Fallout's Feargus Urquhart Stares into the Abyss

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Feargus (00:02):
Show me why it's cool, how it works, and
then you're gonna show me inthe tools and the pipelines
how you actually make it.

Alex (00:11):
That was Feargus Urquhart, the founder, CEO of Oblivion,
talking about, and this isreally interesting 'cause I'd
never really heard this before,but it makes so much sense how
they kind of separate wheat fromchaff on the ideation process.
I think all of us who arerunning game studios really want
to have like an open inclusiveenvironment where everybody's

(00:31):
ideas can contribute, you know,whole greater than some of
it parts, but sometimes thoseideas can turn into noise.
And Feargus is talking abouthow they, they basically
invite the ideas, but then,hey, step two, great idea.
Go investigate, makea little pitch for it,
prove it out, show how itcould be done in the tool.
So it's.

(00:51):
It's not just an ideathat sort of automatically
goes into the backlog.

Aaron (00:56):
It, it sounds like a long description of no scope creep.

Alex (01:00):
Yeah.
I mean, like, you gotta,you kind of gotta, you gotta
have a little bit of filter.

Aaron (01:05):
It's like a, it's like, it's a way to kind
of like diminish it.

Alex (01:08):
Well, I mean, it, it's sort of puts that, that effort
of validating an idea on the,the, where the idea comes
from, the genesis of the idea.
'cause I think it is really easyto, 'cause we do this, like, you
know, we will have a play testand we'll have 10 people playing
the game and ideas are flowing.
People are throwing stuff out.
And then if you don't have afilter, sometimes it's like.
Maybe one of the engineersis in there and they hear

(01:30):
the idea and they do, theythink it's a good idea too.
They start working on it.
It's like, whoa, whoa.
What?

Aaron (01:35):
Yeah.
What are you doing, dude?
Yeah.

Alex (01:37):
So I thought, I thought that was, that's a, it was an
interesting kind of processthat I hadn't seen before.
So, yeah, I think it's cool.

Aaron (01:43):
And I, I, the one thing that I thought too with
that is there's sometimesreally good ideas, but the
person that has the ideacan't, can't perform on it.
You know what I mean?

Alex (01:54):
Right.
It's sort of outside oftheir skillset or whatever.

Aaron (01:56):
Yeah.
Like if I was like, oh,wouldn't it be cool?
Like, you know, and you haveideas like that, but it's like,
I don't know how to program.
So it's, I mean, I guess Icould use the aide to do it.

Alex (02:07):
So you suggest something that's like
17 weeks worth of work.
Right.
But you think it'slike just an afternoon?
Yeah.
Like it's just cutand paste, right guys?

Aaron (02:14):
It is right now.
No, it is.
I was doing some tutorials theother day and I was copy pasting
the code, the programmingcode into the tool and it
was doing the, the widgets.
It was making everything.
And I'm like, this is amazing.
I don't have to learn a code.
Amazing.

Alex (02:29):
Amazing.
Yeah.
It's gonna code you into,it's gonna like brick wall
you into a corner, you know,then you'll never get out.

Aaron (02:35):
Yeah.
I don't know how to, Idon't know how to do it.

Alex (02:36):
Yeah, it does that, you know, it's like, as
I, I've been using some AItools to write code and, and
it, it is, it does make onepretty productive, but it can
definitely code in circles and

Aaron (02:46):
I bet you it happens either this year or next
year, probably next year.
'cause we're coming to the endwhere you're gonna see, see a
lot of people using AI upwards.
So like asking it what to do,you know how like when you
get in your car and it, like alittle thing- it like knows that
it's like it's gonna be fiveminutes to the grocery store.
Like how does it know I'mgonna go to the grocery store?

(03:07):
Right.
Like, it's already tellingme where I'm going, even
though I haven't even

Alex (03:12):
Oh.
Suggested travel timeor So like, does it?
Yeah.

Aaron (03:16):
And it's like, how do you know I'm gonna the bush?
That's amazing.
Did he hear me?
Or whatever.
Anyways, I think peopleare gonna start, you know
how you're, you're, you'relike, you, you're a, you're
a CEO, you hire artists,you hire programmers,
you hire marketing you.
Right?
What if you're gonna haveartists that hire CEOs, AI.
So it's like you're agroup of artists you

(03:37):
don't know, know how to

Alex (03:38):
Oh, so like, I, I have a skill and I want to be
able to monetize that skill.
Maybe start a business aroundit, or, or get customers.
Yeah.
And so I have a, I get a, anAI agent who's gonna like book
me gigs and, and make deals.
Hey, that's a pretty good idea.

Aaron (03:54):
That's right.

Alex (03:56):
But we're not an AI podcast.
it was super cool to,to chat with, Feargus.
I, one of the.
More successful folks in theindustry has just been in it
for so long and has, spentalmost this whole career in RPG.
and I haven't spent a lotof time with him before.
And he's just so downto earth and practical.

(04:20):
That's what I was reallystruck by is just how

Aaron (04:22):
It's the pizza gig

Alex (04:23):
How practical his approach has been to making
games start even as the, thestudio, started by making
sequels because it was sort ofthe right intersection of where
their skills were, where theirconnections and opportunities
were and you know, how, howmany people they had, et cetera.

(04:44):
So, I dunno, I wasstruck by that.
I thought that was pretty cool.
I just got back from vacation.
My brother-in-law wastelling me that we should
all be buying pennies.
Because they're gonnastop making pennies.

Aaron (04:56):
Yeah, I saw that.

Alex (04:57):
And 2025 pennies are already worth more than a penny.
Isn't that nuts?
I don't think bankshave pennies anymore.
No.
Well, he said they doand he, and he got me
all excited about it.
They do.
As I put on my calendar, I'mgoing over to the bank today and
I'm gonna go buy like a hundreddollars worth of pennies.
You know how manypennies that is?
You could startpaying with them.
Oh, that's a dick move.
It's like gold.

(05:18):
Do you think that's agood idea or a dumb idea?

Aaron (05:20):
I don't think it's a good idea.
No, I don't.
I need, they're not evenmade out of copper anymore.
They're made out of like nickeland like un precious metals.

Alex (05:28):
Can I, can we just get to the interview?

Aaron (05:30):
You wanna get to the, let's go to the interview.
Well, we can talk about coins,AI and Lake Michigan, or we
can listen to Feargus breakdown how he makes video games.

Alex (05:39):
Enjoy the conversation.
We'll see you on the other side.
Hello, Fourth Curtain listenersand welcome to this week's show.
It's a good one today.
We are so lucky to havewith us Feargus Urquhart.
Look at that pronunciationwizard, the said CEO and founder
of Obsidian Entertainment.
I've known Feargus, met Feargus,we were trying to figure it out.

(06:01):
I think it's probablybeen decades.
which is just, a testamentto how long Feargus has
been around making games.
I think.
Did you start around like 91?
91? I think I saw somewhereyou had a testing job.

Feargus (06:15):
Testing job in 91.
Yeah.

Alex (06:16):
1991.
Yeah.

Aaron (06:17):
Yeah, I saw that too, and I got happy.
That's on the,that's on the wiki.

Alex (06:21):
Year.
I, year I graduated,college and started Bungie.
So, this is good.
This is a good year.
Good year for everyone.
Feargus has had his hands inmany of the games that you know
and love, particularly of theRPG genre, dating all the way
back to early Interplay days.
So we had, Brian Fargo onthe founder of Interplay,
a little while ago.

(06:41):
You guys are brothers inarms over at Team Xbox now?
We are.
It's super exciting.
and I think now Black Islewas, was that a publishing
label within Interplay?

Feargus (06:56):
Yeah, it was like a development division.
So there was, it wasdevelopment division.
That's what I was, okay.

Alex (07:01):
Yeah.
And that was, thatwas your baby, my, my
understanding, where gameslike, Fallout Planescape.
I think you guyspublished Baldur's Gate.
Yep.
had your hands in, somereally formative, RPG
games back in the day.
And then in two, 2003, andI did the arithmetic here 22

(07:22):
years ago, 22 years ago ago.
Started Obsidian witha few other folks.
To continue building RPGgames and just the run
has just been amazing.
KOTOR, Fallout, Pillarsof Eternity, Outer Worlds.
There's a new OuterWorlds coming.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Can is there, there'sa date for that.
Is that in October?

Feargus (07:41):
Yeah.
Right.
29th.
I think I have that right.
Yeah.
It's October 29th.

Alex (07:45):
Okay.
I could spend the wholehour just reciting your
resume, but that wouldn'tbe terribly exciting.
but it is exciting to,get to chat with you.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Welcome for the show.

Feargus (07:55):
Thanks a lot.
Happy to do it.

Alex (07:56):
I made like a lot of notes 'cause there's a lot
of interesting things in yourpast, you've worked with a lot
of different, brands or games,a lot of different companies,
different publishers, et cetera.
One thing that I I thoughtwas interesting is that, I
think a lot of the early gamesfor you guys were sequels.

(08:18):
Of other people's games.
Is that right?

Feargus (08:20):
Yep, absolutely.
It was, it was actuallypretty purposeful.
I mean, actually early on itwas easier to actually get
gigs if you were doing sequels.
And it also is a littlebit like, KOTOR is a great
example of where we hadworked with BioWare at
Black Isle and Interplay.
And, we'd been friends,we're still friends.
Greg Zeschuk was just downhere, in Southern California

(08:43):
a couple weeks ago.

Alex (08:45):
Did he bring you some beer?

Feargus (08:46):
He did not bring me any beers, so I actually have
had very little of his beer.
I don't, I see him likemultiple times a year.
and that I, and I still havenot had, I've, I've had a
couple of his beers anyway.
And anyway, so we've workedwith them and it was time for us
to kind of mosey on from BlackIsle Studios and Interplay,
and we were kind of pitchingall over the place and, and

(09:08):
it just, it started seeing,okay, look, we pitched things
that people know we can do.
Let's, let's start with that.
And, and then the thingwas, well, we know Biowares
technology and we kind of hadheard BioWare was maybe not
as interested in doing KOTORtwo because they, you know,
as we all found would find outa number of years later they
were working on Mass Effect.
And and it kind ofall came together in

(09:28):
a couple phone calls.
And so that kindareally solidified
this, hey, if we wanna.
Sort of get our foot in thedoor and get to start making
games as a, just as a studiothat's starting in my attic.
A good way to dothat is with sequels.

Alex (09:41):
That's a strategy

Feargus (09:41):
It's I think it's a strategy.
Is it a tactic oris it a strategy?
I never know the difference.

Alex (09:46):
So that's, is that, that's kind of like how
you guys got started.
Yeah.
And what, and what was sort ofwhat the, the, origin story.

Feargus (09:51):
What, so how did it all happen?
So, Brian, I mean, it reallykind of, you know, we of course
had a great time working at,at Interplay, and I think it
just, we could sort of see,see the writing on the walls.
It, Brian had left.
I had actually thought aboutleaving a year before, but I
sort of stuck around for a bit.
I really wanted tomake more Fallout.
That's really what was a big.

(10:12):
Big thing.
I love working on D&D,but we were starting just,
there was these variety ofhits that were happening.
Interplay lost the D&Dlicense, that happens when
you don't pay your royalties.
and I know.
Yeah.
And so, and it justgot harder and harder.
We had to like, make gamesfaster with less people
and it just felt likethis is not sustainable.

(10:32):
And, and a lot of us weresort of in our late twenties,
early thirties and we'relike, well, if we, if we don't
go now, you know, we're allstarting to have kids and buy
houses and stuff like that.
And it's like, well, if we waitfive years or 10 years, like,
are we even gonna ever do it?
Right?
Like, 'cause you get this thingof, we're like, oh, I have a
mortgage now and, and I havea 6-year-old and whatever.
And you just start,like, you start talking
yourself out of things.

(10:53):
And so that's really whatled to five of us going,
okay, I think we can do this.
And it was, you know, it was me,Chris Parker, Chris Jones, Chris
Avellone, and Darren Monahan.
But yeah, that was like the,I mean, it's kind of maybe a
little bit of a boring originstory, but we just felt like.
We could do it.
I think in part pe we, we kindof had the idea, and maybe
it sounds arrogant, peoplekind of knew who we were.
and we had a thing that we did.

(11:16):
we had, we'd met and, youknow, you know, I, the,
the, the world was a littlesmaller back then and kind
of everybody had a, everybodyreally knew each other more
than they, than they do now.
And, yeah, I don't know, maybeit was, like I said, maybe
it was a little arrogance.
We thought we could do it and,and it was time to get outta
there before we just went downwith the ship and, so we jumped.

Alex (11:35):
How did those for like the first couple of years?
I gotta imagine any startup.
Doesn't usually go as planned.
Even if some thingsgo better or whatever.
Some, there areusually some surprises.
Like what kind ofsurprises did you hit in
like the very beginning?

Feargus (11:48):
So I, I think the first thing was like, and I, I
mean I hate to say it becauseit's, it makes it, I mean
this, I, you know, so much oflike starting up companies and
being successful is, I meanobviously is is incredibly
hard work, but then some ofit is just luck, you know?
And I think we, it was sortof the right time and that
got us the co tot two contractand we of course were really
good friends with Ray, Ray,Greg, and the rest of Bioworks.

(12:08):
They really helped us get,you know, kind of helped us.
They set people down to helpus get the engine set up
and all that kind of stuff.
so that was pretty, I I, youknow, there was, that was,
that was probably easierthan it, it was for like
a vast majority of studiosthat have ever started up.
But definitely in the two yearsthere was like, 'cause we wanted
to get to two projects quickly.

(12:31):
It was sort, I know that wassort of a weird, that wasn't
what a lot of developers did,but, you know, when I say
it was like three Chrises,Darren and Feargus, it ended
up being like three producers.
three producers, aprogrammer and a designer.
And so we were very muchproject minded, you know,
and we'd always beenrunning lots of projects.
And so we thought we wanted toget to like, so we wanted to
get to two projects quickly.
So we immediately were like,oh, well we're doing KOTOR 2.

(12:52):
Well, what aboutNeverwinter Nights 2, right?
So we had, we were sort ofalready stock talking to Atari,
and that was like, it just, wecouldn't get anywhere, right?
And so that was hard.
and then we actually, we, wetalked to, we were working with
Gathering of Developers, andthen that didn't go anywhere.

(13:14):
and then we were, and then weactually finished a contract
for po, a post-apocalyptic PCgame with, god not Take Two.
I forgot.
No, it was TakeTwo with Take Two.
And we literally had this,I signed the contract,
faxed it over, and thennever got a return.

(13:35):
I never got a, you know, nevergot a, a contract returned
and like two weeks later I'mcalling, calling, calling and
then finally said, oh, well,you know, this person left.
We changed our this and,and, and I'm like, but
we signed the contract.
He's like, yeah.
And so.

Alex (13:50):
I mean, that's really interesting.
And that's gotta be alittle bit, that had to
be a little traumatic.

Feargus (13:54):
Well, it was and, and it was like traumatic.
And it was like, I thinkwhat was kind of traumatic,
it was like maybe the firstcontract was a little easier
than it should have to be.
To get.
And then the secondcontract was start.
Like we were, like, Iwas, we were all over
the place and everything.
We were like pitching justfelt like it was something
that made sense that wecould get, that we would do.
Like another one was, we werecontacted by Ubisoft and they

(14:16):
had that, that point they had,they had acquired New World, so
they had the Might and Magic IP.
Oh yeah.
And so they got ahold ofus and we said, oh yeah,
well we, we can takethe KOTOR engine, right?
So that engine and then we canmake a Might and Magic game.
And I'm like.
Chocolate peanut butter, right?
I mean, this would be,this would be perfect.
And, and, but we didn't have,but the one thing that we

(14:37):
had a hard time with, and itwas, it was something that
we never really did a lot.
We never did a lot offlashy demos for games
that we could make.
We kind of just always reliedon, I don't wanna spend any
money on if, if, you know,if you don't like the five
page concept document, Idon't know how a demo's gonna
make you that much happier.
So, but, so, but thenArcane did, in the Unreal,

(14:58):
not in Unreal Engine, in,sourced Source, in Source,
did, the, their did my, didwhat would become their,
my Might and Magic game.
And so that's what, that's whoUbisoft went with that way.
So I guess that was the,the interesting challenge
there in the early days wasreally just like, we were
just kind of bouncing allover the place a little bit
for, from like, like pitchingand pitching and pitching.
I mean, we were never in abad place because we were
only ever going to ramp up.

(15:20):
People onto a secondproject once we had
signed the second project.
I guess that's the usefulness,that useful thing of being
when you're first starting out.
but yeah, I would say thatwas a little bit of a, a
bouncing around was, was tough.

Aaron (15:31):
What year is this?

Feargus (15:32):
2003 and then 2003 into 2004.

Alex (15:35):
Back in 2003, 2004, you were signing games
on a five page word doc?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Well, I think there'ssomething really interesting,
to learn here about justplaying into your strengths.
I mean, you had, youhad a, a track record.
You had some expertisein a certain area.

(15:57):
You had relationshipswith, folks who could
provide opportunities.
So you sort of put thosethree together and that's
like path of least resistanceand it kind, kind of worked.

Feargus (16:07):
Yeah.
Well, I I also, I, Ido wonder when you're
pitching games that like.
Yes, A demo is awesometo have, right?
I mean, to show, to showsomething because it then proves
oh you can go make a thing.
But I, I don't know.
I always wonder though, if, ifwhen you go in with a PowerPoint
and you have a concept documentto show people and, and it's
like if you haven't gottentheir interest at that point,

(16:30):
like it's gonna be hard.
Like, it's gonna be hard toprove to them that this is
something that's interesting.
And I think, I think whatwe also like, a big thing we
also noticed was we sometimesjust had pitches to take
people to pitch so that theycould then tell us what they
really wanted us to make.
And, you know what I mean?
So it's like they didn'twanna just say, Hey, we have

(16:51):
this, are you interested intaking like He-Man a crossover
with Barbie and do an RPG?
Like, they didn't wannacome out and just say that.
Yeah.
I, I know, I know.
Yeah.
You just make that, I know, Idid just make that up, but yeah.
And, and so, but theywould like, let us pitch.
I'm like, well, that'ssuper interesting.
God, that's such a great idea.

(17:12):
Well, we've also been kickingaround something, right?
And then, and then Okay, then wecould, 'cause we were not, we,
I, I, I, I think one thing as astudio is we, we, we wanted to
make games and, and we wantedmake RPGs, and of course was
a style of RPG that we wantedto make, but we weren't caught
up in, it had to be this RPGor that RPG, like we'd already
made actually a lot of RPGs.

(17:32):
And so a lot of it was like,Hey, we just like doing this.
We have do it together.
And so we sort of al we sortof looked at a, there was
always a lot of possibilitieson the table because we didn't,
You know, we didn't like,it didn't have to be ours, I
think was the, the, that wasanother big thing about us
is we just, it wasn't abouteverything having to be ours.
Yeah.

Aaron (17:50):
I guess what I'm curious is, like, there is kind of a,
a DnD slash RPG like blood,like blood here, like vibe.
Yeah.
So, so can we, like, canwe go back to baby Feargus?
Like, does, does BabyFeargus play D&D?

Feargus (18:07):
I started getting into D&D I would say around,
I wanna say like 1980,somewhere around there.
one of friends, one ofmy friends introduced
it and me to it and I,and I really enjoyed it.
And there wasactually, I think what.
Really helped as well is, isthere was actually a gaming
club at my high school.
So as I got a little bit olderand every Wednesday after
school we just, we got intoone of the classrooms and we

(18:29):
played whatever, whether itwas gonna be D&D or Paranoia
or Powers and Perils or allthese different kind of things.
And also got into, like, superinto board games as well.
you know, Talisman isthis sort of crossover
RPG like board game.
and you know, we were playingit back in 1982 or whatever,
whenever it, it originally,originally came out.
And so what was the weirdlyfortuitous thing is, is so that

(18:51):
I, So I had a friend that Imet in the gaming club named
guy's named Chris Taylor.
Not Chris Taylor, gaspowered Chris Taylor.
and so Chris Taylor,we worked toge.
So, so I, so I, I was, my otherjob, I've only had two jobs.
It sounds horriblein my whole thing.
Oh, well, three jobs ifyou count obs seating
Interplay differently.
So I worked for Dominoesand I made pizzas.

(19:13):
Anyway, so then I got.
And then I got ajob, 27 seconds.
That was my best on alarge pepperoni pizza.
And so,

Alex (19:22):
Whoa.
Wait.
You can make apizza in 27 seconds?

Feargus (19:24):
Make a large shipable pepperoni pizza in 27 seconds.
Yeah.

Alex (19:29):
You are, you are a producer, huh?
Is that, is that whatyou, can you call, is your
bag, do you identify asproducer or something else?

Aaron (19:36):
Well, I, you how they do the cheese?
There's like a little handle.
They just drop

Feargus (19:38):
No, no, no, no, no.
This is, this was all manual.
This was, yep.
Okay.
This was from Dough Patty.
To basically spoon of the sauce.
You had a spoon, you didn'tspoon sauce and then cheese.
Yeah.
You just, you just got reallygood, the technique of like,
yeah know, I know you, youput your hands like almost
like a coal loader into the,into the, into the thing.
And then you could go like this,you could go like this and it

(20:00):
spread the cheese really well.
Anyway.
anyway, so Chris, so I gothim a job at Domino's and
then he, when he left Domino'seventually, and he got a
job at Interplay in customerservice, and then I needed it
as, as one will do.
Yes.
I guess they wererecruiting right?
Outta Domino's.
Yes, exactly.
Do you know Ben Brode?
a Second Dinner to Hearthstone.
He's got a similar story.

(20:21):
He was delivering Pizzas tothe night crew at, blizzard.
Oh, okay.
to the testers.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And that's how hegot a testing job.
Oh, that's hilarious.
Yeah.
Anyway, so long story short.
Yeah.
So he, and then, and thenhe got a job at Interplay.
And it was, this was like,you know, me and him, me
and him had been playingBard's Tale, you know, like
he played on his Apple.
I played in my Commodore 64,and then weirdly enough, I

(20:43):
mean, three miles from wherewe were playing Bard's Tale
is where Bard's Tale was made.
Right.
So, and we didn'tknow that at the time.
And so, yeah, it wasjust this happenstance.
He got a job, youknow, and he, okay.
'cause that's the whole thing.
I forgot he got a jobat Interplay because he
was in a D&D game withsomeone from Interplay.
And so that's how he, thatthat's how that forgot that
that's how he's got small world.

(21:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then Chris Taylor, I mean,what's, he's, he's not really,
he's not so much in the industryanymore, but, he was the lead.
He ended up being the leaddesigner on the original
fallout, and that's what he did.
So, yeah.

Aaron (21:13):
Wow.
Yeah.

Alex (21:14):
Okay.
That, wow.
That is, there's more thanI guess I, well if he's not
in the industry anymore,I mean, I guess the gas
powered is sort of No, thatthis is not gas industry.
This is not gas powered.
I know it's twodifferent Chris Taylor.
That's crazy.
It's the third onetoo, which is as

Feargus (21:28):
well, which is funny that there's
three Chris Taylors.

Alex (21:30):
Okay.
So Baby Feargus got introducedto D&D, and that sort
of led to meeting Chrisdominoes into interplay.
And you've been working in thatRPG genre your whole career?

Feargus (21:44):
Pretty much.
I mean, I, early on, I mean,so like, obviously when I
was testing, I kind of testedall these different stuff.
but weirdly, of course,I mean it's all, how,
it's how this all works.
One of the first, so myfirst, I think the first
time I was called a leadtester, I think was on
Bard's tail construction set.
And my lead, the, basicallythe developer, the, the
lead programmer gamedirector, what do you wanna

(22:05):
call him, was Tim Cain.
And so that's how meand Tim got, got to know
each other really well.
And interplay was so smallback then you just, I
actually though with Tim, itwas funny because he wasn't
full-time at Interplay.
He was just making it,he was still kind of
a grad student at UCI.
So I'd have to go to his, I'dhave to go to his grad student.
like apartments at UCI to getbuilds that I could then take

(22:27):
back to interplay and play them.
Did you, did you go from highschool to Domino's to interplay?
So that was during thesummer, so I was testing
during the summer.
So I had, I did, I did.
So while I did go to college,I did not graduate college,
which I always tell the kidsnowadays, do not do that.
Graduate college.
I just, it just after, afterfive years, I almost had
a degree, but then I gota full-time job offer from

(22:49):
Interplay to be a producer.
And so then I tried tocommute for a quarter.
'cause I was, that was,interplay was in Irvine
and I was going tothe UCSD in San Diego.
and it was, it, let'sjust say the too much.
The commuting didn't work.

Alex (23:03):
What were you studying at UCS?

Feargus (23:04):
I was gonna be a bioengineer.

Aaron (23:06):
Hmm.
It's adjacent.

Alex (23:10):
But it is interesting how, and maybe, maybe more in
that time period because maybebecause there, there was no
sort of career track into games.
Certainly no like gamemaking studies at school.
There's a lot of peoplein the industry who either
didn't go to college or asa, a story similar to you.
but, I, I love this sort ofthe, the thread here about,

(23:34):
your relationship with RPG,particularly beginning with D&D.
I, I often, tell young peoplewho are asking me about getting
into the craft of game making.
I often, suggest to go play D&D.
Because of the, the kind ofexperience that it, it gives
you an exposure to this reallyinteresting combination of

(23:57):
narrative world building andsystems and system design.
But you're like, the expertwould love to hear like,
what attracted you to, like,why were you playing D&D?
Was it just 'cause

Feargus (24:07):
First off, let's, let's like it, okay.
Yeah.
I have to draw thepicture right there.
Paint the picture of, oflike, I was, you know,
I was a nerd, right.
You know, I was like, I waslike couple years ahead of math,
you know, like I was supposedto, like, I didn't end up doing
it, but like I, for eighthgrade, I had to go to, I was
at junior high and I had to goto high school for the math.
And so let's just saythere wasn't, I was the,
not the most popular kids.

(24:29):
and then of course that meantthat I gravitated to also
the not so popular kids.
And I think at the time,D&D was something that
was very interesting tothe not so popular kids.
And it was, and I love fantasy.
Like I was reading Lord ofthe Rings and actually one
of my teachers in juniorhigh introduced me to other
kind of author sci-fi offoffers authors at the time.
And I don't know, and itjust, I, it was this, it

(24:50):
was this idea, which iswhat we talk about all the
time at, that Obsidian is,is just this idea of like.
I could go into these worldsand I can be someone, right?
I can be successful, Ican gain, I can go up
levels, I can kill dragons.
You know, and I was never likethe, like, and this is nothing

(25:11):
against people who, who are,who are like in a game that
they play two times a weekand have done it for five
years or something like that.
Like, I was a little bitmore casual than that.
but just, it wasjust this, this idea.
And I think it was also theattraction of the numbers sort.
It was this idea of howto define success through
numbers, and addingdragons as well, you know.
So it was a It was,it was, it was, yeah.

(25:33):
And, and it was, and itwas just also the comradery
I had to, so around theBaldur's Gate 2 times, so
this would've been, 2000.
And I sort of had a newgroup of people who were
doing PR marketing on.
Baldur's Gate and nowBaldur's gate was- So Baldur's
Gate was like, interplay,like, Hey, that's cool.
That sounds like a cool game.

(25:53):
We didn't put muchmoney into it.
And of course it, it did great.
And now, now Baldur's, Baldur'sGate too mattered, right?
So now there's morepeople working on it
and things like that.
And so I had to the, thewomen, and they were, it
was actually, it was, itwas, it was two marketing
women and or two marketingwomen and two, PR women.
And they, didn't really,they did not play D&D, they

(26:15):
didn't really play RPGs.
some of them played games, butnot that, you know, there wasn't
a lot of people in marketing prplaying games in the nineties.
It's just reality, right?
And they're like, well, we'regonna have you play D&D.
And they're like, really?
And we're then I'm like, no,we are, we're not, we're not
gonna make you play like forsix months, but you gotta play.
So we have to make characters.
And they, I think we only playedlike two or three sessions and

(26:36):
by the end of I gave you thesecond session, they looked
at us and goes, so this isreally, you guys just getting,
is basically you get around,you get, it's, you hang out,
drink beer and screw around.
We're like, yeah, Imean that's really,
we understand this.
We understand this waymore now because they were
laughing and they were havingfun and it wasn't serious.

(26:58):
And you know, and, and and itwas just, you know, it was just
that unified storytelling of,of a group having fun together.
Right.
And and I thinkthat's what it was.
It was comradery, it was group,it was, and, and I think that's.
What's always drawn to me aboutRPGs is, is, is getting to, you
know, do this thing with others.

Alex (27:16):
That makes a lot of sense.
There's a, there's also kindof a built-in almost escapism.
Of like, you're kind of creatingthis alternate world where you
are, you can do anything and

Feargus (27:25):
Yeah.
It's, and it's, I mean, it's ahundred percent what, what I,
you know, what we talk aboutto, even to this day as we
say, Hey, not everybody's jobin real life is, is amazing.
Like their, their livesduring the workday and, and
we're very lucky in whatwe get to do right now.
Right.
And theirs are not that way.
They could be, and it's notthat, hey, I'm not denigrating
anybody that works atMcDonald's and cooks, fries

(27:47):
and flips burgers at all.
But, but, but they don't havefeel that it's, but they're,
they, they, while they may nothate their job, they don't,
they probably don't feelthey have a lot of control.
Right.
And, and I think what RPGsand games in general, but
I think RPGs in particular,when we make them well,
it gives people power.
It makes them feellike they have.
Can, they can have aneffect on these worlds

(28:08):
that they're going into.
And that's, I, I don't know,that's probably one of,
that's what's one of thethings, the core driving
things that's always keptme like super interested
in, in, in doing what we do.

Aaron (28:19):
And rolling dice is pretty fun.

Feargus (28:20):
Rolling dice is amazing.

Alex (28:22):
Yes.
you, you said a phrase,success through numbers.
Yeah.
It was that sort of, youwere, you kind of like talking
about system design Yeah.
And spread spreadsheetsand that thing

Feargus (28:37):
spread spreadsheets.
I mean, just this idea that,that that success was defined.
In other words, if I get thisamount of experience points,
I can go up this level andI can now do this damage
and I can put on this armor.
And it was all this like, it,you know, it's like it, I, I
didn't know at the time, butit was this, you know, we would
now call it min-maxing Right.
It's like, how do, how do youactually use these systems
to be as successful as youcan in this world, the way

(28:57):
that you wanna be successful?
and so that's, yeah,that's, that's, that's kind
of what I meant by that.

Alex (29:02):
One more question about the past.
Before we get a little bit morecurrent, which is just, for,
and for listeners if you'renot familiar with Interplay, I
guess I, I would put Interplayin the category is sort of one
of the, kind of like foundingfather ish era companies,

(29:23):
that had a, a big impact onthe game industry early on.
Did, did some seminal,games, et cetera.
Like what was the vibe there?
Like you said, like you said,when you were there, or at
least at some point when youstarted, it was really small.
what was that like working at a,I mean, and you're at Microsoft
now, which is the other endof the, the size spectrum.

Feargus (29:44):
Yeah.
The other end of it, you know,I, you know, so the first time
I got hired in '91 as a tester,I think I was like employee 33.
when I got hired in '96, fulltime, I think it was like 112.
So, so we had grown a lotin those, in those two
years, but still prettysmall company comparatively.
and things like, Ithink that, you know.

(30:05):
I think, I think it's hardfor people to probably picture
it, but like there was also,I would've been 23, right?
And at the time, I'm pretty sureBrian's like seven years older
than me, and so he would be 30.
There wasn't manypeople older than 30.
Right?
So, so this was beingrun by people in their

(30:26):
mid to late twenties.
Right.
And, and in an industry wherelike we, we loved games.
We were all in.
What in the hell did weknow about making games?
I mean, there was, as youwere saying before, there was
no schools, there was no, Imean, so I could, so the, the
oldest person I could talk toabout making games was Brian.

(30:46):
Right.
You know, and maybe therewas someone who was 31
or 32, I don't know.
But that was like theextent of it, you know?
And what about business there?
Yeah.
So, so no, and that I thinkalso led to this thing of where
it, we were just, we were allfiguring it out all the time.
Right.
And when you're all figuringit all out all the time, all
together, it's just, it's,it's fun because you're

(31:08):
all bonding all the time.
You're all like,how do you do this?
And how did that,why did that blow up?
Right.
And, and, and, and I think tothat extent in the environment
that, that Brian created wasone where just, Hey, this is,
we gotta get this game done.
Just do it.
Go do it.
That's it.
I mean, he didn't really getinv, I mean, he was involved
in the bigger things, but alot of the other stuff, he

(31:28):
was just like, he trusted us.
He'd check in with us everyonce in a while and we
just, I mean, it was like.
It, it, it's like thingsnow that people in the
industry would probablynot let someone under 40
be in charge of something.
And, and I, and I'm beingput in charge of it.
I mean, here's the crazy thing.
So, so yeah.
So I'm a just a producerat 23, and, and then at

(31:48):
26 they're like, Hey, thisguy doesn't wanna run this
whole development division.
Do you wanna do it?
And I'm like, sure.
So again, I get put incharge of like 50 people
and like four, maybe fiveremote projects on top of it.
So I'm, I'm suddenly incharge of 10 projects.
I'm in charge of the mostimportant like, brand
that they have, which isD&D, you know, and I'm 26,

(32:10):
didn't graduate high, didgraduate college, right?
So, that was, but it was,I, I think the kind of
people that gravitated tothat were all super smart,
hardworking people that justwanted to make awesome games.
right now speaking to thebusiness, Aaron, you were kind
of asking the question there.
It was a different worldfrom a business perspective.
Right.
And you know, I was just,actually, they were talking

(32:33):
to the CFO that was aroundthere around the same time.
His name's Chuck Camps andhe was just, we just had
breakfast the other day.
He said even at the time,what was, what helped that
industry helped the industryand helped interplay.
It was really the manydarts theory because it, if
it took you, like, I don'tremember, but let's say the

(32:53):
first Baldur's Gate cost$350,000 to make right.
It was probably around there.
I know, I know.
The contract And the secondBaldur's Gate was like $550k
and then it grew to a millionor something like that.
But Baldur's Gate 2, I mean,we shipped in 2 million
units of Baldur's Gate2, probably at $49.95 in
2000, and it cost a milliondollars to make the game.

(33:16):
Right.
So.
Right.
You know, I mean, it's why,you know, it's, why, it's why,
you know, Richard Garriottgets to go into space.
You know, I mean, it's, it's,it was, it was the business
allowed for failure, right?
And, and it allowed, sothat meant when the business
allowed for failure.
It meant we couldtry a lot of things.
Right?
And so that's probablywhy it was different.

(33:37):
Now what?
But what, what I rememberthough is because the stakes
were so low and, and, and,you know, and, and we were
making, we think, we thoughtwe were making games that
people wanted to play, itdidn't take a lot of units
to break even on those games.
So even when somethingmaybe didn't, just didn't
hit, you know, I mean, youneeded, you know, you needed.
I mean, it's so crazyto say nowadays, but you

(33:58):
needed like 30,000 unitsto break even, you know?
And and so yeah, and that's,that was the atmosphere.
And, and not to draw thecomparison to the day,
it's just the stakes arejust so much higher, right?
I mean, when I need 5million, I'm just coming
up with a number, right?
But, when it could be 5 millionunits to break even, that's
a big difference in 30,000.
'cause then you have to look at,well, how many, how many games

(34:20):
sold 5 million units last year?
And you're like, oh, wow.
Not, not, not a ton, right?
So it's a very, yes.
It's, it changes.
It changes a lot.
But, and that's why I, I don'tknow, I, I, I do, as we all
say, sometimes you, you harkenback to the early days and,
there was definitely somethingabout those days, and not,

(34:40):
but they didn't feel pressure.
'cause I, I mean, particularlywhen fall it was shipping and
when bald skates were shipping,there was pre like, like, I
mean it was really like, holycrap, is anybody gonna buy them?
Hopefully they buy it.
I mean, we thinkthey're really cool.
Hopefully they'll buy 'em.
And, Oh, they did.
I was, it was prettycrazy actually.
Yeah.
but yeah, no, I do look backand I say, wow, it was, it,

(35:01):
it was, you kind of have tonowadays just not staring to
the stare, to the abyss, right.
And just go, I believein what we're doing and
we're gonna get there.
And there was less abyssstaring, I think back
then, as compared to now.
Yeah.

Alex (35:18):
Yeah.
No, I mean, the, theunit economics were,
were very different.
The scale of the industrywas very different.
consumer, the, the number ofconsumers was, was different.
And just like there wasone business model, now
there's many, there aregames now that are popular
for seven plus years.
That wasn't a thing.

(35:38):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So in the competitivelandscape, you know, it's
like entertainment justin general is all digital
and it's all consuming.
So yeah, it's, it is,it is very different.
But it, you are still makingRPGs and, How has that changed?
Like over, let's kindof get back up to maybe
more current time.

(35:58):
We, we'd really love to, to hearthe story about like how the
acquisition by Xbox happened.
How that's changed your lifeand how you are approaching,
making RPGs in this new contextthat's different from maybe
back in those early days.
But what was that trip?
What was the journey likebetween when, Obsidian got
started and, and then I, Iforget when the acquisition was.

(36:21):
Was that around '17, 18?

Feargus (36:22):
It finalized it right in January of '19.
So we, it was announced in '18and, and closed in, in early.
Very, like right early '19.

Alex (36:29):
That's a really incredible independent run right there.
That type Yes.
15 years.
15 plus years.
Yeah.

Feargus (36:34):
And I mean, and as you, as you know, I mean, when
you kind of, to sum up those,those that period of time, I
mean, highs and lows, right?
I mean that's the, that'sthe independent world, right?
It's, it's the highs of.
You know, doing KOTOR two andit, it shipping successfully
and, and, doing very well onit, right to, the lows of, of
making, you know, making a greatgame like Alpha Protocol, but,

(36:58):
but through, but not doing your,having really hard time doing
it and having, and, and thenshipping something amazing, but
it didn't resonate, you know,weirdly, it still, it resonates
more now than when it cameout strangely, to, you know,
I mean, we got our first gamecanceled in 2000, early 2006.

(37:20):
I think I have my dates right.
Yeah.
I think it was early 2006.
and luckily we're able to rollonto another game at the time,
but, you know, it's through,I think it was, we probably
went through three layoffs, youknow, and, big games canceled
and and I'm always very.
Introspectiveabout those things.
I was like, how to, howto, of course the publisher
always plays a role, buthow, what did we do wrong?

(37:41):
And like, how dowe do this better?
And, and I, and, and thosedays of like having to tell
people they're not gonna, theyhaven't got a job anywhere else.
I mean, it sucks.

Alex (37:49):
Do you remember any of the things that, like when
you did that introspectionover, like a project getting
canceled or something like that?
Like any things thatyou learned and then
tried to do differently?
Yeah.
After that.
So, I mean, that's, that'sa really valuable lesson
that, that is expensive.
Yes.
You know, if you wanna shareanything that's super awesome.

Feargus (38:06):
I, I will, I think there's two things and
they're quite different.
I think the first thing is.
Basically, I'm, I'm gonnacall it, it sounds so
like, I don't know, likesurgical or something.
but it's publisher managementand so we, we'd already, we
worked for a publisher, so Ithink we were already pretty
good at it, but I realizedwe needed to be better at it.

(38:27):
Like we needed tocommunicate better.
We needed to make surethey understood what we're
doing and why we were doingit, how we were doing it.
And also recognizing thatlike the people that we were
working with every day thatworked at the publisher had
a hundred other things to do.
Like, not that we weren'timportant and not, the
project wasn't important,but like generally external
products get very, veryfew people actually working

(38:50):
on them at the publisher.
And so we're like, okay,how do we make this easy?
And so we started withmilestones and what we did is
we would turn in a milestoneand we would make sure that.
We dotted every tand cross like that.
There was never a question thatwe had turned, like everything
that was in the milestonelist was delivered, and it
was like clearly labeled.
And on top of it whatwe said, okay, we need

(39:11):
to make their job easy.
So I, I was an internal,you know, producer and, and
Brian would sometimes askme, well, how did that go?
Like, you know, and, sowhat we do is then we
delivered, we deliveredthree, three, videos to them.
We delivered a, basicallylike a, for multiple, like
30, 45 minute, hour longvideos that were narrated

(39:33):
by people explaining thisis what we delivered and
this is how we delivered.
And that was for the producer.
And then we delivered afive to seven minute video
that was a little bit more,little bit like, showed kind
of funner things, but stilltalk a little bit about the
development, stuff like that.
And that was forthe VP development.
And then we made a two minutesizzle piece that they could
send off to the CEO or thepresident whenever they were

(39:55):
asked, how's this game going?
And-

Alex (39:58):
That's super smart.

Feargus (39:59):
Yes.
And so that helped.
Right?

Alex (40:02):
That's, that's a lot of extra work right there.
It is though.
Mean we had to add a, we hadto add, we, you had to do a
little bit of ROI on, likehow, okay, well how much
time, who's gonna do this?
And is it worth spending?

Feargus (40:11):
We added an extra producer, so we
added an extra producer.
So at that time we said, okay,we're gonna have to add at least
one more producer who's gonna beable to handle all this stuff.
Because we just noticed, andI don't know if it was a, it
was just something that wasgoing on as, as years went
on, it was just seemed likethe producers on the other
side had less time, in somecases had less, experience.
And so we kind of had to fillthat gap a lot of the time.

(40:34):
so anyways, so that was howwe, so, so publisher management
was one big part of it.
The second part of it was, that,you know, it was, it was like
we really had to understandthe game that we were making.
And it WI mean, and weall, look, this is just
development, right?
And I know you knowthese things, right?
It is like.
When we hit prototype, whenwe hit vertical slice, we

(40:56):
hit these things like wehave honest conversations
and we then we then go,okay, how do we scope it?
Like, and, and it was,it's just scope, scope,
scope, scope, scope.
Like if these feature likesimple things, like you
get to vertical slice,but not all of your area
design tools already, right?
So if you've shipped yourvertical slice but your area

(41:19):
design tools aren't all donewell, how can you then start
making your levels of thegame, if not all your area?
'cause you're just gonnahave to return to that.
Now you can decide to dothat, but that's gonna
cost on the back end.
And so we just, we, we try,I guess was just more honesty
with ourselves about thereality of where we really
were in development and notjust letting stuff like, oh,

(41:39):
we'll get there, it'll be fine.
And none of it was malicious.
It just was, you just haveto like, I don't wanna say
stare at the base again, butyou have to just like stare
at yourself in the mirror.
Be honest and go.
We, this is where we really are.
Right?
And and you know, and thenchange the game, right?
If you gotta cut in half,do whatever you need to do.
But you gotta,but stay on track.

(42:00):
And that was the, we, we,we, we got better at that.
And I think I would, I wouldalso say early on it was, it
was, as we really started on aproject, we started to do these
meetings where we said someonewould say, oh, we're gonna
have, I don't know, fire hoses.
Great.
And then, so awesome.
And then, then.
I guess fire hoses are showingup at some point, right?

(42:23):
They're like, Nope, you'rereally into fire hoses great.
You're gonna, you're gonna giveus a presentation two Tuesdays
from now, exactly how fire hosescould work, how they're gonna
be able to play into the game,and, and we made people present.
These things that they saidwere gonna be in the game.
So it was not for thepublisher, it was purely for us.
And it's funny when you,and then, and then, and

(42:44):
it was two parts to it.
You're gonna show me whyit's cool, how it works, and
then you're gonna show me inthe tools, in the pipelines,
how you actually make it.
And when we did that, it likereally changed how those games
got made because someone,like, someone got in front
of us and, and it was like 90steps and they could barely
show and it wouldn't work.
We're like, dude, they'relike, yeah, I know.

Alex (43:06):
That's, that's, that's really interesting.
So you basically if hey, ifyou have an idea and you wanna
put it in the game, greatideas are cheap, but let's
actually think about whatwe're gonna get out of this
and what's it about cost.

Feargus (43:20):
Yeah.
And, and how does itget into our pipeline?
That's the whole thing.
Like, you know, it's,it's, and of course we
break this all the time.
I mean, we had like Outer Worldsas this feature disguises that
Tim really wanted in the game.
And it just kept on slidingout, sliding up, sliding.
And he said, but then hefelt the game- it was really
required for the game.
And so we put thatfeature in super late.

(43:40):
It, you know, after Alphaand then it had to go back
and it get retrofittedto all the areas.
And I mean, I thinkhe's happy with it.
but I summed, I think wewould if we got out together
and talked about it.
I'm wondering if the answerthat we call come to is, it
would've been better to putsome more, some stuff that
was already supported in theengine, more content that

(44:02):
was already supported inthe engine into those levels
rather than a whole new, ratherthan that whole new feature.

Aaron (44:07):
We'll be right back.
If you like what you're hearinglike and follow the show
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Aaron (47:11):
And now, back to the show.

Alex (47:15):
How do you be honest?
I know that sounds like abasic, very large question,
but, really interesting tohear you talk about that was
kind of an unlock for youunpacking some challenges you
had, I guess, with publishers.
About, all right, we do a thingand we're we, we said we're
going to be this far along.

(47:36):
Yeah.
And then we did a thing.
Yeah.
And now we're going tohonestly assess are, are
we there, are we not there?
Like, how, how do you keepyourselves honest, not just
with yourselves, but then areyou, do you end up being just
completely transparent withyour, like your funding partner?
I know that there's always thispressure no to like, not, not

(47:57):
like, like, well, let's not,let's not shoot ourselves in
the foot here by like, likesaying everything's on fire.
You know, like, but howdo you navigate that?

Feargus (48:05):
So first off, I mean, if you comment, I, I'm always
very, transparent, right?
And I, I go but.
There's things you just like,there's sort of elements
of the making the sausagethat scares people, right?
And so like I, I also see thatas a responsibility 'cause
I could completely scare apublisher unnecessarily, right?
Because.

(48:26):
A lot of it is, is if the jobis to, if I say, Hey, I'm gonna
deliver you a 24 hour sci-fiRPG, that looks kind of like
Fallout and is a, in a corporatedystopia or whatever, right.
Which is Outer Worlds.
and I, and that'smy job right now.
If stuff is going sidewaysand I have to change certain
things and okay, we're notgonna have nine armors, so we're

(48:47):
gonna have eight armors, butme as an RPG maker knows that
eight armors is fine, right?
So that, so I, I tryto keep the eye on what
we're supposed to deliver.
If we cannot deliver, if I,when I feel we can't deliver
the thing that we said we weregonna, that's where you have to
have the conversation, right?
And it's, and it's crappy 'causethat you could get canceled.
Right.
And, but I dunno, Iwould almost want, I

(49:09):
almost wanna get canceledearly rather than later.
you know, just because, youknow, I've ramped up more,
we put more time in it that'snow useless because all this
stuff is now we can't useand, and things like that.
So, I guess that's.
I, I guess we were alwaysprobably pretty honest
with our publishers.
I think internally it's,it goes, it just goes

(49:29):
with the, again, you makepeople show it to you.
Right.
And I have to take this from,Todd Vaughn from Bethesda.
You know, he told me yearsand years ago, I think when
we were first starting towork on, on Fallout New Vegas.
It, it's been like 2008.
I think we're sitting at aCheesecake Factory and we
were talking about developmentand stuff and, as one does,
which one does, but there'sa Cheesecake Factory right

(49:50):
across the street from us.
So that's, that's, that'spart partly why, that's
mostly why there's alot of Cheesecake Store
Cheesecake Factory stories.
But he said like, howwhere he had gotten to the
teams was, if it's not onscreen, it doesn't exist.
Like if you cannot show meand I can't touch it and feel
it and use the controller.

(50:10):
It doesn't exist.
You can, you can create the,the, the base theater of the
mind and wonderful designdocuments and concepts,
but if it, if it is not onscreen and I can't touch and
feel it, it does not exist.
And, and so when you, you getinto that mode and you make
people present and you say,show it to me, like for real.
Like, this is not well, and,and then you start getting

(50:32):
lots of words and lotsof this and lots of that.
I, I think that that's how we.
How when we do that, andI'm not saying we're perfect
at it 'cause we're not, butwhen we do that, that's I
think when we're at our best,

Alex (50:45):
Some, somewhere in there we didn't actually get to.
Oh, to how theacquisition stuff you got.
Yeah.
How you got, connected,attached, acquired,
by Microsoft.
Those are usually interestingstories is an interesting.

Feargus (50:55):
So it kind of all starts with Noah Musler, who
was biz dev at Sega and thenhe was biz dev at Microsoft and
Noah had the distinction of, of,of signing two of our biggest
games that then got canceled.

Alex (51:08):
So he's your best buddy.

Feargus (51:13):
So, so I, so I feel, I think Noah
felt he owed it to us.
No, I mean, butmore realistically.
So I've been friends with Noahfor a long time and he knew
we were a solid developer.
And, and while I know thatI'm not ever supposed to
say this, don't worry,Alicia s Shyla, it's fine.
is, is, is that Matt Bootyalways wanted to say there
wasn't a list, there wasn'tlike, sorry, there was a list

(51:34):
of developers they wanted tolook at, but there wasn't like
a list of a check, an exactchecklist of the type of, that
they would, if you, if you hadthese eight check check marks
and then we would definitelyconsider acquiring you.
I think in the end, theacquisition was based upon, so
I, so to me ask like, why were,some people ask why were we
interested in being acquired?

(51:54):
A lot of it was, 'causewe still, we wanted to
continue to make big RPGs.
And now where we're gettinginto the pitching 50, 60,
$70 million games, it doesn'tmatter how big the publishers
out there, they only have somany slots to do 50, 60, 70
plus million dollars games.
And this was, youknow, back in 18-19.
So we had to seriously look atlike, okay, because when we need

(52:18):
a game, it's not necessarilywhen they have a slot.
And so, it's, it'sgonna be challenging.
So we either have to completelychange, we just have to go
back to like figuring out howto get, you know, basically
crowdfunded Pillars of Eternitystyle games, which are amazing.
And I mean that, thatthose games helped us
like you wouldn't believe.
And but to do the bigger ones,no, it was gonna be hard.
So we started to really lookat acquisitions and we'd

(52:40):
been talking, we probablytalked seriously, talked to
four different companies,and and then kind of.
Microsoft came a littlebit later into that, and
it was all because of E3.
And I, I was re, I alwaysremember sitting, I was
talking to Noah and hesaid, he goes, you guys got
something to pitch, right?
I Oh, yeah, yeah.

(53:00):
He's like, okay, we'regonna have breakfast.
You're gonna pitch me andthen we're gonna figure
out what we do with it.
I'm like, okay.
So I pitched him at breakfast.
He said, all right,you need a bigger room.
And I'm like, I don't knowwhat you're talking about.
So then he basically, we,we went to the JW Marriott.
We got a bigger room.
He got like 18people in the room.
I'm probably, I'mmaking that number up.
It was 15 to 15 plus, right.

(53:21):
And, and I'm like, crap,I have a PowerPoint.
There's 15 people.
This is just not gonna work.
And so I kind of said, youknow what, everybody, I'm not
gonna play the PowerPoint.
I'm just gonna tell youwhat we wanna do and
how we're gonna do it.
And I just talked to themfor like half an hour and I
just, I basically, now I hadmade, I'd done that pitch
like 20 times already, so Iwas already very in the flow.
But they, they, they reallyappreciated everything

(53:44):
we're talking about.
And then in the end, we reallysince, but there, I know there's
no Matt Booty checklist, buthe was, they were looking,
they were looking for studiosthat had been around that, that
had continuity of ownership,that there were owners that
were gonna wanna stay and,and continue to make it.
They were known forsomething, and had, and
were of a certain size.

(54:05):
Right.
And, we kind of checked allthose boxes and then, and that
led pretty quickly to, a lunchwith me, Matt Booty, Noah and
Mary McGuane, who's my boss now.
And.
It felt good.
Good questions.
Good.
This, and, and then it,it flow, it went really
pretty fast from there.
I mean, it was, it wasfrom first conversation

(54:26):
to closing six months.
and, and so, they were, youknow, once they got into
the shoot, they were, it,it, it went really well.
So, and it, and I, and inthe end it was like, I mean,
we of course had a lot ofconversations about it and, and
people were worried about it.
but I, I will say what Mattsaid in that first meeting
about how he wanted it all towork and how we would be, what

(54:49):
would be we were allowed to do,has, has stained that way from
that first meeting in like thefirst week of July in 2018.

Alex (54:59):
Yeah.
What an incredible, studiosystem, exists there.
Now.
It's an, it boggles the mind.
I had, somebody hadsent me a link to the
chart, the studio chart.
Yes.
You know, and you just look at.
Like all the teams,all the games, the,
the brands, everything.
And it's, it's just,it's incredible.
It's crazy.

Aaron (55:18):
Yeah.

Alex (55:18):
Pillars, you mentioned Pillars and, and I was, I it
was that one of the titlesthat was actually canceled that
you then took to Kickstarter?
Is that how that worked or No?
No.
So, did I read that wrong?

Feargus (55:30):
No, no.
Yeah, yeah.
No.
So we were actually working,it was actually a game
called Storm Lands, andit was a third person.
Action RPG, thatwe were working on.
And, we did and wegot that all signed.
We got signed up with Microsoftand unfortunately just,
things kind of moved around.
We, we moved producers andit just sort of like, it, it,

(55:52):
while it had a huge amountof traction while we were
pitching it, it was one ofthose weird things of where we
were, we were going through thepitching and signing process
probably for about six monthsand everybody was on board and
everything was going great.
Then it got moved to a differentexecutive producer like a month
after we signed, and then itwas canceled three months later.
It was just weird.
Right.
You know, and I, you know,'cause they end up paying

(56:13):
for all of the pre-productionwe had done during the
six months basically.
'cause they're like, youknow, we're like, well, you're
gonna pay for the work we'vealready done, which they did.
And, and so yeah, itwas disappointing.
now on the flip side, youknow, as, as, as you brought
up pillars that gettingcanceled led to us, it was
when the studio got downto its lowest headcount.
God, I don't even know when.

(56:34):
I mean, I would say.
That was in, thatwas in, would've been
in 2012, early 2012.
and we were probably,we were probably had
more headcount in 2007.
Right?
So we were down to like 72people or something like that.
And, and, and, and you know,and Josh Swearer and Adam
Brenke and, and some peoplecame and just said, Hey, we

(56:55):
gotta do this Kickstarter thing.
And and we did right.
And we made.
You know, we made over, youknow, close, I forgot, 4.4
million or something on you.
You guys broke therecord half the time.
Yes.
At the time, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Alex (57:07):
yeah.
And so, and we, you know,that's just like, just
like the Kickstarter wedid Aaron for the podcast.
You remember that close?
Yeah.

Aaron (57:15):
When that Kickstarter came out, everyone was talking
about it in the studio.
I remember.

Feargus (57:20):
Yeah.
And we deliberate, I thinkthat's the important thing.
One day I was sitting at Diceand I was sort of quarantining
myself because I got pinkeye fricking in Vegas.
I'd never had pink Eye before.
So I'm sitting at this baraway from people and I, and
I hear the, and I'm supposedto, then I'm gonna do actually
a talk next, that I wasasked last minute to do.
And there's these two, thesetwo guy, this, Two guys talking

(57:41):
and they're like, yeah, I thinkwe're gonna go to Feargus thing.
And there's no way they'regonna get that game to make
that game for what they got.
That's ridiculous.
And like, ah, and it turnedout to be Jay Wilson,
who was running Diablo,Diablo three at the time.
And and so, and it's funnybecause from there, 'cause
I said to them, I looked at'em and said, Hey, and they
looked at me and they lookedat me like, oh, it's Feargus.
And I said, really?

(58:01):
I go, we actually canmake it for that amount.
I mean, we've gotten more moneysince the Kickstarter, right?
From people still buying.
And so we have set that, thebudget and we're gonna do it.
Okay, okay.
We believe you.
which was great in some waysbecause now, I mean, that's
what I never, I didn't knowJay before that point, and
now we're good friends.
So, but yeah, so it was, itwas, the, the, but that, that
wouldn't, the, the Kickstarterwould not have happened if we

(58:22):
had not had that cancellation.
And that led to us having ourown IP, getting to make pillars
two and so forth and so on.
So there's always this,you know, you don't know
what's, you know, somethingbad happens, but then it
opens up something amazing.

Alex (58:36):
Yeah.
So, so I mean, so you startedby, you know, basically
doing sequels of other,other, other people's, games.
Yep.
And you made the comment abouthow you guys aren't precious
about the, like, the content,it doesn't have to be yours.
You know, but, but thenyou did pillars fraternity
and it was very successful.
And it is, is your game.

(58:56):
Yep.
Like.
That must have beena little different.

Feargus (58:58):
It was, I mean, I, I, you know, and, and I, it's, I,
you know, I live, I think likeyou do in this world of, of,
I, like, half my brain is, iscreative and, and then the half
of my brain is business, right?
I got, like, I'm constantlydoing this stuff and like, like
the first thing I would sayis like, when we were able to
have our own ip, it meant thatnow our, our business was worth
more, you know, we own somethingand, and, and things like that.

(59:20):
But on the flip side, yeah,it was, it was, it was, it was
exciting because it was nowwe were gonna be able to make
a sequel of our own thing,which never had happened.
Like we kept on, like, it was,it, it got to be weird for us.
Like, we, like do people,like we feel, I feel we do
good work for people, butwe, it was, we never worked
with a publisher twice.

(59:41):
And, and, and it was,it was not un like.
Lucas Arts was happywith KOTOR two.
Right.
But they were not convincedwe could make KOTOR three.
Right.
And so, because it was gonnabe, have to be new technology
and I think it, it was gonnahave to be on the 360 and
they were worried about that.
you know, and we workedwith Atari and Neverwind
Nights two, but theydidn't wanna do Neverwind

(01:00:03):
Nights three at the time.
And so we kind of kepton Fallout New Vegas.
Like there wasn't, we kindof knew going in there wasn't
gonna be a Fallout New Vegas 2.
We know this.
That that was a, that was justa planets of alignment thing.
you know, I mean, we had hopedto do South Park two, right.
That, that ended up being,you know, fractured but whole.
But, but you know, that wasn'tthat, that, that we didn't even

(01:00:23):
like, 'cause the LA like one ofthe, like, at the time it never
didn't even sound like Matt andTrey wanted to make something
else, but I, you know, they kindof changed their mind, which, I
mean, they're super creative andwhen they, well, I think when
Trey has an idea that's whenlike, Hey, now let's do this.
Right.
And so, but yeah, that was aweird thing for us is we just,
we never really, we didn'tget to make any sequels of
any of our own things untilpillars of fraternity too.

Alex (01:00:44):
Very interesting.
how do you guys make an RPGLike you, you've made many, like
when you, if you're startinga new one, like, and I don't
mean like the 178 page version,but just philosophically,
like, so I, you know, Ithink where do you start?

Feargus (01:01:03):
We start with, obviously there has to be
a combination of somethingthat's interesting to us that
we feel will have space, youknow, with gamers, right?
Like that there's, there,there that, that it's that
that's not something that'sbeing overused right now.
Or it's like something thatwill resonate with them
and, and you know, auditWorlds is a good example.

(01:01:24):
We kinda, were bouncing around,do we wanna make a fantasy game?
Do we wanna, do we wannamake another spy again?
Do we don't dothis, wanna do that?
And now that was sort ofcame about also because Tim
Cain was working for us.
And then Leonard Boyarsky, thetwo guys, two of the three guys
that really created fallout.
Leonard was at Blizzard andhe kind of wanted to get out
of Blizzard and they wantedto do something together.
And that all came down to,so how, so that first thing

(01:01:47):
of, I, like I, it's even in,I just wrote a new cons, the
new template for concepts.
And you know, the first thingis I always say it's the
elevator pitch of, you know,it's, it's, and, and elevator
pitch for Outer Worlds wasFallout meets Firefly, right?
So now you could pickthat apart and say, well,
the game is nowhere.
Fallout meets Firefly, but ifyou kind of squint, there's

(01:02:07):
definitely aspects of it.
And, and so I think wherewe start, I think like
anybody really is that, canwe say it in a few words?
Like for real, you know, youknow, ground like grounded, not
an RPG, but it was basically,Hey, let's do a Honey, I
Shrunk the Kids' survival game.
Okay.
Get it.
Like, I can now picturethat right in a backyard

(01:02:29):
or, you know, and,and so we start there.
Then, 'cause we've madethese things for so long, we
just start asking ourselves,like, we probably go then
two, three steps down.
Like, okay, is it open world?
Is it, is it gonna be regions?
Is, are we talking about,a class-based system?
Are we talking about just a orjust an ability based system?

(01:02:50):
Like, and we start like,and what kind of, like,
what kind of story do wefeel like fits within that?
and like, what techare we gonna use?
I mean, we have a lotof our own tech that
just is for making RPGs.
But, and, and you know, and,and so we just, I, I dunno,
we, so we, we start thereand we just start keep, we
start at very, at the highof the, the triangle and then
we just start keeping down.

(01:03:11):
But we, I would say maybethe difference, I don't
actually, I don't know, I, wenever really talked to other
people about exactly how theyfigure it out themselves.
But we go to scope really fast.
We go to, what arewe talking about?
Is it gonna be four classes?
Is it gonna be 12 classes?
Are it gonna beelves and dwarves?
Like.
Do we, you know, because I mean,I mean 'cause it, 'cause it
then quickly has to get to, wellhow many people and what's the

(01:03:32):
budget and what, so we, I guesswhat it's, I think for us we do
this like top down, bottom upat the like simultaneous thing.
So of like, let's talkabout whether doors have
traps, like, or whatgalaxy is it gonna be in?
Right.
And so we're like doing thesame, we're doing that at
the, like simultaneously.

(01:03:53):
And then of course then westart having other people
like start, okay, you writemore of a story treatment and
what are the main characters?
And I think Chris Avellonealways did an amazing job of
like, he didn't go off andwrite 50 page story documents.
He, He would just, he would,he would, he really focused
on the characters, like onthe NPCs and the companions.

(01:04:15):
And he would, he would go and hewould like spend days in, go in,
in, in, in, searching the webfor the, for the, the, the actor
and the picture and then thevoice and, and then, and because
for him it was always, that iswhat would help people get it.
Like if I, if you can picturethe person and you can see
this concept art that I'vekind of smeared together, and

(01:04:37):
then I can give you like avocal track and say, and then
I can tell you their backstory.
Like, oh, I can, I,you know, I get it.
And then that there's,that's another puzzle
piece, and all of it.
And so, yeah.
So I mean, I don't know.
I don't, I don'teven that helps.
But I mean, that's kindof the, that's the,

Alex (01:04:52):
well, that the, the, there's, I mean that, that
the, the place where you guysstart at the high concept,
which is just really.
Understandable, I thinkis super, interesting
and important.
You know, that's likevision, vision setting.
Yes.
It's hard.
It's sort of, yeah.
and there's so muchabout what we do that is,
that's really complicated.
You know, and a big part of thetrick is making the things that

(01:05:14):
are complicated seems simple.
Yep.

Feargus (01:05:16):
Yeah.
And when you have a hundred cocomplex and when have 150 people
now working on a game, like,so we have like a hundred and
we have a lot of people workingon our worlds too right now.
And like you have to.
You have to have the, the,the core things really be
understand, under understandto be, they have to be
simple enough for everybodyto truly understand it.
And then you have to repeat,repeat, repeat, repeat,

(01:05:38):
repeat, and say it overand over and over again.
Like to the extent of like,you ask anybody on who was
on the Outer Worlds oneteam, you ask 'em, Hey,
what's our elevator pitch?
And they could all say,Fallout meets Firefly.
Right?
And I think that's the other,probably other thing, I,
we, we, as with ever studio,we're good at doing things
sometimes and not others.
But one of the things wetry to do with the teams is

(01:05:58):
like we re-pitch the team,the, the game to the team
every period of time, right?
So then we're like, okay, we'regonna talk through it again.
Like I'm literally, I'm gonnapitch you the game again that
you're working on, right?
And just to help people.
Like remember, oh yes.
That is the core of what we're,what we're trying to accomplish.

Alex (01:06:16):
Do your, do your guys like designs stay fairly consistent
from pre-pro to delivery?
Or do you, do they often takecrazy right turns as you go?

Feargus (01:06:25):
I would say fairly consistent.
and I think a part of thatreally has to do with, you
know, traditionally beingan independent, you know,
independent developer,we had one budget.
Yeah, we're gonna get a littlebit more money probably.
But like you just, you, youhave to like, stick with things
and that's what's gonna ship.
Like, we, we, you know, we'vehad some more recent games

(01:06:48):
sometimes where, because there'sjust a little less pressure.
We're not gonna get fired.
Like the, sorry,the, the like this.
We're not gonna get ourcontract canceled if we are
one day late on a milestoneor something like that.
So there's a little, thatpr a little less pressure.

Alex (01:07:00):
You, you have, you have some, some correct flexibility.
Yes.
Because you're part ofa larger organization.
It's got a reallybig slate and Yeah.

Feargus (01:07:07):
And so we had to work through that, right?
And we had to work through that.
Like, okay, that's nice,but that doesn't mean
we don't get crap done.
And it, you know, it led to alittle bit to this idea of like,
look, not every quest in an RPGis gonna be amazing, but people
kind of wanted to be preciousabout every single quest.
And so we got into thissort of this, this, this
point in time we were justkind of like circling and
circling and everyone'slike, well, we're iterating.
That's what we'resupposed to do.

(01:07:28):
Game game design is to iterate.
And I'm like, yeah, but like.
You can't iterate on everysingle thing, all the,
all the, all the time.
And so we're just, you gotta,I think I, I was one of those,
probably one of my poor moments.
I said, look, we'regonna ship back Quest.
Just deal with it.
Right?
No.
And, but of course we alwaysmake them better right at
the end and things like that.
But not everyone'sgonna be amazing.
The goal is to get the game doneright and get a great game done.

(01:07:50):
And if you, if you can'tmove forward because you're
constantly doing this.
Like, then you're notlearning, like, you're not,
like, you're not like gettingforward and moving forward.
And so, that was a big partof where we used to be and
we've gotten back to now,you know, I, they, people I
try to say, they, they'll allsay, if you ask, what is this?
What is one of the stupidthings that Feargus says?

(01:08:10):
I say, perfect is theenemy of the good a lot
because you can't perfect

Alex (01:08:15):
Benjamin Franklin.
Is that a BenjaminFranklin quote?

Feargus (01:08:17):
I don't, I I think it's, it probably is.
And, and I think thatthat's, and I just try to, I

Alex (01:08:21):
say I'm a, I'm a woodworker.
I say that all the time too.
Exactly.
So as long as I keep allthe fingers, yes, but I,
but I know what you mean.
You could, you could, youcould perfect yourself
to death, you know?
And it's like there's ahuge value to shipping.
It sounds like that's beenpart of the culture since the
beginning is get it, let's getit done, let's get it done.

(01:08:41):
yeah.
And I love that.
awesome.
Feargus, we've, we'vekept you a little long.
Sounds good.
I just, one, one,I have one more.
Thing I'm curious about.
Sure.
Which is like the wor the worldin which we are living in today.
Is very different than theworld in which you and I
got into this industry.
Yes.

(01:09:01):
Many years ago.
there are a lot of things thatare, amazing and there's a lot
of things that are challenging.
And as you thinkabout the next act.
For you, you know, like,what are, what are you
really excited about?
Like what, like, I, that'sthe po that's the positive
version of that question.

Feargus (01:09:20):
No, that's the po So, so the thing is, is
'cause I, I, I, I, I, I'mlaughing because it's, it's
just, it's making more RPGs.
And so like, and, and, andit sounds so dumb, but like,
like it really is like, andit, and it's like, and it's
thinking about how we do that.
Like it's how.
How do we make this person feellike they're more in this world?

(01:09:41):
How do we make thisworld feel more alive?
How do we feel likethey have more agency?
How do we make them feellike, they're the king or
the devil, or whatever itis that we're trying to do?
How do we make it like justthe people in this world
feel more natural and areinteracting more naturally and,
you know, and, and, you know,and, and all these things.
And, and I, that's.
I, that's where I'mon all the time.

(01:10:03):
Like, that's where we are.
It's like, how do we do this?
Because it's, I guess, Ithink that's, if there's
anything I could want, wouldever wanna give advice to
younger game developers isto say, this is a career.
It is not this game.
Right.
And that doesn't mean youshouldn't work hard on what
you're doing right now, butyou're gonna get to make
another game and anothergame and another game.

(01:10:24):
And so just look at this, lookat this as a path, and this
is just one step on that path.
And then, and then get excitedabout what that next, that
next thing is gonna be.
And that's what I do.
I mean, I mean, it's, it, it,it's hard to do this, this job
at our level for as long asa lot of us have done it, to
not, have to have that positiveview and think of it that way.

Alex (01:10:45):
It's taken me a long time to come to that POV
Feargus, but it's, I thinkit's absolutely true.
It's a long game.
It's, it is a career.
You're gonna have wins,you're gonna have misses.
And it, you can't live or die onthe one thing that you're doing
today, a hundred percent not.
but you, you know, you alwaysgotta do your absolutely
best to try to try to findthe, the, the, the fun,

(01:11:06):
the amazing, all that.
But, always be learning.
that's, I thinkthat's great advice.
Cool.
Do you, do you think AI isgonna be, you're talking about.
Like building worlds.
And believable charactersand MPCs and stuff.
are you thinkingabout AI context?

Feargus (01:11:22):
Yeah, so I listened to, the AI Daily Breakdown, I think
is the name of the podcast.
I listen to it, it's everyday, it's every four or five
days a week, and I probablylisten to it two or three days.
And like the one this morningwas about, so Google released
Genie three, which is whereit'll actually, you can type
words and it will create aworld, a 3D world in essence,

(01:11:43):
that you can walk around withand it will stay consistent.
For like two minutes.
In other words, like the treethat you look at, if you turn
away and look back at thetree, it will be the tree that
was there before and it's,and it does it at like seven
20 p or something like that.
So I do think that that is, I dothink that's super interesting.

(01:12:03):
I think I like to use, I, we'vebeen looking at a lot with AI
is just using it for validation.
So obviously when we'regoing from creating areas and
characters and stuff, likethere's, there's so many things
we wanna accomplish with themand they're, and, and, and we
have all these sort of like,design things we wanna do.
Like, well, let's useAI to verify all this.
You know, like, so are weactually, we say we want this

(01:12:24):
level of reactivity across thegame with all these characters.
Hey, I look at allour design documents.
Did we actually say thatwithout, you know, someone,
me or someone else having tolike go line by line by line
by line in every single thing.
I get where I get I get whereI get into, I, I, I don't.
I feel like, of course I cango into chat GPT or, or, or

(01:12:46):
any of the other ones and Ican go, Hey, write me a, I
dunno, write me a, a 3000 wordsci-fi adventure about, you
know, burger flipping androids.
Right.
and it can do it, and it can doit kind of competently, right?
And it, and it's not that it'suninteresting, but I just think
I still, I'm a big believerthat, that the creativity is

(01:13:07):
gonna come from people, right.
And they're the ones who have towrite that, that, that prompt.
They are the ones thatlike, are going to put
things together that, thatare just different, right?
And, and so, and not the AI,not that the AI is closer to
people, then of course machinelearning was wherever long ago.
but I don't know.
I just, that's, I I look atit as a helper in the end.

(01:13:28):
That's, that's what it's,and are we gonna use it
for more and more things?
Of course.
But it is alwaysgonna be a tool.
You know?
Yeah.
It's like Photoshop, I thinkis the, that's the, that's
the words from the esteemedMatt Booty the other day.
but yeah, so it's, it's,it's like it's, it is a tool.
Right.
And, and a lot of, when I listento a lot of people that are kind
of in AI every day, that's kindof how they're looking at it to.

Aaron (01:13:48):
Until they start making AI that are CEOs.

Alex (01:13:51):
Hey, most, most CEOs are, most, most CEOs are tools.
Anyway, I said it.
I said, and you said it.
You said, said it.
Not Phil, though.
He's awesome.
all right.
very good.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Thank you so much forspending an afternoon with us.
It was so great to get achance to, to chat again

(01:14:13):
after so, so many years.
And you're down here?
I'm in SoCal.
Hang out.

Feargus (01:14:17):
Oh, I didn't know that.
Absolutely.
Anytime.

Aaron (01:14:20):
Y'all should play D&D together.

Alex (01:14:22):
Yeah.
All right.
Cheers.
We shall see you around.

Feargus (01:14:26):
Thank you.

Aaron (01:14:26):
Cheers, Feargus.
Nice meeting- to meet you.

Feargus (01:14:27):
Thanks a lot.

Alex (01:14:29):
One thing that he said, which I love, was
the quote, perfect isthe enemy of the good.
And I was trying to remember whoit came from and I was wrong.
I thought it was a BenjaminFranklin quote, but it
comes from Voltaire.
And I think I knew that becauseI had looked it up at one point.

Aaron (01:14:47):
I'm saying that today, I'm, I'm not lying.

Alex (01:14:50):
You have it all queued up.

Aaron (01:14:51):
We're we're working on something.
And it's like the details,guys, come on, let's just
get it in the engine.
There's like littledetail, you know, you know
what I'm talking about.
That little, like, you get stuckon the details and then it,
you get to like, it actuallyfunctioning and you start to
say like, oh wow, all thatstuff didn't really matter.
Like all that.
Like, it's like we spentfour hours on that one

(01:15:12):
little thing and it's like,you don't even see it.

Alex (01:15:14):
It's a tough, it is kind of a tough one because
the, you know, devil's in thedetails is maybe the opposite.
And they're both sort of true.
You know?

Aaron (01:15:23):
Yeah.
But there's important details.
There's like, that's right.
There's like nuance and thenthere's, it's a difference
between nuance and then

Alex (01:15:31):
I, you know, I have found that that is a, that's
a real, it's a real skill.
Knowing when to putyour pencil down.

Aaron (01:15:39):
Yeah.
When to step away is good.

Alex (01:15:41):
Good.
When is it good enough?
yeah.
And if you chase perfection,you will almost never catch it.
But it was, it was greatgetting a chance to, to chat
with, Feargus another studiohead, part of the Xbox Studio
system, which continues to justget more and more impressive.

(01:16:01):
Kind of interesting tosee what's gonna happen.
What do you think's gonna happenin the next couple of years,
like Switch to PlayStationseems to have kind of won,
won this console, or again,game pass, like Steam, iOS.

Aaron (01:16:15):
I think there's too many games right now.

Alex (01:16:17):
Platform games.

Aaron (01:16:18):
Is the first thing.
Yeah, there's too many games.
There's an incrediblylarge library of games
that are relevant.
So like when we, like, ifyou go back and you think
to like, let's say SuperNintendo, maybe, maybe even
getting into the N64 PS 1.
A lot of the older gamesweren't really relevant.

(01:16:39):
Like people weren't, thereweren't too many people hunting
older games like there are now.
I guess what I'm trying to sayis that if you come into, if
you're new, like if you're ayoung person and you're getting
into games now, or you're anold person, it doesn't matter.
You don't need toget the newest game.
That's what I'm saying.
So like back in the day, itwas like you have to get the
games that come out in November.
Like you have to, thoseare the three best games.

(01:17:01):
All the big, the big gigstudios had at least one
mega hit that was coming out.
And it was alwaysa really good game.
I you're saying?

Alex (01:17:07):
Yes.
Like the, the, the, the relevantaspects of gameography were
the games that we're releasingin the holiday season.
Yeah.
'cause that's where all theeffort was poured into and Yeah.
Yeah.

Aaron (01:17:17):
And then that game would last you a year, so you could
get Halo and then multiplayer

Alex (01:17:21):
Last year games were less relevant now.
Yeah.
Because they were older.
Yes.
And now it doesn'treally work that way.
You're right.

Aaron (01:17:28):
Yeah.
Now you don't, so now youcan, you can get a Steam
library or, or Game Passif you get game pass.
That's a really goodexample actually.
There's like, there's, I,there's at least 50 games
on there that are, that arecompletely relevant to the
kind of gameplay you like.
At least 50.
You know, Diablo 3 is on there.
That's four, 5,000hours of gameplay.

(01:17:51):
Oblivion is on there.
There's like Doom.
There's all these games thatyou, you know, and they're
all, they all look good.
The graphics aregood, they're fun.
They work on mid,mid, low level PCs.
You don't need like the next,you don't, you don't even
need a console, you know?
So I, I think it's, I think thefuture is something, something

(01:18:13):
like Game Pass, you know,where there's just like, like
Netflix, there's a library.
You pay a monthly fee and itdoesn't matter if you don't,
if you get the latest orgreatest or not, you know?
Because Outer Worlds 2, hisgame, his new game is gonna
be on Game Pass, I thinklike Outer Worlds 1 is on
there, and that's a, that'sanother 80, 40 hour game.

(01:18:34):
40 hours I think is whatit is for the first one.
And it's a good game.

Alex (01:18:37):
40,000.
40,000 hours.

Aaron (01:18:39):
40.

Alex (01:18:40):
Alright.
Well thank you for, joiningus once again this week.
Hope you enjoyed ourconversation with Feargus.

Aaron (01:18:49):
I did.

Alex (01:18:50):
I did too.
And we shall see you next time.

Aaron (01:18:53):
See you next week everybody.
Thank you for listening tothe Fourth Curtain Podcast.
Visit us@thefourthcurtain.com tofind our monthly newsletter and
support the show via Patreon.
The Fourth CurtainPodcast is a production
of Fourth Curtain Media.
Lovingly edited by Brian Hensleyof Noise Floor Sound Solutions.
Video production bySarkis Grigorian.

(01:19:14):
Production support by KimyaTaheri, with Community
Management by Doug Zartman andArt Production by Paul Russel.
Thanks again for listening.

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