:19):
and the black had like a sheento it that only light someplaces.
And those are actually now bothworth a lot more now is weird.
I caught them on the downswing andthat's the thing I've, I've bought those.
And then I started buying moreand, and then it's like, now
I have like sneakers below me.
I have above me.
I have seekers in my closet.
And I'm, and I'm still working on aproject, but it's gone from like agro
(17:44):
to being like, how can I make this also?
Because I learned ever since I also hadto do free to play design for awhile.
And I think a lot aboutethics and all that stuff.
And like, how do you makesomething enjoyable to somebody?
Because I don't think digital goodsare forever, cause they're not,
I've had so many free to play gamesthat have closed and I've lost
(18:04):
all the stuff that I didn't buy.
Cause I don't buy stuff usually I'm Iusually go to the skill route and stuff,
John (18:10):
progression has gone.
Yeah.
Shawn A (18:11):
Yeah, but like
all this stuff disappear.
So like, my goal honestly is to, I,well, right now I'm just figuring
out like something to do with seekersand in a, in a fun way and more of
a culture reaffirming way, because Ijust really started to care about it.
Like,
John (18:27):
So
your collection is a, how many pairs
Shawn A (18:30):
I don't know,
John (18:31):
last cow?
Shawn A (18:32):
like me right behind
me on soon 6, 5, 6, 8, 14.
There's 14 up here.
There's like three,
four or
five there.
If there's more in a closet by, I
John (18:46):
say, 20, 31 for day of the
Shawn A (18:49):
30 or so.
I mean, that doesn't countthe ones by the door.
My boots also, like I havelike these really good eight
air force, one duck boot,
John (18:58):
Oh, the ones with
like the spiky kind of
Shawn A (19:01):
have had, I had, I got that pair.
I got a black on black pair.
That's now also hard to get and AndI bought them when they came out.
Cause I was like, oh, these look cool.
John (19:10):
I
would buy those.
I would buy those every year if Icould, man, but they're hard to get
Shawn A (19:14):
Yeah.
And then like in 2020 during thepandemic I bought like these wheat ones.
Cause I guess again, I think I wasahead of the curve too, because like
that weak color, you know, that nice.
That nice kind of orange, just brown.
John (19:26):
You know, Timberland yellow kind of
Shawn A (19:27):
Yeah.
But, but a little, little warmer, right?
Like that that's caught on.
Like clothing has been popping up in thatand those popped up and I bought them.
They were not sold out.
And then they disappeared and jumped upin price and they it's actually took like
weeks for people to be like, oh, that'sthe thing I've learned about sneakers.
It's like people will dog, a pair.
I saw, I bought a pair of sneakers, thepair that I rocked for a while, these
(19:49):
patent black like with white bottomsADJ ones that I thought were beautiful.
The first pair I bought was onsale at a sneakerhead shop extra
butter in And I saw them and I waslike, they were like 20 bucks off.
I was like, I think these are beautiful.
I'm going to buy them.
Then the next two pairs of them.
Cause I bought two more pairs becausethey were went down to $70, a pair on
John (20:10):
oh my gosh.
Shawn A (20:11):
There were $300 now because
everyone eventually was like, wait,
these are actually really cool.
And they were like three colorsand Nike actually spent a lot
of money on marketing them.
They were like the whole air Jordan, likesomething I forgot like, like I forgot
like some sort of space thing with them.
And they were like allthese like space things or
John (20:32):
okay.
I wonder if it was kind of like a littlelike star speckled soul or something that
was kind of clear lunar or something.
Shawn A (20:38):
No, no, they were just like
this black, but like really interesting,
like very shiny and the different,different levels of like sheen, like
one was sparked smartly and one waslike more start just black and yeah.
And like, I have one more pairI've, I've broken in the second
pair and I have one more pair.
That's still unworn.
And I'm like, and that's the thing I hateabout sneakers is that like, it's like,
(21:00):
I can't replace them now because I'm notgoing to spend $300 on a pair of these.
I wish I would have likebought 10 pairs of them.
John (21:06):
the thing
Shawn A (21:07):
you gotta have,
everyday sneakers that you like.
And now it's gotten to the point wherea black and white pair of Jordans
is hard to get and that's stupid.
Like you just like, why don't youjust make like, just please make some
pairs that are nice that I can justbuy in a store, like Timberlands,
like imagine if they were like, oh,this color just never exists again.
It's like, but that's the standardcolor they're like, yeah, you
(21:28):
have to catch it next year.
And there'll be $300.
Cause we're only going to partnerwith billionaire boys club
or
John (21:33):
that's, that's
basic economics, right.
Supply and demand and create a scarcity.
Right.
But I'm with you.
Like, I like the fact that there arecertain shoes that they keep making
the same model, same color ways.
You're always guaranteed to getthem, but they want to sell new ones.
I would, you, would you now consideryourself 30 pairs in, would you
consider yourself a sneakerhead?
(21:55):
thing
Shawn A (21:56):
Yeah.
I mean I it's like, I think I
John (21:59):
to dream
Shawn A (21:59):
Oh, I mean, that's actually
like I'm Kelly stuff behind me.
Like I have like a pair of like, I have apair of the like Lego Adidas, shell, top
ones that had like, like the stripes arelike jagged, like, cause they're Legos and
they, I think they are made out of Legostype things cause they have a partnership.
And then I also have the Lego setof the I have like, I mean behind
John (22:23):
Legos set shoe
Shawn A (22:25):
I have the, like the
off-white air Jordan, one like
that, like other brand of made,they put together versions of those.
Cause I just wanted tosee what it was like.
And they made you giveyou a little figure.
That was like, Jordan, it has like a back.
And I dunno, it's, it's, it's funny.
It's it's interesting culture,like I think a lot about it.
You know, I'm still selective obviously.
(22:47):
And also you just get a lot of ELLson the sneakers app and wherever.
So it's kinda like, but like I've,I, I think you don't become a real
sneaker head until you really arehyped about a pair and you can't
get it and you're just upset.
And then you go out of your way to pay ahundred dollars plus over for the pair.
And then you're like, okay.
I finally feel like my soul is complete.
(23:10):
Now that I have this pair.
That's when your Alliance, whenyou've ascended to like sneaker head.
John (23:15):
I am super, I look forward to seeing
this game now, knowing where it's been
incepted from and the years of researchand transformation that it's undergone.
And you know, you and I have talked alot about culture and games and, and, you
know, I've even kind of thrown out theidea of having like a sneakerhead panel
(23:38):
at some conference, wherever we can justkind of throw our feet up and talk, talk,
shop in a table or something like that.
Something I've heard you talk aboutthat I'm particularly excited in one day
is throwing a hip hop and games panel.
curious what's on yourplaylist these days?
Shawn A (23:53):
I mean, the one sad thing is that
like, I listen to wireless music these
days because= I don't travel anymore.
I used to listen to a lot onmy commute because it's like
harder to listen to music withlyrics in it when you're writing
John (24:06):
I'm with you, I'm with you.
I need to listen tolike instrumental stuff.
Absolutely.
Low-fi
Shawn A (24:11):
it
And that's actually likepolluting my Spotify thing.
Cause I top top
And I'm like, I honestly, they need to,the thing they need to do is they need
to create a exclude from history, likebecause like I listened to the entirety
of like the Phoenix rape soundtrack forlike, there's like a piano sessions of it
that I love that was, I think the pianosessions of Phoenix right, is my number
(24:34):
one played album of 2021, which is stupid.
John (24:36):
That means you will
work and you were working a
Shawn A (24:38):
Yeah, exactly.
And like, and like like classical musicand like Ben Prunty, who did FTL and into
the breach, like the game soundtracks.
Like I love his music so much.
I've loved it for years.
And also like, I buy a lot of this music.
I know necessarily you can't actuallybuy a lot of Japanese game soundtracks
for less than like 50 to $80.
So I'm like, so I don't feel badabout streaming level Spotify, but
(24:58):
I actually, you know, I buy a lot ofthe albums by the artist actually.
That's how I traditionally learnedabout people is the, like, I just
listened to a bunch of music and they'dbe like, here's your release radar?
And here's your recommended weekly.
And I used to just grab them,dump them into a playlist so that
I always had it and then go backand like check out the artists and
be like, oh, am I a fan of them?
Am I not a
interestingly enough, the album I'vebeen listening to which means I've
(25:19):
listened to like two or three timesin the last week was Denzel Curry's,
John (25:23):
Oh, love me some Denzel Curry, man.
Shawn A (25:27):
and I got to him because
of release radar, like, him
and a bunch of other people.
I went back to listen to Flatbushzombies, 3001, a laced Odyssey.
Cause I love that album.
John (25:37):
damn.
I missed them.
They came out here during thepandemic when I was like, man, I don't
know if I'm ready to go, go into ashow, but I would have risked it.
I, if I was living by myself, Iwould have masked up and risked it
to see them live because you know,they might come out here once a year
if that, but I opted to miss out
Shawn A (25:56):
I've been listening to group
that's kind of, kind of not hip hop.
is a, this group called horror.
John (26:02):
Hi.
Shawn A (26:03):
H H oh 9, 9 0 9,
John (26:06):
Okay
Shawn A (26:07):
even though yeah.
They're horror.
So they're like a, they'relike a punk metal rap group.
It's like these twoblack guys it's funny.
Cause both on Denzel Curry and theiralbum, they feature Saul Williams.
Who's a favorite musicianslash artist of vine.
And I thought that was like wildbecause they're such different albums
and horror's album also has CoreyTaylor from Slipknot on one of the
(26:27):
songs, which was also really cool.
I've always like high school me andlike current me are both like just
geeking out over this album that I'vebeen listening to her for a long time.
They, I saw them play like a liveset at a Afropunk a long time
been obsessed.
Like, it's interesting cause they like,they clearly, you know, have like awesome
(26:48):
bars and at the same time, like justlike shouting and like punk sensibilities
and just loud guitar and electroniclike industrial stuff going on and.
It's just like really chaotic andreally controlled simultaneously.
So I just
John (27:04):
well, I mean, depending on
who you talk to, right, you can see
there's a thin line between punk andhip hop, where it's like, you know,
anti-establishment like going againstthe grain, complaining about the status
quo, you know, just different forms.
Shawn A (27:20):
Well, they talk a lot about that.
You know, when they talk about, CBGBsand like the, the merging cause like
a lot of rap groups, like Africanof a Bata would be down there.
Would, we got introduced to thepeople in the east village where
I'm from, like, it's funny.
Cause like I know, I keep thinkingabout how, like my dad played CBGBs
in the late seventies and I'm justlike, I wonder how much overlap
there might've been at that time.
(27:41):
What he might've thought about the scene.
Maybe he hated it because he was Maybehe loved it because I think a lot of
people were you know, were really gettinginto the, like So I mean, punk and rap
were, you know, they weren't always,adjacent in Manhattan because people
would bring it down and bring punk up and.
John (27:57):
Yeah.
It's like downtown Bronx kindof Brooklyn comes in the middle.
There
Shawn A (28:01):
Blondie, right?
Like, it's really strange.
Cause the first rap song to hitthe mainstream was Blondie rapture.
Right.
Where she's like rapping.
And it's like a white lady song
John (28:12):
you are educating me right now.
Shawn A (28:14):
yeah, that was like, and
she talks about fab five Freddy
who's like, you know, the guywho was instrumental in merging.
they call it like, you know, eastvillage and stuff like downtown.
And then like uptown was like Harlemand the Bronx So like he would bring,
you know, rap down there because hewas all about like art and everything.
And that was like where that scene was.
So, you know, it tookcertain like people who are
John (28:34):
Holy shit
Shawn A (28:36):
to bring everything
and yet like, so rapture was the
first rap song to be played on MTV
John (28:41):
so it's like ratchet
delight, 79 rap rapture, 81.
Holy
Shawn A (28:48):
I don't think rappers,
I dunno if rappers are like, got
to MTV, that was like the thinglike rap Rapper's delight was big,
But MTV
like
John (28:56):
like mainstream,
did
Shawn A (28:58):
mean, everybody knows this, like
John (28:59):
well, yeah, they only wanted
to feature like rock bands, right?
Like, like what do they call it, man?
Like hairstyle, rock bands, whatever.
Shawn A (29:06):
we talk about
John (29:07):
yeah, we could talk
about this for a minute.
I love it.
I just had to takeadvantage for my damn self.
Right?
Like it's, it's rare that I get toget into these topics with fellow
NYC ERs, you know, I have to tap inso that I don't lose grips as I move
around and live on the west coast.
but game dev, bro, I metyou through game dev.
You've kind of changed myperspective on a lot of things.
(29:29):
I didn't know that the New York citygame development scene was what it,
what it was and what it was becoming.
And here you are, not by choice, butI recommend to everybody, you know,
get out of the city, stretch yourwings, see how other things operate.
And then bring back whateveryou find at some point in time.
So you're down in Marietta, in the southbeing around family, living in the burbs
(29:51):
now, but now you got some property.
You got office space, superproud, super happy to see that.
Tell me about where you are today.
What are you doing?
How's the company,
Shawn A (30:03):
yeah, as of the 18th March
2022, I was my last day at MLB
where I was there for six years.
as when you own your own company, itwas my first day back to full-time.
Working for my company, new challenger.
John (30:17):
New challenger, new challenges
been an LLC for a minute, but
now you saying you're full time.
Shawn A (30:24):
yeah, it was a,
it's an LLC since 2012.
Actually this was 10 years.
Like in the middle of 2012 wasthe end of my tenure at rockstar.
And then I had to start this all Cand we're actually in the process
because you can't merge an LLC fromNew York, you can't convert it to
be
a corporation or anything.
So we're figuring out we're in the processof merging the LLC with the corporation,
(30:47):
which was started this year also.
So,
John (30:50):
interesting.
Shawn A (30:50):
we're cause you need a
corporation in order to like, you
know, get investment and stuff.
So that's and that's what I had todo to get money, to continue the
company and to be able to take my lifeinto my own hands essentially again.
John (31:02):
educate me, Sean,
a LLC, and a corporation.
Isn't it.
Limited liability companyversus like incorporation.
Is that the two different things?
Shawn A (31:12):
Yeah.
So we're a C corporation.
It's it's interesting.
Cause so like an LLC is a pass throughentity where all the money that
you earn is on your own tax return.
So like, you know, if you earn ahundred thousand dollars for your
business, that's what you get paid.
That's like, goes on your thing aslike a, I earned this amount of money.
You know, having that EIN is helpfulbecause then it's like, okay, well
(31:36):
you're actually a real business andnot just a person pulling random
money, even sole proprietorship, theystill kinda like how it copyright.
They recommend you filing acopyright, even though you own the
copyright on anything you make.
Because it's easier to contest.
Similarly.
It's easier to just, like deductionsbecome like the big thing when it's like,
oh yeah, but an LLC, you have deductions.
And so like, a lot of this stuff is like,you know, cause then you pay people,
(31:58):
you pay for things you pay for stuff.
It's a lot easier to just belike, oh my desk, oh my lighting.
Oh, is all for my business.
Yeah.
Whereas, you know, when you do acompany, pretty sure you have to
like invoice the company if thecompany's paying for that stuff.
But it's not as easily tax deductibleif you're working for a corporation,
Like as I was working for majorleague baseball or corporation,
(32:18):
so yeah, that's just like, youknow, different, it's more like
invoicing you know, have to have morepaperwork, even though I'm technically
the president of new challenger,you know, if I go on a corporate
trip on an LLC, I just pay for it.
And then that's a line item on my taxes.
Whereas like for like a corporation.
As a flight, you'd be like,okay, well, I invoice the copany
(32:38):
for the money for my flight.
They give me the money back and thenthey, even though it's still my company.
I mean, and also now I have likeco-founders who also have shares
in their shares and everything.
you could, you have shares in acorporation, but an S-corp is different
than a C Corp in that an S-corp isjust a tax designation of an LLC.
it's really annoying.
(33:00):
I've had to look into it, but likean escort basically then removes
the the tax liability from you.
Like it's no longer a pass through entity.
it's now like you do you file a separatetax return and that's, people do it.
I don't know why, because Inever really looked into it.
John (33:14):
Okay.
But you're a C Corp
Shawn A (33:16):
now I'm a C Corp, which
means, yeah, we have, we have shares.
We have like bylaws, we'resupposed to have a board, the
boards, one person right now we
secretary, we have president,you know, we have an official,
you have to have official people
that do certain
John (33:30):
there's like, what are the
key roles in a corporation then?
Like, cause I know, you know, there's,
all this, but like in reality you onlyneed what like three there's three
key positions that have to be filled.
Shawn A (33:43):
well, right now it's like
president there's like secretary
and maybe something else, but yeah.
I don't know, right into the key twothings, our president, secretary, and both
of those could be the same person, COC.
All those things are just designationsthat you set up in a company.
Like you don't have to have any of themactually like, but you know, I'm always
confused by CEO because it's like chiefexecutive officer, but like, I feel
(34:05):
like that role changes based on a lotof times, that's basically like I shake
people's hands and they give us money
you know, we do business, you know, wefundraising it's and for like a nonprofit
it's different than for a for-profit.
It's a I don't know.
John (34:18):
Okay.
I don't know as a valid answer
for sure
but you're the president andyou have a separate person as a
secretary that's new challenger.
do you have the time to develop or is itstill kind of biz dev mode at this point?
Shawn A (34:32):
It's, it's a lot of everything.
know, you know, me, I'm, I'm, you know,I work doing game deals with color expo.
That's one thing.
That's what I always say.
I always have say I have likethree jobs now that I don't
have the full time, day job.
New challenges is now myfull-time day job my evening job
John (34:47):
How does that feel?
How does that feel to be say that to
Shawn A (34:49):
feels amazing, I did it for about
a year and a half from between rockstar
and having to get back on the job scene.
And, you know, it's, it's, it'shard having a day job and having
to do all this other stuff.
John (35:00):
I imagine it's
not where your heart is,
Shawn A (35:02):
Yeah, it's a, yeah, my heart
was not, definitely not in my day job.
you know, but then again, I also throwmyself at anything that I'm doing.
So like I need to be the bestat what I do wherever I'm at.
So that's also another thing is it'slike, that becomes frustrating because
then you run into issues where peopleare okay with mediocrity and are not,
and that becomes a culture clash.
(35:24):
And that, that's definitelyhappened to me in the past.
But yeah, so like now it's just good tobe like, yeah, I'm new challenger and
I'm also doing the game deals with colorexpo, two things I, greatly care about.
And yeah, so new challenger is like,it's dev it's some business of it
all kind of happens simultaneously.
It's, it's definitely exhausting.
I'm actually two of the firstthings that I'm looking into.
(35:45):
Like, cause now I need employees so that
Cause like in order to go with oneof these companies that can get you
better health insurance than the ACAyou need to at least three employees.
so salary people, W2 people.
And so, I'm one that to find two more
John (36:02):
so the secretary doesn't count
Shawn A (36:04):
well, right
now he's not employed.
He's just the secretary and the likethe and, own stock in the company.
But like, until he has ajob, he doesn't get paid.
Like nobody gets paiduntil they have a job.
Like, cause we have like the secretary whowill also be probably the, like the COO
and have a CTO who he has a full-time job.
John (36:25):
going to be the first spot you
look for your, your tech engineer person.
Shawn A (36:29):
Yeah.
Like you need to find engineers.
I need to find a producer who I'mtrying to build like an interesting role
because like, I actually I got a lotof producing experience from being like
put in an AP position and I'm trying tolook for someone to can fill like an AP
role who can help me because I'm stilldoing treasury, meet down city stuff,
but also have the next thing.
So it's like, I need somebody who cantake over that because there's just like
(36:53):
managing to get the build, getting thebill, looking at the build, being like
this works, this doesn't work, And thenjust handing that back to the person
that can take three hours sometimes.
And that's like third of my day.
Right?
it's like, so if I could not do thatevery time, that would be super helpful.
Because I also have awhole other game to design
John (37:14):
follow-up.
How do follow up that bad boy?
So in your day to day as president,whereas partial BizDev, you're
managing treachery and beat down city.
You're trying to dedicate some cyclesinto the next thing that may or
may not be a sneaker focus thing.
what's your like key tool set?
What are things that helpyou do your, day to day?
Shawn A (37:33):
The secret thing
is the next, next thing.
It's something I'm also working on,but like the next thing is going
to be more combat focused and I'mlooking forward to announcing it
John (37:42):
see, I would expect that I
would expect the, whatever you do
next follow up that combat system.
Shawn A (37:48):
I'll be hinting a lot.
I've been watching alot of movies and stuff
and getting a lot of books thatthat if someone looked at my Amazon
purchase history, they'd be like,oh, I know what this guy is working
John (37:57):
Oh, Ooh.
Okay.
Okay.
Some hints.
Shawn A (37:59):
I, I mean, I use Trello,
I still use that's like my
primary, like tracking stuff,
John (38:04):
Did you come across Trello?
I'm curious because in yourpost-mortem for church free and
beat down city, you talk about.
going through a learning process of like,man, how do I get organized and how do
we do our task board and stuff like that.
And so, so was Trello kindof your solution for that?
Shawn A (38:21):
game does a color expo,
which has moved on a sauna, which
I need to understand all thesetracking things, just bug me out.
Like I've been using JIRAfor the last six years and
was still never able to actuallyget a solid answer for how to use
it by like anybody that I workedwith who was also a producer.
the annoying thing is that peoplewalk in and be like, no, but
this is how you use a thing.
(38:42):
But if you ask three people,how do you use a thing?
Like, how do you use epics in JIRA?
None of them will giveyou the same exact answer.
Cause I'll be like, well,what about subtests?
Can't you just use a sub-task insteadof making an epic there's so many like
things that people can't give you anactually answer to and because they just
use it and it just makes sense to them.
John (38:59):
can easily start a
war over the epic debate.
Shawn A (39:03):
Yeah.
So Trello like was helpful.
Cause I looked at it, I'm like,I don't know what to do here.
And we were using Google sheets andjust listing stuff and that didn't work.
And so Trello was like, they'll bethe key thing was like, let's make
boards, like let's make a backlog.
and then like make boards, atone point it was just bugs.
marked fixed slash implemented,and then marked verified.
(39:23):
And, but then it becamelike, well, our game has UI.
It has enemies, it has music,it has all these things.
So we have lists for basically everything.
As well as like our console portsthat are going on right now.
And then those get, you know, moved intoin progress and they get moved into, and
it was just like, I didn't know that.
John (39:38):
So it sounds like Kanban style kind
Shawn A (39:40):
exactly.
So it was like all, but like, it'sall about how you set it up, right?
Like nobody says, Hey, here's a way.
So with the game, those of colorexpo, those folks knew how to
do this stuff better than I did.
Cause I had, never setup a JIRA by myself.
It was always set up for me.
I didn't know that secret, then it'sall up to you on how you set it up.
And
John (39:59):
yeah, the workflow, the tags.
Shawn A (40:02):
because everybody acts like
these things, they all feel very opaque.
And like, this is how it goes.
And you're just like, yes.
That's how it goes.
But you have to set it up that way.
Like it doesn't give you a templateand say, or maybe they do, but you
got to pay like some weird amount ofmoney and you still don't even get
the features you want with Trello.
Like, I want more colors for labels.
And like, no, no, you don't get those.
(40:22):
I'm like, but there'slike 16 million colors.
Like, why can't I have more colors?
They're like, I don't know.
But you can't.
And
like so, Trello, like Google suite,like that's been really core.
I'm still confused when people giveme an outlook file, like a word file
or something with doc
X.
Cause I'm just like,
John (40:39):
they don't import nicely.
Shawn A (40:40):
Nope.
John (40:41):
that's crazy.
It's crazy.
How Google has kind of like supersededMicrosoft office or like their
iron hold over the business space.
So trust.
G suite all Photoshop
Shawn A (40:53):
Photoshop,
illustrator.
I'm
of I'm one of the only pixelartists that uses Photoshop.
It's really frustrating, but it'sthe thing I learned on and the thing
I know and when I try to use otherthings, I'm like, what do you mean?
you can't save layered files.
So illustrator I use cause like,you know, vector art, logos.
I do all my own logo design right now.
(41:14):
I don't want to keep doing it,but it's what I've had to do.
which was before it was Autodeskpurchased and made free.
It was like 30 bucks a year orsomething or 30 bucks total.
I don't know.
And it was great cause it's like, Ireally liked that it has like a kind
of light marker just on the base.
Like it's just like, you canjust color stuff very quickly.
I do it for like production art mostly.
(41:35):
one day when we do our art book fortreachery beat down city, there'll
be a lot of the sketchbook stuff
puzzle, the nice pencil right off the bat.
Like I went to art school, so I'm verypicky about like how hard a pencil looks
on a thing and how like sketching fields.
And it actually feels really nice.
So, and it's, pre-configured that wayversus like Photoshop, you'd have to
figure out like what brush and, youknow, they give you like an sketchbook.
(41:57):
They give you a pen anda marker and paint brush.
That's like, they have cleardelineations, whereas Photoshop is so
customizable that you have to basicallyfind someone who knows good brushes
and then download their brushes.
sketchbook just starts in a good place.
That's easy to work from.
John (42:14):
do you draw on like
a way calm or tablet?
Okay.
Shawn A (42:17):
I've been rocking a way.
Calm tablet, like the plastic joint, nota screen since like till I was a four,
like when I was in school, they wereable to get like us a discount on them.
John (42:28):
How much did it
run you at that time?
With the discount?
Shawn A (42:31):
I, dunno
John (42:32):
200.
That's fair.
Shawn A (42:33):
a medium, like they're
like 400 for the medium.
John (42:36):
You went to school for computer art.
That's where artistsfundamentals come from.
Shawn A (42:40):
yeah, like I had a
Photoshop class and that was
the teacher who Like her websiteused to be Photoshop, diva.com.
She was like an alpha tester on Photoshop.
she used to do photo compositing withphotos, like, cutting the negatives and
putting them together and then exposingthem to make like new photos and stuff.
So that was helpful because like,just literally, like, even though I
understood graphic design and I thought Iunderstood bits of Photoshop, she taught
(43:03):
like so many, like low lying thingsthat you know, I use them to this day.
Like, I, I'm still theresident retoucher in my house.
Like we tried to get weddingphotographs like retouched.
And from the company that wasrecommended by the people who
we got our photographer from,
and
we could not tell them how todo it because when we gave them
notes, it just came back bad again.
So then I was just like, I'll do it.
John (43:23):
yeah.
it's that saying?
Right?
You want something done?
Right?
Gotta do it.
Your damn self.
Geez.
your academic training is in art andhere you are, that's like your, your
key go-to tools, but you did a bunchon treachery and beat down city.
it's funny hearing you talk about thepixel art because yeah, it's got a really
what I say nostalgic or retro look, butthen to hear that you probably did it
(43:47):
all yourself makes total sense, right?
Like using what you know,bringing that into your project.
Shawn A (43:52):
took a long time.
The first thing that we made for thegame was it well, we started making
these little people, like that was like,cause I, I had this idea for like a
green to use, like even like a small,but still way out of scope, like side
scrolling, 3d kind of look that wasgoing to be like street fighter four.
And I was like, and it's true.
(44:13):
Actually, a small teamcan pull that off now.
It would take a long time butit's actually happening now.
Small teams are now coming out with,like, I saw a trailer for a game
that used like arc system works is acell shading technique in a fighting
game that just looked really good.
But, but at the same time,like I wanted to experiment.
I wanted to learn like what to dohere and like cause a lot of people
(44:33):
are like, well why'd you do it?
And I'm like, well, doubledragon on the Nintendo.
Very specifically.
Now if the arcade never actuallyplayed the arcade as a kid,
John (44:40):
any S double dragon.
Shawn A (44:42):
yeah.
And bad dudes on the Nintendo.
Yeah.
Those two games, I justreally like the light.
Reduction infidelity you know, it'sexpressionists in that sense where it's
like, what does the mouth look like?
What does it like, you know, superMario, I know they talk about that.
They did these things becausethey showed off better, but like
Shakira, Miyamoto's an artists.
Cause if you look at otherpixel art of the day, most of
(45:03):
it is not as good as his art.
Like he had color andlike him with a, to Zucca.
Takashi to Zucca yeah.
He was the other artist.
He worked with me a Modo side-by-sidedoesn't get anywhere near
John (45:16):
the acclaim, right?
I mean, I don't, his name definitelydoes not bring as much as me and modals
Shawn A (45:21):
yeah, I don't know if he was
the artist, but there was also another
guy that did a lot of the key artlike that Moto didn't do all of it.
but just looking at how they didit, like they just clearly had
a key idea of color compositionsensibilities that other people did not.
And they also have the ability to havelike, you know, a few colors on screen.
Whereas, so, you know, they usetheir technical limitations, but
they made beautiful art out of it.
(45:42):
Right.
you know, they program themusic to hit on specific notes.
And even though that waslike a limitation, this is
why the games beautiful.
And so like the, the thing about currentpixel art, a lot of times I feel like
people don't think about it like that.
They think about like, let's makepixel or as opposed to let's make art.
that is pixels.
John (46:01):
Yeah.
That's what, w what areyour constraints, right?
What are you trying to bring to life?
And got a great look.
Shawn A (46:06):
And, at GDC last year,
I actually gave a talk that was
like animating a complex fightinggame, three frames at a time.
and it's still not anywhere.
It's not YouTube, butstill behind the gate or
John (46:16):
paywall and the
volt still linked to it.
Shawn A (46:18):
yeah.
And it's like I talked about how therewas a point where, cause everyone does
all this like really bouncy Pixler.
And like, I hate it because like, I thinka lot of it's not actually good animation.
It's just moving.
like street fighter three, greatlooking game, a lot of games don't
understand what was good about it though.
And they bounce everything.
They're like, oh, you gotearrings, you got hair.
(46:39):
And I'm like, you can't justbalance everything at once.
Cause then it does like that.
Doesn't, that's not howthat's not how shit works.
Like really in real life.
Like, your hair doesn't bouncethe same way as your body,
but people just do it because.
Uh, reason.
so I was like, well, mygames stark on its own.
And I kept thinking like, do I add more?
And that I was like, you knowwhat, I'm actually gonna figure
out how to do more with less.
And I'm going to limit everything.
(47:01):
If I can't do it in threeframes, I might not do it.
and sometimes we went over, if it wasa hundred percent necessary my grapples
would be used slightly more complicated,but we used a lot of street fighter to
Sprite, flipping techniques, because likethey would do stuff where a hurt, a hurt
characters frame would just keep moving.
And like one eighties in order to like,while like Zane, he was grappling them.
(47:22):
So Sanjeev goes through like threeor four frames of a grapple while the
other character is just the same hurtframe or goes through two for frames
of cycles and just, they keep rotatingit and putting it in different places
so that it looks like this move ishappening, but saying was really just
holding a solitary character and it'sjust flips from like 90 to 90 degrees.
(47:42):
Like, not a full cause,like Sprite rotations, bad.
It's ugly.
Unless it's done really well,but yeah, that was just all,
really challenging myself to makesure my art all worked together.
John (47:52):
That's awesome.
I mean, so many times thesethings are disconnected, right?
Like you have your artists and youhave the person implementing it
and engineering and tech artists.
And, and so I always find that fascinatingto, to see at this level, when you would,
did you have to implement those as well?
Or were you working with yourengineer to go, okay, here's
(48:14):
the frames of the animation.
This is how it shouldplay in this, how it runs
Shawn A (48:18):
Yeah, that's been, that was
a, that was a, several conversations
over time, because there was a timewhere our a lot of things were more
machine-driven like fallbacks weremachine-driven where, like, if you
hit somebody, they would fall back.
And it was like you know, anarc in the game of the arc.
Like, so it was floaty, know,it needed tweaking, like,
John (48:41):
there wasn't really
an animation, right.
You're just kinda like setting someposition on screen programmatically,
right That's what you mean by
Shawn A (48:49):
yeah, like when
you tween something, right.
John (48:50):
yeah, there you go.
That's a better word.
Shawn A (48:52):
it's like goes over an
arc, but that's how things were
animated a lot of times and therewas a lot of like, how does street
fighter to work and guesswork right.
Of a lot of stuff.
John (49:02):
that's a great foundation to
build off of or strive after for
Shawn A (49:05):
yeah, we really like, we're
like, okay, so every fallback is like
two or three or four frames of just,it goes to a fallback animation of
them, like kind of like arms down andfalling back and then transitions to
a downstate when it hits the ground.
But it has like pretty mucha fixed arc in a lot of ways.
Not always because there's actually someother programmatic stuff that came up
(49:27):
like if you, kill somebody with a throw,like with a pile driver or something, they
will bounce because they also have a thingwhere when they hit zero, they fall back.
they this thing where it's like,they hit the ground and then
they fall back off the ground.
It is actually pretty cool becauseit looks like you're like, you're
skipping rocks with people like youdo a body slam bounce off the ground
John (49:49):
an extra Browns.
do you take me back because I lovethe shit out of street fighter two.
in your opening sequence.
It is literally that scene from thestreet fighter two arcade, right
where the dude knocks out the otherperson, but it's flipped now, right?
It's not white dudeknocking out black dude.
Shawn A (50:05):
Well, it's a, play on the
whole, remember that Pepsi, commercial,
where they were like the cops.
And
John (50:11):
it to me.
Shawn A (50:12):
think it was supposed
to be like one of the Jenners or
Kardashians or whatever were in it.
And everybody was like, allthese pictures of people dancing
and all this, like unity.
And then the, and then she walks up to acop and like, gives him a Pepsi rather.
And he like opens it up.
And like, does like a cheers thing.
And everybody's like,oh, soda saves the world.
Right.
and that's how you solve police violenceapparently is by being friends police.
(50:37):
So this one is, a socialite, like she'sin her jacket and all that stuff, but
she's just there holding a can of Coke or
of Fs Cola rather.
and then the cops there, the shittyracist cops there, and that she punches
them out the background is actuallya multi-racial group of people.
Like if you look at the background, It istiled also because like, I don't know the
game, we never really figured out tiling.
(50:58):
So a lot of it was manual by me, butlike the sorts of background, Sprite of
just a bunch of characters, like doing solittle animations of celebratory thing.
And then yeah, she, knocks themout and then it goes, yeah,
like the Fs Cola fight someone.
And so it's like the flip of that.
It's also like slightly on aplay on sorry to bother you.
I don't know if you've seen that movie.
(51:18):
it's uh So sorry to bother youis like movie about like how
far will you go to make money?
And it stars the Keith Stanfield he'slike a poor guy who gets a job at a
call center, Danny Glover's in it.
And he teaches him about thisthing called the white voice.
And it's it's, overdubbed in the movie.
So it's like, I think it'sit's David Cross David Cross.
(51:38):
And like Patton Oswald, likedo the like overdub voices.
And it's really funny cause it'sjust like your inner white voice.
It's like, it's not evena white people sound
like it's what they it's what
they aspire to sound It's like,you've never, you've never been fired.
Only laid off.
You don't even need the money.
You're just here because you want to cometo an office and so he starts using that.
(51:59):
It starts getting more and more likericher for the company and the company
is basically dealing in slavery.
people can sell themselves to the company.
And they just They work for the companyfor the rest of their life it's like
a big thing and there's like protests,but then there's a part where a woman,
who's a like one of the protests or shethrows a Coke at the outlet flake as
he's walking in his name's Cassius green,
(52:20):
Which is funny, cause likeKashi is green, right?
Like, So he, she throws a thing athim and it hits him in the head and
he goes like, ah, and it becomeslike a YouTube, viral sensation.
And it's like, and so it likehave a Cola and a smile bitch.
Like yells that.
And then that becomesthis huge viral thing.
And that's, if you see any of theposters, there's like a physical poster
as him on a phone with like a bandageover his head with like a red block.
(52:44):
And it's because of he got hit by the can.
And so that was like the fight.
Someone was like kind ofthis like play into that.
And it was actually because we needed aninteresting intro for the launch trailer
and because I wanted to have somethingthat would catch people's eyes immediately
that transitioned into, oh, this isgoing to be the beginning of the game.
(53:04):
and again, hook somebodyimmediately cause they see.
not just street fighter, butit's also politics, right?
Like it's and if you get where I'm goingwith it, then you're like, oh cool.
But if you don't, you're justlike, oh, she find her ha.
And if you don't otherwise,it's like, oh, these are these
big sprites that are moving.
And you're like, oh, okay.
I'm so
John (53:22):
it does a great job of
like catching your glimpse.
If you, if you're looking at it in aconvention show or something like that,
you'd be like, oh, that looks familiar.
Let me go check it out.
And then it's kind of deep in that combatis the big part of this mechanic, but
the city is also living, breathing andmuch more modernized than any other
depiction you've typically seen of it.
Right.
And the characters and the layers inhere, came across the treachery and
(53:45):
beat down city by sheer coincidence.
I think it was a two-fold thing of likeconnecting with you for game days of.
Or maybe coming, coming across some ofthe things you were talking about on
Twitter and then being like, oh, snap,you know, Sean's got a game out there.
Like, what is it what's goingon in here and check it out.
And then I guess, timing was perfect whereprime gaming was featuring it or giving
(54:08):
it away for free or something like that.
And I checked it out and I, I lovethe look obviously, and then the
whole montage to beat them ups.
And then the combatsystem was crazy to me.
Right.
Because you've, you've since called outso many inspirations for it, like fallouts
VAT systems, traditional JPGs right.
Like anybody who plays old schoolPokemon, like living in menus and
(54:28):
selecting fight or run or ability.
And then even the real time inputpart of like a Mario RPG, right.
Like something that blew my mind, right.
Like, oh shit, I'm no longerjust watching the thing play.
I can still actively do inputs tolike increase damage or whatever.
And then you couple that withlike insane characters, right?
Like sweet backstory, vibrant,colorful characters that I've
(54:52):
never seen before that you don'tsee represented in this manner.
And I was like, yeah, youknow, re remind me the name.
It was like, was it a PuertoRican lady, a Mexican grappler.
And then like a Jamaican.
Capoeira dude, Remind me their names
Shawn A (55:06):
Lisa is the MMA beside us boxer,
Puerto Rican woman, and bread The bull
killer steel is a, the Mexican wrestlerand Bruce Maxwell is the Jamaican
American Capoeira G Cuno fighter.
John (55:21):
you put a lot of years into it,
but I look at these gameplay systems
and I'm just like, oh man, tell me more.
What was some of the challenges puttingthese, some of these things together,
things that you didn't plan for?
I'll preface this by saying you havea full one-hour post-mortem where you
go through the entirety of the game.
So I'm definitely gonna encouragepeople and I'm going to link
(55:41):
to it, to go check it out.
If you want to learn more, definitelygrabbed the game, take it for a spin.
I think it's on switch PC,
Shawn A (55:49):
we got something
to drop this year.
Like wise, we were hopingto be out everywhere.
But there's at least one otherconsole that's coming out.
that'll be out when we drop this DLC.
It comes out day indate with that console.
John (56:01):
oh, this DLC.
Shawn A (56:02):
The game actually
ends on a, on a cliffhanger.
cause like, you know, projectmanagement, you start learning things
and you, I realized that, I hadover promised but also the things
that I did promise like 40 some oddinterviews, here's all this music.
Here's all these moves.
Here's a bunch of levels.
Like right now I think the gameclocks in at like four or five
hours, depending on how you play it.
(56:23):
And I'm like, that'spretty good for 20 bucks.
Like,
so then at some point I was justlike, and we had actually decided we
wanted to make it like episodic inthe sense that each like part of the
story was like the end of an episode.
And, you know, the whole game is actuallymade to be like bite-sized chunks.
Like the ramping of all the fightsand going to the Halaal car and
fighting the boss is meant to basicallybe like, okay, you got, you keep
(56:44):
going through these little chunks.
And they are all designed to go from likeeasy, medium, or easy, slightly harder,
medium, you know, in the beginning,and then a little harder than medium.
And so we would design it to belike, okay, well, this isn't gonna
feel like drastic, sharp cutoff.
Right.
We wanted to really introduce ideasover small, small little bits and
(57:04):
then the whole thing is designedin the sense of how many ramps does
it take to get to the center ofthe sociopath to get to the boss?
And the boss is supposed to, youknow, they're not bespoke, like
a lot of games are, every bossis basically a normal character.
Like they just have different stats.
so then we have these ideas where thebosses can reinforce certain things.
Like, do you know defense?
Do you know, very basic things.
If it's earlier on and you gottadefend more and know more about
(57:28):
countering and whatever, and probablyknow more about item use as you
go on, but, some people get it.
Some people don't as, as with all games,
So we have like another dropto do So it's like a, to be
continued, a big thing happens.
The whole story gets turned on itsear and yeah, we're doing a lot of
like, just writing and design forthe next episode, with a question
(57:49):
mark of, is it one, is it two?
people have to play the game tofigure out cause like I don't want
to spoil be like, yeah, this is theend or whatever something that's
interesting about indie games as youcan be a little bit more mysterious.
You
can so the good thing is like, most peoplearen't like where's the second episode I
paid for this game and blah, blah, blah.
Most people are like, I can't wait.
I'm excited for.
(58:09):
it's funny.
Cause like we had to tell our Kickstarterbackers also, cause there's a bunch
of them that are just not in thisand we're like, you're going to be
in the next bit like so, and likesome of the art from Kickstarter
backers will be in the next bit.
John (58:20):
I love hearing that when
a game is released, what will.
Two years ago now, 2020 March 20th.
Yo, you actually going today dayand date to your anniversary.
Yeah, look at that.
Shawn A (58:32):
Yeah, it's been a lot, like, I
mean, well, it's been like two and two
years and two weeks now since like thepandemic began and, and like me figuring
out I'll launch a game into said pandemicwhile taking care of a kid, at least
my kid has daycare now, which is good.
John (58:48):
yeah.
Oh, hell yeah.
Shawn A (58:49):
that was, that was brutal.
John (58:51):
Where does new challenger come from?
What's the inspiration behind the name.
Shawn A (58:54):
so a bit ago, I don't know.
I like finding games obviously,like I've loved street fighter
John (59:00):
Yeah, you put the quarter in
new, new, new, new, new challenger.
Here comes new challenger.
Shawn A (59:03):
so I had a website a long
time ago and it's still the website's
URL is a new challenge or a waits.com.
And I came up with a company like anidea called a new challenge or a weights.
And the website is a new challenge ora waits.com, but it's, but it's, it's
direct, redirected from new challenger.
And so I on I'm actually probably comingup on my 12 year anniversary on Twitter.
(59:25):
And so I wanted to make like a newchallenge or something on Twitter,
but the new challenger thing wastaken, it's still taken by a defunct
account that was tied to rev three.
I don't know if you remember them.
It was a media group that was likethink Anthony Carboni ran that he's
a games, purse writer, media person.
(59:46):
And so that account's still taken.
And so I was like, I wasonline at for the, we, you
everyone, that was a huge line.
You had a lot of timeto think about things.
And so I was like setting upmy Twitter and I was just like
typing all these different things.
And I was just like so I decided anew challenger and I was like, well,
(01:00:06):
it's too close to the new challenger.
So then
like let me just change it to the you.
to be kind of like, it's the new,
new
John (01:00:14):
the
Shawn A (01:00:15):
yeah.
and that, that just became it andoh, and I think, well, that's the
thing, that's my Twitter handle.
And then one day I was like, well, what doI, I needed to come up with an LLC name.
And I was looking intolike funding and stuff.
And I was like, well, what do I do?
And that was.
This is your new challenger.
That'll be my company.
and it makes sense because the moreI thought about the industry and the
more I thought about my place in it.
(01:00:36):
And I was like, well, you know,we make games that like, are
about fighting challenging things.
And then also the company as a self,like as like quote unquote minority,
whatever under underfunded, under,under invested in like a lot of
people call it underrepresented.
Uh, But seeing other people tryingto fight that because it's like,
I grew up in poverty in the city.
Right.
Like
under invested in basically necessarily.
(01:00:58):
And so,
as that person, I just am achallenge to the industry.
argue with people's sensibilitiesand then, you know, for sure be
density is an argument againsta lot of people's ideologies.
And like, it's like, it's a gamethat's similar to like, get out,
like all the white people are bad.
Like.
John (01:01:15):
yo
you, you got you, peoplegot to check this out.
People got to check this game.
I'm telling you it's unlikeanything it's extremely
refreshing in so many ways, right?
Like it's nostalgic and retro,but it's also modern and mixes
a lot of cool elements together.
now being able to look back andto see how the game turned out.
taking what you thought it couldbe, what it ended up being.
(01:01:38):
Talk to me about any of thefeatures or components that you are
most proud of or things you wishyou could have done differently.
Shawn A (01:01:47):
I mean, everything
is the fighting system.
Could I
better, et cetera?
Like of course, as Ithought about it over years.
Sure.
Which is definitely gonnaspill into my next project,
John (01:01:56):
But I have to add that I love the
way that you build your combo on the fly.
I thought that was so bad ass.
I don't know why, I guess I'd neverplayed fallout or anything like that,
but
me it was like, oh yeah,what can I unlock you?
What can I fit in here?
Right.
Like,
Shawn A (01:02:11):
Well, that's the thing
like up, isn't that right?
False about like howmuch you can do damage
and like you use items on the flyand do all that stuff on the fly.
And I thought it was always funny thatreviews of fall three were confused.
They were always like, but thenthe little moment to moment,
shooting's not that interesting.
It's only interesting when you enter.
That's the point, wrong with you?
It's the whole thing like thegame is not a running gun.
(01:02:34):
First person shooter.
The game is a tactical firstperson shooter, where you stay in
cover until you have your points.
You peak out, you line up with somebody,you blow their head clear off, and then
you go back and you like, figure out whatyou're going to do in like, maybe move on.
And, I love fall three when I played it.
John (01:02:52):
still hear about that game.
Shawn A (01:02:53):
The conceit of the game was
I was really frustrated, you know,
beat them ups were coming back becauseof the Xbox live arcade older ones,
which I was like, yeah, I love these.
And then like newer ones, like, like Ithought castle Crashers misunderstood
the genre for a lot of texts.
Cause also it took a lot more fromthe 3d character actions, genre, which
has a lot of like juggling and combosin the air and stuff that I it's
(01:03:19):
fine for character action games, butthat's not a beat him up thing to me.
And also cause like th then that meansenemies become bullet sponges or punch
sponges because you're like, you, you, youhave to have someone to juggle in the air.
So that you have to have more energy.
That's why devil may cry at works,but like a beat him up where it's
like, you just need to keep, like, itdoesn't have the like cinematic flare.
(01:03:42):
It doesn't have the whole, like,can you make your combo meter higher
or whatever it doesn't have thatit just has hit people and move on.
That's what a beat them
John (01:03:50):
We'll forward.
Shawn A (01:03:51):
I like do it in an interesting
way with it, make the enemies interesting.
Make all these things interesting.
So, and yeah, like Scott Pilgrim is a gamethat everybody in my opinion gets wrong.
Like, I didn't like that game that much,again, enemies were punched sponges.
It was poorly balanced.
It had great art because PaulRobertson's art is amazing.
But like that has blinded peopleto the fact that the game is
(01:04:12):
like, has very poor fundamentals.
Like, if it's a four playerfighting game and enemy can't
block, it shouldn't be able toblock on both sides simultaneously.
And yet they can in that gamebecause the whole point should be
that they block on one side andsomebody comes up and hits them in the
back But
you know, there's a book that justcame out about beat him ups that were
actually featured in called go straight.
It's like a bitmap books, great book.
(01:04:33):
It's beautiful.
All their books are beautiful,but I was super excited and super
surprised that we were featured in it.
But the thing about these gamesis that they are in Japan.
They're called belt.
Scrollers also, so the idea is thatyou move forward, stopping, you
stopped to fight and then you move.
And if the fighting, when youstop is just forever, then it's
like, you're something missing.
Like either the games like made aspecific way to keep you to stop
(01:04:56):
you because it's a quarter muncher.
But if it's like an enemy thatjust blocks too much, it's
like, that's just poor design.
I think that's my opinion.
but, so we were trying tomake the best of beat them up.
That was like the thingthat we were trying to do.
And then when we were trying to do that,I was realizing actually even realized
years later that I was trying to dosomething that wasn't going to work.
The things I wanted to do conflictedwith the genre and I didn't realize this.
(01:05:18):
and we were just like having a hard time.
Technically we're in GameMaker.
There were just a lot of animationissues and all sorts of stuff.
So it was like, what do we do?
And I was, I went, I was takinga shower, like a literal shower
moment and I sat there and I was.
Beat him up RPG.
I was like, we're going to have here.
And I was like, was like, I was like MarioRPG, like I've thought about Mario RPG.
(01:05:38):
I thought about hybrid heaven,which is this game on and 64.
it was from Konami.
It was supposed to kind of be like metalgear, but not at all like metal gear.
So it has like a story like aliens and,like government coverups and stuff.
But the whole battle system isone-on-one fighting game, but term-based
where a lot of this came from.
(01:05:58):
Like, it has like you stop, like theenemy goes and goes enemies attacking.
but it's very based on 3d fighting games.
So it's like, you canchoose a step left or right.
You can try to block.
Um, And if you step left or right,but the person kicks in the direction
that you step in, then you'll get hit.
So it has that 3d fighting elementwhere if you step around somebody,
but they do like a roundhousekick, you might still get hit.
(01:06:19):
And it was interesting.
And it has like way too many moves.
It's a game that I love though.
And you learn your moves by gettingthem done to you, but if you got
the head, but in the game, you werebasically invincible for a lot of time
because you also could hurt enemies.
And if you heard a body part and youhit them again, you just kept whaling
on that body part, you would win.
So the head butt would literallydamage an enemy to the point
(01:06:40):
where their head was almost done.
And then you just hit them onemore time and you beat them.
So That was actually something about beingthe most, that like, you know, in double
dragon, on the NES, everyone does the backelbow to be Jimmy Lee, like the last boss.
Right.
Spoilers.
If anybody hadn't played this,the 30 five-year-old game,
John (01:06:58):
like
your, your face forward, back attack?
Shawn A (01:07:01):
yeah.
Yeah.
So like you just get this like elbow,that's the most powerful move of the game.
And what you do is you just walk upelbow and then wait, and then do a medial
elbow as they get up and you just keephitting them until you win essentially.
And that's, you know, dominant strategy.
And I don't like dominant strategies.
I I've, I like to playfighting games BMS or whatever.
(01:07:22):
It's funny.
Like I used to want to be a competitiveplayer and I started to learn
that, like, you can't have fun as acombative player, you have play to win.
John (01:07:31):
find one strategy that works
there's no, I mean, people, freestyle
people go for the audience kind of wow.
Moments, but yeah, the the, dominantguy, like, you know, you might pop
out a raging demon when you can, but
it's not the, the most frequent strategy.
Yeah.
Shawn A (01:07:46):
there's this guy, Cain blue
river who like a south American Marvel vs.
Capcom player.
And he plays like the onesthat I want to eat with.
I was like Hulk and hag are, and likethe characters that I'm like interested,
but like, yeah, literally those games atthe end are all about figuring out how
to have a long combo, not let the otherperson, if a person presses a button and
you catch them on a wake-up, they're done.
That's goal in that game, thatgame goal in the game is not to
(01:08:08):
like, be exciting and have fun.
And that's fine.
I just learned thatabout the fighting games.
Cause I always would, put out the risky,
John (01:08:15):
High-risk high-reward
severe punishment.
Shawn A (01:08:19):
yeah.
And I'd get my ass handed to meby like, like I once about to play
like Chris G, who was, again, a
John (01:08:24):
Yeah.
No Chrissy,
Shawn A (01:08:26):
I was, I was at a friend's
tournament was about to start and we
were in warmups and I started playing
against
John (01:08:31):
What game?
What character?
Shawn A (01:08:33):
for I'm a zingy flare.
I'm bread was basically thefirst character we made because
we wanted to make a grappler.
That was interesting.
another, one of the core tenants waslike, can we make a grappler you know,
more interesting in these games So,yeah, and I was playing with Chris G
and I realized that I like, I don'thave the patience to play competitively.
Like, cause he's a competitiveplayer he's going to play in the
(01:08:55):
most annoying way possible to win.
And I'm like, I want to have fun.
I just, I that's actually, I thinkwhere I gave up mentally and I was
like, I don't want to be a competitivefighting game player anyway.
Cause like also one of my best friends,you can't play smash brothers with them.
Cause he's done competitive smash.
You are not going to have fun with him.
He's not going to let you have fun.
He is going to, he turns off his faceand just plays and like his brain
(01:09:17):
shuts down and it's just smashedbrothers until everyone is dead.
and then he wakes uplike it's really strange.
John (01:09:23):
the difference though?
Right?
There's like playing for fun and playingto win are, are mutually exclusive.
I mean, they're having fun, I guess.
Right.
If they, when they're having fun, but,
Shawn A (01:09:33):
know
John (01:09:34):
yeah, that's debatable for sure.
That's debatable.
I, I'm in the middle inthere somewhere, right?
Like when I'm playing for fun,I pick characters that I don't
really know that well, and try todo things that I see the pros do.
Yeah, for sure.
Damn man.
I love a little fighting games.
inspiration, obviously frombeat them ups fighting games.
And a lot of lessons learned similarto your sneaker research, right?
(01:09:57):
Like you now have an appreciationfor these 2d fighting mechanics,
these combat design considerationsand systems and, and pros and cons.
Shawn A (01:10:07):
I am the encyclopedia
on this stuff these days.
there's only a couple other peoplelike that as people who also design 2d,
like beat them up slash fighting games.
And that's the thing, like noteverybody is that person, like
when they make some of those games.
that was the thing I was going tosay, is that like, yeah, we were
failing to make the best beat them up.
So then we just took a lotof these elements and there's
also fire pro-wrestling is oneof my favorite games and it's
(01:10:29):
it's a great single-player gamebecause has a behavior system.
That's very simple.
It's basically like when at full health,do I do the move that's on square or
do I do the move that's on triangle?
Do I do the move that's oncircles, triangles run square is
usually we then cross was medium.
Then circle was heavy.
Then square plus cross was usuallyreserved for like the finisher.
(01:10:54):
And then there's like, do youthrow the character in the ropes?
Do you jump off the ropes?
Do you do all this?
And there's like, the game hasall this like really layered,
like telling a character.
Like if you have full.
You're more likely.
How often are you likelyto run to the ropes?
How often are you willing todo square triangle or circle?
And so it creates like this waywhere you can create a character that
actually acts like a real wrestler.
Like, and then it has like sub things.
(01:11:16):
Like if the character is bleeding,do they have a special move?
Like, like how Rick flair in real life, ifwork flares bleeding, he usually will win.
because he gets a boost in real life,like in real life, fake wrestling.
Right.
And so like in the game, therewas actually a thing where if
you were bleeding, your statswent up as opposed to down.
And there was like a thing wherelike, it was like one hit reversal
(01:11:36):
where like, if someone hit you withyour finisher move, there's a chance
you'll sit right back up out of it.
it's again, it's all chance based.
and there was also like auto counters.
So like, if you, if you could do anymove at any point, there were no meters.
There was no, like, therewas no meters at all.
Everything's invisible.
So your health is visible.
You could actually beat somebody inone attack in that game, because there
was also a
(01:11:56):
there's also a hidden thing calledcritical where their every move has
a chance to do a critical, especiallybased on your characters type.
So usually the critical wouldbe mapped to their finisher.
So like you could theoretically runto the ring, get in as you could
make Steve Austin, cause his faceis in the game and you could grab
the person, put them in a stunner.
And if they don't counter it,because there's a chance that
(01:12:17):
they won't counter it because it'sauto, it's all auto countering.
And then if the game decides.
The rolls, the dice.
There's a chance you could criticalthem with one stutter and then
they'd just be laying on the ground,like in referee would like, go over
to them, check if they're okay.
And then go like, and the match.
And so that's interesting.
I want an interesting fightingand that's what they do is that
like, there's a small chance.
(01:12:38):
You will just auto counter a finisher,even when you're at really low
health and about to be defeated.
So like in our game, we put in like,all these counter moves where like the
grapple counter system was built sothat at high health, the characters
more likely to counter then at lowerhealth, but then there's like grappling.
Then there's more grappa or friendlycharacters, like the sneaky types, which
are less likely to auto grapple versusbrawlers who are more 50, 50 versus
(01:13:02):
grapplers who were 75, 25 because theywere grapplers why wouldn't they counter?
And I grew up as an only child.
I wanted to basically make aninteresting fighting RPG that
you could play by yourself.
And then that, then when all thatcame to me, I was just like, yeah,
like, cause I didn't want to try tomake like foreplay or beat him up.
(01:13:22):
I wanted to make something that,cause I actually cause NESW drag.
Because they didn't have two players,they gave you a leveling system.
And so like, I like that leveling system.
The fact that that leveling systemwas based on how often you did
certain attacks, you could actuallygain the experience stuff, but it
would actually make the game harder.
You got more experience forpunching then kicking and kicking
did more damage than punching andkicking, was way more dominant.
(01:13:44):
So if played more aggressively andmaybe got hurt more, you'd actually
get moves faster in the game.
And then, and then really beable to just destroy the game.
Once you got like the jump kickand stuff, and even then enemies
had like counters where they wouldduck enemy will throw you off them.
If you got on top of them, likeall these different things that I
thought was always really interesting.
And that was all built into this game.
That again, from like 1987,
(01:14:06):
And like fire pros from the eightiesalso it's from the late eighties.
So it's like, these games with thesefundamentals are from very long time ago.
And I was like, yeah,we're going to do that.
so, so
became like wrestling matches ratherthan just because also the idea about the
game was like, why do you have to fightpeople on the street in the first place?
Right.
Cause beat them up.
(01:14:27):
So like you just rollthrough 30 of the same
John (01:14:29):
everybody's a, member or some type
Shawn A (01:14:33):
And our games it's based a lot on
like, you know, growing up as a racially
ambiguous person who had like a white momin like a neighborhood filled with people
Also not really understanding, cause my,my white mom was also very xenophobic
towards like, the quote unquote, thePuerto Ricans and stuff like that.
So even though she would make friends alot of people's moms, she like she's from
(01:14:53):
like North Carolina, she's a progressiveperson, but like a lot of progressive
people, as we all know, are racistand or xenophobic and Islamophobic.
And that was my mom.
She
John (01:15:03):
that generation,
Shawn A (01:15:04):
progressive enough, but
again, progressive enough to have
a kid with a black person, notprogressive enough to let that kid be
in a Muslims elementary school class.
Like it was just strange.
Right.
It was, there was a weird fascismto like certain, like Progressive's
where they, they, they, they stillbelieve certain things that, that they
just still believe like archetypesand stereotypes of certain people.
(01:15:28):
So, but yeah, so like, you know, growingup and having people shouting at me
and my mom and like being like, likeasked what I am by cops and like, you
know, being, cause we've got beingracially ambiguous every or, or just
people like a lot of people, like alittle blood, a lot of Puerto Rican,
Dominican, like older women would justassume I was Puerto Rican or Dominican.
Cause I
I am
John (01:15:48):
being New York
Shawn A (01:15:49):
Yeah.
And so they would juststart speaking to me.
So all of these like assumptions of who I
John (01:15:53):
start speaking to you in
Shawn A (01:15:54):
Yeah, of course.
And I'm nah, man.
I'm don't know.
And I'm it was just like all theseassumptions and, you know, people
harassing you for like, to give themmoney or buy their CD or just was like,
and also, one time I threw a snowball atlike a friend and it missed, and it just
went into the street and somebody cameback and they just punched me in the face.
(01:16:15):
Cause I was throwing snowballs andthey got hit by, I think, a different
snowball that wasn't mine, butthey just like, like I used to get
into like the dumbest fights also.
I like would almost get robbedexcept I didn't have any money.
So like, I remember a guy, like we wereplaying, ultimate, mortal combat three
in like a shoe store near my high school.
And cause that's, that'swhat they had for some
uh,
(01:16:35):
Brooklyn tech.
And so everybody would be inthere, but by that point it
was just me and somebody else.
And some kids came in and theywere like, they were like, yo jump.
And it was like to see if youhad any change in your pocket.
I just had my keys and my chain wallet.
So they were like, cause I, I had $1 a dayfor food and I would spend it immediately
and then eat my, like my hostess cake orwhatever and drink my tropical fantasy.
(01:16:56):
Cause I yeah, I didn't have that.
That was me having more moneythan I had as a younger kid
where I had no money every day.
John (01:17:03):
Hold tropical fantasies
are like the big, like
Shawn A (01:17:05):
it
was 20 ounce.
John (01:17:06):
20
Shawn A (01:17:07):
hours
Yeah.
For 50
John (01:17:09):
water, you know,
soda flavored sodas.
Shawn A (01:17:12):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like I, I love the blue cherry one.
That was my jam, but
don't know.
John (01:17:17):
such a value, bro.
How
Shawn A (01:17:19):
Yeah.
I mean, I would always be like, I'mnot spending a dollar on a soda, I'm
going to get some food and some soda.
But yeah, so like, so thatguy was like, yo jump.
And I had no money, so he just left.
But like, again, like, like thecity is less like a very violent
place, like verbally, a lotof times sometimes physically.
this game came out of a lot of, it waslike, well, what if I could fight all the
people who were shitty to me on the streetor shooting at me or shooting my ex-wife
(01:17:43):
who was a dark skin, Puerto Rico womanwith like long hair that was mistaken for
the help, like on more than one occasion.
So it's like all the characteristicsof the, of the main characters are
based on like friends and people.
I know interactions we had witheach other or with other people.
And so it all just manifestedinto yeah, three players.
John (01:18:05):
Into your three awesome characters.
do you get to play each of themthe narrative or you kind of select
who you are at any given time?
Shawn A (01:18:14):
You select whenever you want.
But there are like, through the wholething, there are these revenge fights
that are, are revival, rival fights,rather where you end up in a fight,
because the thing is, we didn't wantanyone to be able to go through the
whole game without seeing the, the eyesthrough the eyes, because each person's
important and they have to, you, you,we need you to have a conversation
(01:18:34):
between two or all, three of them.
So there are fights that all threepeople are involved in the, the
talking, but then it ends with oneperson because that one person is
like, no, I'm taking this personnel.
Or someone starts getting like raciallyprofiled or, and then the other people
are like, I'm going to help out.
Or like, you know, like, youknow, Brad and Bruce will be
(01:18:55):
like, I'll fight them for you.
And Lisa's like, no, like screw that.
I'm going to fight them.
Like, that's what I want to do.
And it's so then you get asense of all three characters.
There's like a build ofthe teams, like dynamic.
You get to know that they're all inthere for each other and that they also
have things that they don't like abouteach other, but they also do like, you
(01:19:15):
know, so there's like a lot of banter inthose cut scenes with people involved.
Like it's, it's funny to me, like youwere talking about like the different
characters and like I've seen peoplelike highlight like queer characters
on the switch and I'm like, thathad never even previewed the game.
And I'm like, Lisa literallyis wearing bisexual colors.
Like she's wearing pinkand blue and purple.
And I'm like, that's the bisexual flag.
(01:19:36):
And she is either BI or pan, like,you know, whatever she likes men and
women, like, and like, there are cutscenes where she, fully comes out.
There's a whole cut scene that deals withlike kinks and sexual attraction and stuff
in the midst of and wrestling references.
And it just is like, it'sa whole lot of stuff.
John (01:19:55):
you wrote all that, right?
Shawn A (01:19:57):
And it's all stuff that like,
I think about on a day-to-day basis.
And I've had to think about thecharacters and who they are and how they
interact with the world around them.
also it's grown as I've grown as a person.
it's, the game that it's hard for meto talk about because it is me as a
person is like
John (01:20:11):
is you the first one?
Shawn A (01:20:13):
I don't recommend opening
your heart and throwing it out the
switch like I did, because it's, yeah,it's just hard for me to talk about
like, it's if someone doesn't likeit, it's like, do you not like me.
John (01:20:24):
Yeah.
Yeah, there is that paradox, man,but I mean it's easy for me to say,
but I'm glad you did it, right.
I'm glad you, you put yourself into thisexperience because it's very unique.
how long would you say, from like a timestandpoint, you started in 2012 and, and
shipped in 2020, and then now you got DLC.
So been like 10 years at dev, huh?
non-stop of
Shawn A (01:20:45):
initially, yeah, initially the
funny thing is the first thing that was
made for it was the intro cut scene.
And it was just I met in versephase, the musician I had just these
characters and some backgrounds and Iwas like, I don't know what this is.
I had done some Sprite work and myex-wife and her best friend had like
a little like variety, YouTube showthat they were trying to get to be big.
(01:21:07):
So they like were like, Hey, do youwant to do like a little short for this?
so I did a thing where it was likebread where like a bicyclist is trying
to run it, the group and the groupstanding there being like, you move?
Like you're on the sidewalk.
You're coming right at us.
Like, and person justkept saying, watch out.
And then bread does like a Lariatand like a flaming Larry and
(01:21:28):
knocks person off their bike.
And that's actually kind of a,you know, where the idea of.
That move.
And also like the idea of havinglike bicyclists right at you.
Cause it's stuff that's happened tome again in the city where people just
are like, get out of the way and I'mlike, I'm on the sidewalk you get out
of the way, like it's you to be here.
And also when I go to othercities and it's not illegal
and they're all like behind yougoing, I'm no, like I'm walking.
(01:21:52):
Like you go around.
I like, I I'm, I'm pedestrian.
I'm like an aggressive pedestrian,like you want so, so like that was
like a thing and I needed music for it.
And so I found this, I was just lookingfor chiptune music and I found like,
a cover of forget you or, you know, Fyou by Cielo green by inverse phase.
(01:22:12):
And it was great.
It was like this amazing,like chiptune cover of it.
And then I was like, I rememberI announced on Twitter that
I wanted to work with him.
And he was like, oh, in what capacity?
And I was just like, oh, well,I've got this idea for a thing.
And then I, so we made a twominute intro song and that's how
I actually honed a lot of that.
cut scene.
Art came from that because theintro used to be like, I don't know.
(01:22:35):
I used to do like reallyin-depth pictures.
And then like, it was like really weirdlooking and pixel, and then I had to
keep 50 percenting it and expanding itback out and making it till it was truly
one-to-one pixel and still readable.
And I had to keep basically, like Idid like four or five iterations of
that intro, but the first intro wasjust stock photography and it was like,
(01:22:58):
I had to base my stuff on something.
And so I found a lot of photos of liketime square and like, presidents and and,
and landscapes and all sorts of stuff.
And so you can find the photosthat I had referenced in my art,
like
composition, whatever, but yeah,basically it's unrecognizable just
in the sense that I had to basicallycrunch all my art down, bring it all
(01:23:20):
back up and then fill in to make surethat it was actually still readable.
And it helped me learna lot about pixel art.
And I just, I it's something thatlike a lot of people take for granted.
And I, you know, I got to learn about likethe art of doing it while doing the intro.
And I still had to change it overtime when I realized that like
the trailer was like, even mybackgrounds, they weren't like correct.
(01:23:41):
They weren't one-to-one.
So like when we would, you know,stretch it for the game it would
go like, if it's like one pixel ortwo pixels, if you ever did like.
any in between some stuff willget stretched, like, because it
was an in-between cause you'restretching it like 150% or whatever.
So you have to do one or two or three.
You couldn't do like, oneand a half or something
John (01:24:02):
oh, yeah, for sure.
You need to have like powers of two kind
Yeah.
Shawn A (01:24:07):
I had to learn and then, you
know, we had to just keep redoing the
art until I finally learned like howto do a project and then like and it's
like, yeah, like operatingwithin the limits.
And it was just, it was fun becauselike, it was like, how you make
a bodega look like a bodega?
When every magazine is only twoby three pixels tall, the no
smoking sign is like very small.
(01:24:29):
All these things.
It's like, what parts do you highlightthe name of the place obviously,
but, and maybe the lotto sign islike just an abstract yellow and blue
image on a, on a, on a glass window.
Like it's.
John (01:24:42):
I love it.
Yeah.
I love pizza for me.
The image of a bodega sign.
It's usually to get like bright,yellow and red and it kind
of covers a corner usually.
Shawn A (01:24:51):
there's also
the like awnings too.
Cause like what the awnings?
What do they sell?
Can you write the words bigenough for people to read?
I had to basically like approximate,what words would look like
in two pixel height things.
So it'd be like two.
Like one, then one, then two,then one, then maybe one up
here and then like a space.
And then like, just trying to writewords look like they're words, even
(01:25:15):
though they're only two pixels talland one pixel wide, for letters
John (01:25:19):
is this going to be the calling
card or the style of new challenger?
Is it going to be pixel art?
Shawn A (01:25:25):
No.
John (01:25:26):
No.
Okay.
Shawn A (01:25:26):
that was, that was
my first thing learned a lot.
I mean, I think it's, for me it's morelike good art so the next thing a lot
of what we want to do is expandingon like the black art aspects of it.
Like graffiti cause that's also oneof the things that, you know, we like
making environments that looked livedin, but in order to make a lot of
the graffiti in the game, it camefrom like looking at watching graffiti
(01:25:50):
documentaries and buying graffiti books.
I have a bunch of like graffiti art booksthat like from the seventies, like when
people would take the photos of them andlike look at the styles and then use those
styles to create the graffiti in the game.
And I, that wasn't like the intention inthe beginning, but it ended up becoming.
You gotta respect like the art stylesand respectfully present things.
(01:26:15):
And that's going to bethe prevailing thing.
Like
it's cause I think my brainalso changed as time went on.
Like it's something that I say alot is like I had a talk that was
like, it's bigger than video games.
And it was like, it's bigger than hip hop.
Like the dead
press song because
it's all about like videogames are important.
Like video games are great, butlike, I think they're, they're really
(01:26:35):
powerful and you know, you can't.
John (01:26:37):
Well, that's the
medium of this time for sure.
Shawn A (01:26:40):
think it's fine that some
people want to stay in like the pixel
zone and you know, I might do thatfor a smaller game in the future,
but
I don't know.
I really want to make just somethingthat looks like, beautiful painting.
That's like a goal, like beautiful,like Harlem Renaissance style, like
graffiti, like interesting thing lookinginto the next thing we're looking into
(01:27:00):
is that like Harlem Renaissance artand graffiti has a lot of overlap of
thick black outlines, bright colorssimplified shapes and you know, trying
to, and like there's also like KerryJames Marshall, who, again, I've, I've
seen and learned of so many peopleand he's artist of today and his art.
It's just beautiful.
It's like black silhouettes with likelittle bits of white highlight into them.
(01:27:24):
But like, it's like black,like, like he draws all black.
He just only draws black people, paintsthem huge paintings, like 10 feet
tall, like 20 feet wide sometimes.
Like I went to an exhibit andthe paintings were humongous
John (01:27:37):
like 10 feet is
like a basketball who
height
Shawn A (01:27:40):
Yeah.
So maybe eight, nine, I don't know,stuff but big paintings with, barbershop
scenes and like the hairdresser scenes.
And he had this whole sequence oflike black Frankenstein and the bride
of Frankenstein, but they were like,you know, how giant Afro with like,
white lightning cutting through it.
It's just very beautiful.
And so I want to do, you know,I want to do something along
(01:28:00):
the lines of like the many, likegreat black artists of our time.
Like, that's like the nextthing that I want to do.
And then I also have like an idea forlike something that's way more like anime,
Graffiti influenced also.
So, you know, there's, I'm reallytrying to pull from The, the future.
I think treachery beat density is a great.
It's a great, like it's a pixel game.
That's like a protestabout a lot of stuff.
(01:28:22):
And so the next stuff is like,I want to move on with the
art but I'm really happy with whereI, you know, with what I got to do.
John (01:28:28):
You learned, you put it out
there and your next game is going to be
influenced by something different, right?
we'll see an evolution.
We'll see a progression.
I like it.
Sean, so you, you are a key piece ofthe game developers of color expo.
That is pants down, kind of myfavorite game developer gathering.
It was, you guys gave me a shot.
(01:28:50):
It was my first place where I gotto come on and give a talk back in,
I don't know, 2019, I guess, prepandemic or 20, 20 GOC, 2020 a game
I came on and did a little spiel onculturally aligned protagonist design.
I, I gotta give you your credit causeyou helped me refine that thing from
what my outline to what it ended upbeing that I could kind of be pretty
(01:29:13):
proud of and in a little book, right?
I think that's where I first manifestedor throughout an idea of, Hey, I
want to put a podcast together.
So stay tuned.
And by nature of having the thingcaptured in video and watching
it and be like, shit, man, Igot to do it now, here we are.
And I'm, and I'm ecstatically, happyto be able to kind of come full circle
and, and bring you on to this podcastthat I've created to share your message.
(01:29:38):
Let the people, let the world know whoyou are with new challenges up to after.
You know, having been able tocome on to onto that platform.
So I thank you immensely.
I try to tell everybody I can andif shit pushed it, when I was at
EA and I'm pushing it while I'm atepic to be like, Hey, we have to get
involved in game developers of color.
(01:29:59):
I want to just get you to, to shareyour insight on, what it is and where
you guys are trying to take it andwhere people can go to learn more
or what you guys are looking for.
Shawn A (01:30:09):
thank you.
I mean, I appreciate that.
I appreciate, again, like yourwillingness to just take the notes.
Cause you know, they could havegone a completely different way.
John (01:30:16):
yeah, read Margaret.
That's like a good man.
Shawn A (01:30:19):
it's like, I know what I know and
I'm going to cause people just do that.
Sometimes I was, I was actuallytalking to a young developer of color
at GDC this year, who I was tryingto pull out of him what he does.
And he was just being really,it was weird, he's new.
And he wanted to talk to people, butwas also really aggressive to the point
where I just didn't want to talk anymore.
(01:30:39):
Cause I was like, so what do you do?
And it was like game developer.
And it's like, what does that mean?
Cause this is literally a gamedevelopers conference, which is
an umbrella for game developer.
It's interesting.
There's like a, there's a weird conflationwhere some people think game developer
means is like, you know, the typical dev,like the typical developers, developers,
developers do, but like the, like, andthat was, that didn't mean artists.
(01:31:01):
That didn't mean animators, thatmeant people who made office.
Right.
It made people made that's what made,but like the term, wouldn't be called
the game developers conference.
If that has people who do sensitivityreading to marketing to produce, you
know, production, like it's everybody,that's what we're game to over.
And he just didn't seem to understand thatand kept trying to ask all these questions
(01:31:22):
and he kept just getting really sarcastic.
And I was just like, dude, I've beendoing this for like almost 20 years.
Like over 20 years, I've beenthinking about these terms.
So I'm just asking you questionsso that I know what you do.
And again, like, so again,like the fact that you were.
All right.
Like, cause again, like thisculturally stuffed cultural stuff
with characters is like stuff I'vebeen thinking about for a long
John (01:31:40):
Yeah,
Shawn A (01:31:41):
And I saw it and that's kind
of why we also like ask people like
to tell us who their background is.
Cause I was like, oh, therearen't that many like Dominican
speakers in the game space.
And I was like, I love what you're doing.
I love who you are.
It's actually, it is actually alittle weird cause we actually do
try to make sure that we representas many types of people as possible.
So I'm always like, cause like, youknow, it can be really easy to be
(01:32:02):
like, you know, black people have aheart and I'm like, yes, that's true.
However, indigenouspeople have it hardest.
So, and like other groups, if they're notrepresented, then we are not represented
as our rainbow coalition of black andbrown folks that we're trying to do.
So like when I saw that,I was like, okay, cool.
Let me work with this dude.
Cause I like his idea.
and also, cause we were talkingabout Louis Lopez and I think that's
(01:32:23):
a great like connection there too.
Cause
like I
felt
felt like he was, I felt like, well like,like the Wiess being a Dominican guy
written by white people and potentiallycoming out kind of weird sometimes.
And I was like, yeah,let's let's dig into this.
Cause we also worked at the samecompany, a rockstar at one point.
So I was like, yeah, let's talk.
And then you were like, sure.
And I was like, wow, that's great.
(01:32:44):
And I was just, and again, likeit's, I went to this rap conference
once that happened in Williamsburg.
And I don't know if it'll ever happenagain, but one of the things that people
were talking about was their importancein breaking artists and being like the
first people to drop a new artist andlike, and that stuck with me in that,
like, that's what I want game does withcolor expo to be is like a spot that gives
(01:33:05):
everybody their first time out, becauseGDC for me is really hard to get into.
And I've even had talks that I've giventhat like they get, bad ratings from,
from an audience that's just doingrespectability politics or something
on me, like being like, like I'veactually, looked at my, I've literally
looked at like my talk ratings there.
(01:33:27):
Cause you know, you get all
John (01:33:28):
yeah, you you've done like four.
I feel like
Shawn A (01:33:31):
I've spoken, I've
John (01:33:33):
at GDC
specifically
Shawn A (01:33:35):
spoke at 2013,
GC 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
I think I skipped, I skipped 19because Because I was able to
get Mike a part of why, well, Ididn't get any talks accepted.
And then I was going todo 20 between and happens.
So and then I did threetalks in 20, 20, 21, and
and I didn't do any talk this year becauseof my arguments with them and payments.
(01:33:58):
And they only wanted pay me for oneof my talks and I know they don't pay
a lot of people for anything they do.
John (01:34:04):
big one, bro.
I put in a lot of hoursinto my first GDC 12, right?
It was a panel.
So it was like five of us of us,including myself, a lot of time.
And you know, got like top 5%rating or something like that.
So a big deal for them.
But like, all they say islike, okay, here's a pass.
(01:34:24):
Right.
But you're on the hook forgetting yourself there and
everything else like that.
And so that's a big difference from,I think the way you guys run things
where you actually pay your speakersfor their contribution to the.
Shawn A (01:34:36):
yeah.
And if someone needs, like, when wedid it on, when we did an in person,
if someone needed to come, we had apolicy if you were speaker and you
know, we wanted to do it for everybody.
And if you were a dev, we did do it.
Sometimes also, if you were again,because we try to represent as many
people as possible, you know, we flewout to south African game developer.
It was $1,500 a piece.
(01:34:57):
I think both of them gave a talkto, sometimes we'd be like, if we're
going to pay for you to come out,can you at least give us a talk
And then we'll just be like, here you go.
Like I told some people, I was like,Hey, if you need help getting out to our
event, just give a talk, be on a panel orsomething like, I want you to be on this
panel because you'll help round it out.
But then also that'll give usthe incentive because you're kind
of working for us at that point.
(01:35:18):
So you give you money.
But we also had a game devwho had a tabletop game and
couldn't afford to come out.
So we were like, well, we, we,we were down in tabletop games.
This game is like from a, likea queer Asian perspective again,
because we try to value having as manydifferent types of games and as many
different types of people as possible.
We said, yeah, let's just throw moneyat that person and get them out here
(01:35:38):
because we want their game out here.
And
so yeah, our, our whole, the game doesthe colors, but the whole thing is
about like, we don't get paid a lot oftimes you don't get paid to come out.
The tech industry,everyone gets flown out.
People get paid like $40,000to give a talk sometimes.
And these people want to argueover $500 a lot of times,
and like
and paying for you tocome out and everything.
(01:35:59):
And it's like like, and they're nottransparent about what they earn.
it's like, you know, and
you're
John (01:36:04):
for-profit entity
Shawn A (01:36:05):
Hey, so it's like, Like why?
And so, and you expectJuliet spend like two grand.
Like the first year I went toGDC, I spent $2,000 on my ticket.
It was 2012.
And
I
John (01:36:15):
I only go with like the it's on
company dime these these days, man.
Shawn A (01:36:20):
Yeah.
So and that's actually, and thenthe second year 2013, I was on
a PlayStation mobile panel, liketalking about places you're mobile.
And so that got me, my badge.
And I think I was actually anexhibitor at like the police boost.
So I got that badge andI wander the expo hall.
I really love exhibitor badges.
Cause you get to wander the
John (01:36:36):
Yeah.
That's a key thing.
So somebody posted this geniusidea on Twitter and I don't know,
I never thought about it, right.
Because the magic of GDC really isjust, just all these developers are
in the same place at the same time.
Right.
So it's just like, just getyour butt to San Francisco.
You don't even need to goin the conference right.
To, be able to benefit from being ableto connect with and talk to and play
(01:37:00):
games and learn from and exchange.
You know, for people that get to getthousand dollars or whatever, for the past
Shawn A (01:37:06):
yeah, there, I mean
there's companies that do.
Like to dice this year and one of myfriends, like their company, like I
knew a couple of people, the company,they, they just had a suite upstairs.
They didn't have badge to the thing.
Cause it was, cause thatevent cost $3,000 to go to.
And like even just like $900 to go tolike the awards or something, it was
just like, it's this ridiculous amountof money that people were just like,
(01:37:28):
nah, we're just going to rent the suite.
It's going to cost uslike 600 for the week.
And for some reason thathotel was really cheap.
It was lot cheaper than my GEC hotel.
But yeah, I mean, a lot of people justhang out in the park, that's big thing.
Or then I'm a part of a a list wherethey ended up renting out a suite
and having these small little quietchats that you could just go to.
(01:37:48):
They were an hour anda half each and it was
so you could have like this,yeah, you could have this.
And they have, youknow, a party and stuff.
So, you know, there's, there'sdefinitely a lot of ways to do GDC
without going, or like you could goto like, get the Indi summit badge,
which is for the first two days, that'sactually pretty nicely discounted.
And it also gets you into the expo hall.
And those tickets are very limitedand they're, but they're cheap.
(01:38:09):
And so that's what I did the yearswhere I didn't have the other thing,
but I, oh, no, I think I actually gavemine away cause I ended up speaking.
But like, yeah, that's whythat's one of the reasons why I
would like push to give it to.
But again, like it was like tryingto give a talk was like very opaque.
You get bad feedback fromsomebody who just doesn't like
the way you said something.
And so there was a lot ofrespectability politics in there.
(01:38:30):
I looked at my reviews and they'dbe like, I literally say one comes
to GDC for actionable information.
And there was none of this in this talk.
And then the next one will be like,wow, the actionable information
that I just needed for a moment.
And you're just like, like, I don't know.
I, I like, I have a, I don'tunderstand the audience there.
A lot of them are really like,I don't know what's going on.
(01:38:53):
So like, they, they like get very confusedand I've had to learn like how much you
have to repeat stuff for people in order
to think that, yeah, you have to reallybe like, here's the points of doing it.
Cause if you don't, some people justget lost, even you're being clear.
So you have to kind of make yourtalk for the people who can follow
(01:39:14):
along to a full talk and the peoplewho really get lost a certain point.
So, that's a again, like I think itwould be really helpful if people,
so again, like I had to learn how topitch talks to get talks submitted.
I had to pitch talks three orfour times to get them accepted.
I didn't want game does withcolor expo to be that way.
So our whole thing is like,We just take as many people.
(01:39:34):
We, last year we took asmany people as we could.
Some people had, you know theycouldn't, they couldn't do it.
So then we took other people last year.
We actually took all of ourspeakers from the year before.
And we wait-listed everybody.
Because it was like let's look tofill the spots with the new people
and then let's fill in as necessary.
And then let's fill in with, youknow, with our heavy hitters.
(01:39:58):
Cause again, we have heavy hitters.
We have like heavy hitters that arebuilt because we keep like there was
a Aubrey, Jean Scott is a, she did atalk about like NASCAR, cause she's
a, trans indigenous woman who talkedabout like NASCAR player customization
from like a socially minded place.
And that was like a great talk.
And I'm the speaker curator.
(01:40:19):
So I like, see these talks.
I'm like, yes, we wantyou to give this talk.
We want again, have AAA.
When I have like vets, we want to havenew people again, like everybody new to
speaking, but also new to the industry.
But also again like you and like,there's that guy Joe, who had like a
10 lessons in 10 years type of thing.
It was his
John (01:40:35):
That was a great one,
10 minutes
Shawn A (01:40:37):
first talk ever.
And he was really excited to giveit just wanting to make sure like
was constantly emailing and belike, Hey, when is this going?
Is everything okay.
And like was ready to give it.
And it was just great.
Cause it was like, as someone I meta while ago and I'm like, thank you
for giving your talk at our event.
And that's the whole thing is like, wewant to make, make it very comfortable
for everybody to give their talk.
We don't want people to feel tripleand sec, like second and triple guest.
(01:41:01):
And like and we don't want people tothink that like, because at the end of
the day, and then at the end of the day,everyone, like all like so much of the
feedback is like, we love the talks.
We love the community.
Even online.
People are like, we love the community.
We love the talks and that's, youknow, that's and people, especially
these days are like, oh wow, thesetalks flow so well into each other.
(01:41:22):
I wonder if someone designed it and I'mlike, it's me the game designer, thinking
about experiences and thinking aboutlike, there's there's even time thought
it's like two, two or three short talks,then a longer talk, then a long talk,
like then a 45 minute, like a panel or atalk from one person, because we wanted
to give you like a ramp and then a Andthen the break would be like 20 minutes.
(01:41:44):
So then it's like, okay, well Ican leave for a half hour, back
and come back to some short talks.
it was, it was, we did the thing
John (01:41:52):
yeah, it's pace
in the loop, the curve.
And I love that there's no overlapwhere it allows me to consume every
talk without feeling like I missed out.
Right.
Like I got to make a harddecision between talk.
I really want to go see and anothersong I really want to go see.
So I appreciate that aboutthe scheduling as well.
Shawn A (01:42:08):
Yeah.
The only thing with thatis it makes it hard.
Cause like if we can't break a certaintalk barrier, like we can only do so
many talks if we keep it on a single,
John (01:42:17):
that's true.
you want
Shawn A (01:42:19):
that's the thing about GDC is
GC can have five talks at the same time,
because it has like all these differentrooms and, it allows more trains of
thought, like you could be like, I justwant to go on to the, technical track.
Like I want to be on like, Iwant to go to these programming
talks because that's what I do.
And, you know, we hear from peoplelike, oh, I want a more technical
talk or I want more programming talks.
(01:42:40):
And I'm always like, thensubmit them because I can't,
I can't submit talks for you.
talks want.
But
John (01:42:46):
you want.
Shawn A (01:42:47):
but also I do think like, you
know, we eventually will potentially
have to break that single trackbecause or just, or just accept
that like, there's one track.
If you don't like someparts of it, you'll leave.
If you do, then you say, and youlearn something new about that.
I mean, that's the one thing peoplehave talked about that they learn
about overlapping things that theydidn't necessarily know about because
(01:43:08):
they stayed for a talk that theydidn't necessarily think was related
to them, but then they were there.
And one of my wife's friendsdoesn't do games at all.
He came to the event in person theintent of leaving after about an hour,
just because he had other stuff to do.
And he stayed all day he waslike, this is fascinating.
John (01:43:25):
It's
really well done.
It's very accessible.
Right?
You guys have affordableprice points for everybody.
And I think, you know, I would love anexcuse to go to New York, any excuse I can
to go to New York to do game dev stuff.
But the fact that you guys likeeverything else went online and
you guys were pioneers, like, Ithink you one of the first ones to
(01:43:45):
go online and kind of trailblaze.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, Sean,but it, it allowed attendance to
kind of skyrocket by going online.
Shawn A (01:43:54):
yeah, I think we doubled
the first year and year was
actually like kind of steady.
It was kind of let's sameamount of people, like
John (01:44:01):
new people.
Shawn A (01:44:02):
But new people but the good
thing was I, again, like you see
ticket sales all over the world.
and that's something, you know, we'velearned a lot from the GDC experience
that a tons of people got COVID a GC Bthe online experience was apparently like
10% of the talks were streamed, which alot of people were really upset about.
And so the thing is, is like, if you'regoing to offer a, hybrid event, you got to
(01:44:23):
do it both good for both groups of people.
and then also make sure thatthey're not getting sick from it.
So I feel like we're vindicatedby keeping it online only for now.
I know in person is important.
Like I was at GDC.
I'm the only reason I actuallyfelt comfortable at GDC was
cause I had COVID in February.
So I was like, I was we
yeah, we had triple VAX plus naturalimmunity meant like, cause I got it
(01:44:47):
even with triple VAX, like for my kid.
And I meant that I wasn't very likely toget it and then transmit it to my kid.
And like, you know, I've donetwo tests since getting back and
nothing
It's the most, the mostconclusive, negative like
I've actually seen like, like my wifeactually didn't have it earlier this
year when she thought might and she hada faint line and she did not have it.
(01:45:09):
And they see that that'snot likely to happen.
And it happened because weactually did get COVID later.
So we know we didn't have it thenwe both felt sick for like a couple
of days and then we felt better, butit was, it was allergies actually.
So I don't know.
Again, COVID is like a Russianroulette with your life and
with children and everything.
So it's like the in-person thing.
(01:45:29):
super important to me.
Like, I felt great to see so many ofmy friends to be around for some like
momentous events, but yeah, I want to,that's why it just then makes it me think,
well, we need to make the online better.
We need to make community better.
We need to figure outhow to, and where we are.
We're working on our, our, afterhours, like party type things where
we're thinking about like, you know,what, what went right last year and
(01:45:50):
how could we make it better this year?
Like, how can we, it's literally just,how can we make everything better?
We're actually keeping thetime the same this year.
just seeing, like, because thatwas a huge growth, it went from
two days to four with more content.
So we're like, well, how do wemake the same four day thing?
Now we just like, again, we iterate,we tweak we say like, okay, how do
(01:46:13):
we, how do we do things similar?
How do we do things that wereworking as well as possible?
And then how do we do things thatlike some of the like networking
stuff, how do we make that better?
And that's like a big, a time investment
of researching
but yeah, it's important.
We want to 'cause we, we want gamedeals of color, exposure to be like
mini GDC in a sense like where we don'thave like, you know, 12,000 people.
(01:46:35):
It would be nice.
John (01:46:36):
Sure.
We'll get good.
We'll get there.
We'll get there.
Shawn A (01:46:39):
but like, we want to make
sure that like you come to our events.
And you could get pickedup by a publisher.
You could get picked up by abusiness and you could find a job.
A company can find you like, it's like andwe have heard that there are people who've
come and they've checked out our games.
And heard that, like, thosegames have been shown at events.
They like were parts of like specialparts of like, like a company is like a
(01:47:02):
real at like a PAX or something, Causethe big thing is like the challenge in
this industry is getting opportunitiesto do business, getting opportunities,
to meet people, getting opportunities,to find jobs, getting opportunities, to
actually talk to people in a real way.
That's not like, because I've submitted alot of Java applications over the years.
I've never heard back andyou never get real feedback.
(01:47:22):
You submit a game to a publisherand they won't tell you anything.
And it's like, how am I supposed to know?
I might, I might not change mygame, but how am I supposed to
know what, what I did wrong or whatdidn't fit if you don't tell me.
like, so like one of my somethingI said many years ago is that
information dissemination or lackthereof is one of the biggest
problems in the games industry.
You don't, it's so pink.
(01:47:43):
You don't know how to get a job.
Everyone says, here's how you get a job.
Here's how you pitch.
But then you pitch, youdo the thing correctly.
You back.
when you hear back, you don'tever, you get a form letter and
it's like, how do we get past?
That is like the key thing.
And so that's the gamedoes a color, I suppose.
How do we get past it?
And.
Yeah.
Work with a smaller group of people toget them through, because again, we're
(01:48:06):
the smallest part of the industry, right?
So it's like,
John (01:48:08):
yo it's sensitive as a staggering
and Yemen information dissemination.
Absolutely.
I mean, that's a key reasonthat this podcast exists, right?
I'm one of, I don't know how many, butyou know, I'm trying to do for what I
can to spread the knowledge and share allof our experiences because the, I guess
amalgamation of all of our experiencescan hopefully be some type of fact
(01:48:30):
of, Hey, these are the different waysthat it works with different people.
Kind of, I wish I had more time toget into how you broke in, right?
Getting your foot in the door at rockstar,the time you put in at MLB the, the NYC
game development scene, but your history,your journey is, is fast and rich.
You know, we only touched on a bit,I'm happy to have shared what you're
(01:48:54):
up to on GDC, where new challenger is,where it's going, where it's growing.
Shawn A (01:48:58):
You talk about the
intro and I'm like, my, the way
I got into the games is like it'ssomething that no one can replicate.
So it's
like a lot of it was luck.
A lot of it always is luck.
John (01:49:07):
oh yeah.
A big part of it is luck man.
Like right place, right time.
Right?
Like, is the position available and areyou there when they're looking for it?
Right.
Do you have the skillsthat they're looking for?
Shawn A (01:49:19):
like some of it was luck.
Some of it was nepotism.
I got into a bra MLB because I knew thatlike the teacher that I used to have
like ended MLB New York was small andthey said, Hey, Sean, what are you up to?
And then the other people hadworked at Take-Two in rockstar.
So they, they knew howshitty the environment was.
So like, I could just talk to themabout it and just be like, Hey, like
we have like, you know, common ground.
(01:49:39):
And then they had, youknow, the need for somebody.
So like, and they, you know, Istarted with like a one month
contract that ended up turning intosix years of working at a place.
So it's like, again, like most peopledon't get these weird instances that
again, like, I can't, I've not beenable to get a job off an application.
I've never actually gotten like, offof a cold, except at rockstar rockstar.
(01:50:00):
Like I got that because I applied like madand again, they needed what they needed.
there was no HR person at the time.
My old boss was the one looking at stuff.
So the fact that I had a threething and they needed to capture
person And that's the problem.
That's why we that's.
Why game does it color exists?
Because like, there is no way to report.
How I got in and I have a hard time.
(01:50:21):
I got lucky, extremely lucky, right.
Time, right place.
And that needs to not bethe way it is for everybody.
It can't, it can't bethat way for everybody.
Like, you need to be able to geta job, like even getting into like
retail was right time, right place.
Like, so it's like, you know, peopleneed to be able to earn money to live.
And it's like, they need to beable to like, how do we get the
(01:50:42):
2% of black people to be the 10%?
Like if it's like 13% of America and it'sstill like a tiny percent then like of
like black folks in America, or like,how do we get more indigenous people?
How do we get more Latin Xpeople if like it's all luck.
So like the game does of color exposeabout engineering, situations So that
John (01:51:01):
Breaking new developers.
Shawn A (01:51:02):
you, you were now in front of
these people, like they can't escape you.
We, one of the tenants that we have isif you come to this event and you're a
sponsor, if someone hits you up abouta job, even if they really do not fit
that job, I need you to tell them that Ineeded them in a nice way to say, Hey man
like this job is an environment, art job.
You do primarily character art.
(01:51:23):
That is realistic.
This is a cartoony environment job.
We appreciate.
But if like, maybe if you had a moreenvironment stuff, give it to us.
But usually it's just like, unfortunately,because of the competitive and you're
like doesn't tell anybody anything.
So it's like, I mean,that's the key thing is.
I just, you know, I just want the gamesindustry to be better for everybody.
I accidentally found outabout helping people at GDC.
(01:51:45):
Cause like, you know,game, those of color.
So gave people scholarship.
We gave them like badges for GDC.
And I accidentally ended up in anlike, not accidentally, but someone
I knew on Twitter who I'd never metbefore I was talking to her at GEC.
And then later on afterwards,it was like, thank you for GOC
expo for giving me this badge.
I was like, oh yeah, I'm just, I keeptabs on a lot of people and I'm like,
(01:52:05):
oh, it's great to see what you're doing.
It's great to exhausting, butlike also very fulfilling.
And then it turns out that thatperson was helped by my team
because I'm not on that thing.
I don't deal with thosetickets or anything.
I'll slide somebody in and be like,yeah, this person is one of our people.
They need to get this badge.
Like I advocate for people all thetime that I see like a fire in them,
(01:52:26):
it's like, you know, it's again,it's a, it's a hard industry.
I feel extremely lucky to bein a I don't want to be in it a
lot of the time and it's hard.
So it's
the fact that I've had so many people.
You know, supporting me, I'm likeexcited and scared and all sorts of
things for the future, because like,you know NFTs are bothering me because
everybody worried that like I'll runinto like 10 different meetings where I
(01:52:50):
could make money if I wanted to be evil.
But like if I wanted to be a shitty personand take NFT money, but I not that person.
So it's like, like game does havecolors, but we have a sponsor
call I saw on their website.
Oh, we do NFC.
I said, I was like, yeah, wegot to go like, and they were
like, is this a hard stop?
And I'm percent.
Like, I, you know, it's hard to have it'shard to have things like, ethics among
(01:53:15):
I, so it's like, it's reminds me ofthe Vince staples line where he's
like he's like, I want to fight thepower, but I need a new Ferrari.
John (01:53:22):
Yo hard
Shawn A (01:53:25):
Yeah, like, I mean,
I, I love Vince staples.
He's one of the most exciting Ben,one of the most exciting people
on ramp for a very long time.
And, I'm glad that I see thatpeople are catching onto that
John (01:53:35):
Yeah, man.
Yo.
Shawn A (01:53:37):
that's the good, that's a
good place to end up and to this.
People's.
John (01:53:41):
Everybody go check out
some Vince staple bars, man.
Sean, I really appreciate your time.
My brother you know, there'sdefinitely more to talk about.
I look forward to seeing what comesout a new challenger, especially
picking up that DLC final question.
We usually do a whole lightning roundand ask you all these personal questions
that are usually fun and exciting, butI want to be respect for your time.
(01:54:03):
got to ask you the question ofthe show that I ask everybody.
And it's selfish for me, right?
Cause it gives me a pool ofreferrals for people to interview.
But if you had a good time falling out ofthe play area, is there anyone that you
would nominate out of your circle, right?
Be it a mentor role model orsomeone you want to help me break
(01:54:25):
in game dev that I could sit downand interview for the podcast.
Shawn A (01:54:29):
Yeah, I've been thinking about
this cause it's like, Cause there's
John (01:54:32):
got a vast network.
My
Shawn A (01:54:33):
I mean, again, like it's yeah.
There's like anyone who's atgame does a car expo is there
because I want them there.
John (01:54:38):
yeah.
Yeah.
I got few.
I got a few people lined up from that.
I met through game desert of color.
So for sure.
Shawn A (01:54:44):
one person that I
think like, well, two people.
That I think you would just, well,three people, I think you y'all
would get along Okay
think talking to catsmall would be really fun.
She's one of the co-foundersof the game does a color expo.
John (01:54:56):
For sure.
Hell
yeah
Shawn A (01:54:58):
she's in tech and not in
games and like she makes games,
but she doesn't do that first.
I think that's an interesting thing to
Cause I bring that up a lot abouthow, like how black women are all so
disrespected that like she's had a reallyhard time finding, you know, everyone
wants people to work for free black women.
And that's been a lot of her experience.
And also again, yes, she founded thisthing and has been, she's done a lot
(01:55:21):
of great things in games and tech.
I think and then two people that Ireconnected with in person, this at GDC
was my buddy, Justin Woodward, who he
yeah, he runs the thing calledthe media India exchange.
He's also a game developer withhis company and terror bang.
I met him nine years ago at Evo.
He was one of the, there was like a,it was a small indie table and like him
(01:55:43):
and his and the dude, Evan who was withthem, like, you know, two black dudes.
I was like, they were like him.
And then this guy, Richard Tarell.
So it was like four black people ata, at a game dev table of like six
games or eight games or something.
I was like, wow.
That's, that's like 50 50, like atthat point, like that was wild to me.
And Justin is.
Just a hustler in games.
(01:56:04):
I think my friends Sterling, theGarvey who I've known for a similar
amount of time through actually, we,there was like a two year time span
where both we ended up at like agreat restaurant, like afterwards and
he was in games press a long time agoI was at the dinner where he started
working at this company hit detection,which does consulting and games.
(01:56:27):
Like they do like readingand stuff like that.
John (01:56:29):
I think, I think I saw this on
your Twitter that he's not like the head.
Woo
Shawn A (01:56:35):
we were eating
falafel in the mission.
And again, this is why it was likeimportant to be there in person
because like, his father passed andI was able to like be there with my
friend and say, you know, I don'tunderstand your relationship, but
I understand family relationships.
So
to be able to give a hug toyour friend, to console them.
And then also at the end, we, I bookedbook, ended my trip and then I got to
(01:56:56):
sit there while he got his text saying,this is when the head is stepping down.
And this is when youare the official person.
And like, just be able to be like,you know, I'm proud of you like that.
John (01:57:06):
Oh, what was that?
Was that like hugs high fives.
Shouldered that
Shawn A (01:57:10):
yeah, it was just, yeah, we
were just eating falafel and I was just,
like, I just said, I'm proud of you.
Like, you know, it's justpeople that on the come up.
John (01:57:17):
on the phone.
Okay.
Shawn A (01:57:19):
yesterday we spent
lot of time in New York.
I don't know Justin's from thebay area and cats from the Bronx.
So, but then also let's say oneother person like Ava, Ava car
is a great person to talk to.
Ava does a lot of like talks, Ava runsglitch, which is like a publisher.
They do a lot of tool development,but they have a huge community.
And
they just do a lot of great stuffand, glitches definitely like a sister
(01:57:42):
organization to game does a color.
So we try to share as much info.
And yeah, just try to, we're we'rereally trying to figure out how to
work together, better in the future.
Cause we, we both announcedour ticket sales going on sale
or submissions rather going
today.
John (01:57:56):
Oh shit.
Shawn A (01:57:57):
yeah, we weren't there.
There's like their thing is they'reactually having something during
So, you know, Eva and I are just,we're always in communication.
We, and we have very differentways of looking at stuff.
Ava also deals with a lot oflike funding, and Eva gave toxic
game deals of color expo also.
John (01:58:16):
yeah
her name is.
Shawn A (01:58:18):
yeah.
Or they, their name,
John (01:58:20):
They, name is familiar.
Thank
Shawn A (01:58:22):
it's well, it's just, for
me, it's been, I also have my own,
like, you know, the key, they,like, I've been on a weird journey.
I became a, tried to be an encyclopediaof people's pronouns and like, it's funny.
Cause like, I, I have to correct peoplenow when they say preferred pronouns
and I'm like, no, they're not preferredbecause you don't say your preferred
pronounced E if you were assigned maleat birth and that's what you identify as
(01:58:44):
that's not preferred that's it's he it's.
So like the term preferred is like sayingthat you made something up or you made
a preference, like sexual preference.
It's like, no, this is who I want.
Right.
like born in you.
So like, if someone
John (01:58:56):
do we say, you say what
are your What are your pronouns?
Okay,
awesome I'll fix that.
I think that's, I think I'd saypreferred pronouns on my little template
Shawn A (01:59:04):
yeah, I actually had to,
like, I saw it was at a meeting
where somebody said somethinglike, like transgender or women.
And I was like, no,it's, it's trans people.
can say trans men or trans women,but like, you know with a space
also because women are women.
I don't know.
There's, I've been trying to be likeas respectful because also like a
lot of that stuff opened a lot oflike meeting a lot of people on the
(01:59:28):
spectrum of race, gender, everythingin the games industry, which is weird.
Cause you hear that they don't exist, butI'm thankful that this is my friend group.
It's like the smallpercentages are in my circle.
And so like, it's like helped meunderstand who I am as a person.
And so I try to just give thatback to everybody and, you
know, everybody slips up still.
(01:59:49):
And I think as as, longas you have care in
John (01:59:52):
Hell yeah.
Shawn A (01:59:53):
and you like can correct.
When someone says, Hey, that's not me.
Like somebody recently waslike, I'm not a woman, but okay.
And I was like, oh, I'm sorry.
I took And I said my bed and they werelike, and they, and they were like, yeah.
But I, I, but, but they werelike, and also I agree with
you and it was just like this.
So it like, you know, if I just like,if I basically got on my soap box, then
(02:00:18):
you know, that would be, you know, yougot to always have learning moments
and always have to course correct.
And again, like that's whatthe game does, the color expo.
And that's what I'm tryingto do with this company.
So, you know, I'm looking forwardto talking again in the future,
John (02:00:31):
Sean man.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for the overtime.
we'll stay in touch myfriend, have a great one.
That's a wrap, kicking it withSean Allen, talking about his
grit and starting his own thing.
And that long road of makinga game all by yourself.
Doing the pixel art and everything.
Sounds like the next thing from him,a new challenger will look vastly
(02:00:51):
different while still bringing thatmust check out combat gameplay.
I chatted with him this week.
And he mentioned that he's branchingout from the game devs of color.
Into a new venture I'm hyped to seewhere he takes that new time into.
Please check out the show notesfor links to his game, devs
of color expo post-mortem ontreachery and beat down city.
If you want to know more about thatgame, as well as a few of his GDC talks
(02:01:13):
available on the vault and a link tothat goes straight to the ultimate
guide to side's schooling, beat them up.
So book.
A lot of my homeys that I've met inthis industry, all share similar stories
of having to leave their hometownto do this thing myself included.
And I'm always lurking to seehow many of us get back to our
hometowns with the knowledge andexperience that we've acquired.
(02:01:34):
To see if maybe we planta seed somewhere there.
I don't think I'm a go back toliving in NYC, you know, weather and.
Population and bang foryour buck and all of that.
Taxes.
But I'd love to go contributeto the dev scene there.
But even more than that.
I love to go back to Dominican Republicand grassroots dev scene down there.
(02:01:56):
That's really enticing to me.
We'll see, we'll see.
On the next episode of outta play area.
We'll sit down with Leon Cooperman, theCTO of caste AI hailing from Ukraine
and having come over to the states.
Through IBM and building variouscompanies of his own, who looks
to share his story in the podcast.
He'll be the first non strictgame developer on the podcast.
(02:02:17):
But nevertheless, the developer who worksadjacent to our industry and whose clients
include or can include game developers.
And who appreciates the craft and games.
I always encourage growth evolutionpushing outside the lines a
bit in life and on this show.
So.
we'll see how you will feel about it.
I'll be interested to see whatthe feedback ends up being.
(02:02:37):
make sure to follow us so that youdon't miss out on that episode.
Thank you for listening, Deb.
If you found this episode informative,I ask that you pay a link forward to
a developer to help grow our listener.
If you're a game developer with astory you think could help a fellow dev
out, please go to out of play area.comand click on the Calendly link at
the top to meet up, please make sureyou get approval from your manager
(02:03:00):
or studios, PR HR team beforehand.
Out of play area, the game developers,podcasts releases, new episodes every
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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.
(02:03:21):
Stay true.
Stay dangerous