Gaming: Xbox/Playstation
Game On: Innovating the Future of Gaming
In this episode of unNatural Selection, we sit down with Yohan Sengamalay, a leader behind the development of legendary gaming platforms like Xbox and PlayStation. Yohan shares his journey through the evolution of the gaming industry, offering an insider’s perspective on how competition and innovation drive success in entertainment.
We’ll explore the strategic thinking behind designing games that captivate millions, how the gaming landscape has transformed over the decades, and what the future holds for game developers in a hyper-competitive market.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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Today we're talking to Yohan Sengamalay.
His career spans 3 decades as a leader in innovation in the gaming industry for some of the world's top companies including Xbox, Amazon, Sony and Activision.
He started his gaming career at Microsoft where he held product and marketing roles for the Xbox gaming division.
1:20
He led the media strategy for All in House studios, building award-winning programs for franchises like Halo, Forza Motorsports and Gears of War.
His love technology led him to Amazon where he helped positions managing partnerships for Amazon Studios, leading the advertising product team for the launch of the Fire TV, and building the gaming strategy for Amazon's Alexa voice service with companies that span the game landscape like Hasbro boarding games, PlayStation video games, and Paizo tabletop role-playing games.
1:52
A father of three, Johan currently resides in Seattle where he spends his downtime getting schooled at Rocket League by his eldest son, being humbled atop golf by his middle son, and immerse in Minecraft worlds built by his youngest daughter.
Welcome, Johan, It's great to have you here.
2:08
Speaker 1
Thank you, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
2:11
Speaker 2
So that's, you know, it's extraordinary and clearly you're like deep in the, the gaming world.
2:17
What is the entertainment business?
And, and so I, I really look forward to learning about this industry, but just for a little bit of context for, for myself and for anybody listening, what business are you in?
Obviously gaming, but at a high level like what, what business is this and and what's your role within that?
2:35
Speaker 1
Yeah.
So last key to the studio that I'm at is, is, I mean, we're in the entertainment business, right?
Our our primary function is to build content that entertains audiences.
And my team, it's a small group, it's a, it's a ten person studio Co founded by myself and, and a couple of other industry veterans that I've worked with for the better part of 20 years.
2:57
Our, our, our focus was really on a, on a subset of gaming because gaming has become so huge as an industry.
It's really focused on, on strategy.
It's it's where we sort of cut our teeth early in our careers.
And it's an opportunity kind of for us to come back, get back to our roots to a degree with last keep, but also to try something new as, as the industry has changed so much and and has grown.
3:19
Yeah.
So, so it wasn't a simple answer to your question because I think you can take it from a few different angles, but but yeah, we, we make video games.
3:27
How Video Games Influenced You
I love that.
And you mentioned how the industry's evolved so quickly just within our lifetimes.
It's amazing how much stuff has evolved just within our lifetimes.
But I mean, I'm old enough to remember Atari, the Commodore 64, those early versions of video games that, you know, I was too young to own.
3:44
Or though Atari.
I do recall how it has evolved from the early days of Atari and Pong to Nintendo all the way through some of the three-dimensional video games that started popping up in the 80s to where it is right now, and I've lost track since then.
4:00
But how much did those early years influence you as a kid?
4:07
Speaker 1
I would say, you know, gaming has always been a part of my life, video games from an early age to your point, I, I'm old enough as well to remember the Atari, the back tracks and sitting in my basement with my brother playing the the first, you know, the first home consoles was, was life changing.
4:23
It was, it was incredible.
It was, you know, one of those things as a, as a pretty introverted little kid, I, it was not only a gateway to new worlds, but it was also social.
It was also social, as crazy as that is to say.
My friends would come over and we would all sit around and we would, you know, play games and take turns because you couldn't play multiplayer back in those days.
4:44
And we'd sit on our couch and play them.
And so it was a way to bring people into your world as well.
And so, yeah, I would say it's always been a part of my life.
It is an industry like a lot of industries, as you said, we, we've had that, we've had the opportunity because it's, it's tied to technology, because we've, we've been a part of this incredible growth in technology over the last 20-30 years.
5:06
It's an industry, it's always been tied to latest technology, right.
And we, we, we would always talk about this at Microsoft and the idea that, that gaming, whenever there's a new sort of major piece of technology that takes hold with consumers, gaming is there in the forefront of either being a part of that driving that, that technology or and innovating on top of that, that, that technology, you know, from, from the Internet to mobile phones to virtual reality, so many of those new technologies to voice the, I got to, I got to work on it at, at, at at Amazon.
5:38
Excuse me.
There's so many different ways that gaming just naturally finds its way into those, those new technologies.
It it, it capitalizes on trends.
And so that's allows it to grow and change and create new play patterns and bring in new audiences.
5:54
Speaker 2
Yeah, I used to play a lot of video games growing up as well.
And I don't know how much of an impact that had into me becoming a computer scientist.
And, and I know we talked about you have three kids, right?
6:03
The Impact of Video Games on Children
You know, I've got two kids as well.
And, and, and you hear about the downsides of gaming and the impact they can have in kids.
And I'm sure there is truth to that, but I can't help but think of my experiences gaming when I was a kid.
You know, I, I definitely felt the addiction, you know, I'd be at school thinking about the game that I was going to play when I went home, right?
6:22
But that said, looking back, I remember the the concepts around strategy that I learned from that it, it helped me developed a comfort around the electronics and a dexterity to be able to play with those fine motor movements and coordinate what I'm doing with my fingers with what's happening on the screen, be able to virtualize some of those concepts as well.
6:43
And then it also helped me think through kind of storytelling.
You know, I remember playing the early versions of Zelda and thinking about the stories that went behind all these video games that I played and so many times and very indirect ways, things that I do today kind of link back to what I learned just by playing these fantasy video games 30-40 years ago.
7:05
So, so I think there's definitely a benefit to their two children.
Obviously to extremes, every anything is bad.
7:10
The Influence of Video Games on Journalists
But you mentioned like you're, you know, you wanted to be a journalist.
And I wonder to what extent it was precipitated by the storytelling that you saw in the video games that you were playing as a kid.
7:20
Speaker 1
I I think that you, you've hit the nail on the head and just quickly you made, you made a comment about, you know, how games, you know, build dexterity, those sorts of things.
I have, I have a dear friend who is a heart surgeon and he plays video games to keep kind of sharp when it comes to, you know, you're talking about precise movements, things that, you know, obviously are much, more, much more impactful than than playing a game.
7:43
But he, he uses that as a way to, to keep, I would, I would say current and, and, and able to do his job.
And, and so, yeah, I, I think to your question about, about storytelling, absolutely.
I think narrative and, and stories and building worlds and, and, and delivering it to people in a way that they can consume.
8:01
I think that's the really valuable piece of it, understanding how people consume content and you know what makes them excited about something.
Those are those are important pieces of journalism.
They're important pieces of being of an author and certainly of building a world in, in video games and, and and other and, and in entertainment as well.
8:21
So yeah, absolutely.
8:22
Speaker 2
That's cool.
So, so now if we project forward a little bit, you know, you ended up at Microsoft and then eventually Amazon and you participate in all these incredible platforms that define the gaming industry today.
8:33
The Gaming Industry
What were those cultures like?
I would imagine, I would imagine the pace of innovation right now in video games is like incredibly fast, but it probably has always felt fast.
It's just increasing.
So I would imagine that was a very fast-paced, innovative environment to be like, how do these especially big companies, I mean, Microsoft, you know, they're not small companies, How do they foster a space of creativity and psychological safety to be able to be creative and create these things, right?
9:07
Because again, you know, you're creating a video game.
It's not just throwing pixels on a board.
It's like storytelling.
Its creativity, its design.
You need a space where you're free to be able to explore these things in ways that are also very experimental, because you don't know what's going to work.
9:25
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's, it's, it's not an easy answer or I would say every, every company has done it differently.
And I I would say they've also evolved over time.
When I was at Microsoft in the late aughts, it was the Xbox 360 generation.
9:44
So 2 1/2 console generations ago, Xbox was very much a start up within Microsoft.
It was a bunch of I'm being reductive here, so please, fellow colleagues, don't get angry at me, but with a bunch of folks who were just hungry to build something great.
10:05
And but we had the backing of Microsoft Office and and Windows billions of dollars.
So honestly, it was actually a little bit of an artificial safety net to be able to innovate.
And there were some incredible franchises and games we were able to make because we didn't have to worry about running out of money within recent right.
10:25
He couldn't just spend on everything, But it was it was a lot safer in that way because of the fact that we had a huge multi billion dollar company behind us who wanted innovation, who wanted a consumer product.
10:41
Honestly, Microsoft at that point that Xbox was the was the the tip of the spear for their consumer story, right?
It was before surface, it was before a number of other of their consumer facing products.
And so they wanted this to be something they could put forth and, and, and could get people excited and build brand loyalty and those sorts of things.
11:02
And so I would say Microsoft was very much a Unicorn in that way.
And it was awesome.
It was wonderful to be able to be a part of that because you were able to see such brilliant creative people in a setting where they were given the freedom to, to, quite frankly, to create great stories.
11:22
And you look at some of those franchises that came out during that generation.
I meant you mentioned them in the, in the bio, you know, the Halos of the world, the, the Forza Motorsports, Gears of War, There's so many great now what I would say are entertainment franchises.
11:38
They're more than just video games now that came from that time because of the fact that Microsoft created that, that really amazing sort of environment to be able to, to, to innovate Amazon.
Similarly.
It was when I moved to Amazon, it was the beginning of their game studio and their game sort of a strategy they had.
11:58
They had not been, besides being a platform for others to build games on, like their Fire tablets, they had not created their own content.
And so it was similar.
Amazon had a different approach, which is very much sort of almost start up ish start up adjacent in that Amazon had a culture of test and learn fail quickly, right?
12:18
Whereas Microsoft's was much more, let's take our time and build something we love.
Amazon's was get something out there, try it, see what the customer says, because everything is about the customer and quickly iterate, quickly iterate.
And, and I loved that.
That to me was fantastic because one of the the negatives or one of the things that I, I found difficult about Microsoft in that respect was it could take years, could be four or five years.
12:42
You need to get something to market at Amazon.
It was much faster.
So you saw two huge multi billion dollar companies with very different approaches to how you you bring things to market, how you test and learn.
Yeah.
So it was a great, it was a great experience for me because I got to do that from the comfort of a of a huge company.
13:03
Learn from industry veterans.
And then when I went to do it myself, I kind of took the things that I liked about each of those and, and, and, and tried to bring, that's what we do, right?
13:12
How to build a successful startup
We, we learn from others.
We, we learn from experience.
We learn from failure more than anything.
And then we, you know, we try to apply that if we're, if we're, if we're smart about it.
And that's, and that's how I've kind of, it's, it's sort of the, the teaching and the learnings that I try to bring to, to a small studio.
13:27
Speaker 2
The way that you described your experience at Microsoft and Amazon is from an outsider.
It's what the impression that I've gotten about them as companies in the fields where I do interact with them, whether it be office, cloud and so on, like they, they do have a different approach.
13:42
It works for both of them.
They're both obviously incredibly successful companies, but it goes to show the psychology, the strategy, the culture behind these things.
And it's interesting to see how obviously they both work.
But then for you to take all of that into your experience nowadays.
13:58
You, you mentioned something earlier on about gaming being at the forefront of these things, whether being participating in the evolution or even leading in some of these technologies.
14:07
How gaming has evolved over the last 30 years
And, and it's obviously made huge leaps over the last 30 or 40 years since it kind of started back with Pong and all these other platforms.
How have you seen the the field evolve over the last since you've been in it professionally over the last three decades?
14:27
What would have been like the big inflection points, everything.
It's like somehow of a sudden, like things are progressing, they're evolving at a steady clip and then boom, something happens.
You're like, wow, that's a whole event change that now unlocks a whole new way of doing business potentially.
14:43
Like in computer science has been like cloud and it's been like the Internet, obviously in the browsers.
And then before you knew it, they were mobile.
And then now you have AI, which we'll get to in a second.
How has gaming evolved over the last three decades?
14:58
Speaker 1
Well, I think you, you touched on a number of the major sort of milestones just right there.
I think they're similar, You know, the growth of the Internet.
I think it it, it converted what we used what I talked about before, you know, playing a game with friends in your living room to playing with anyone anywhere, mobile phones.
15:17
Obviously, it brought a not only did it bring a new form factor to playing games, you could take games with you anywhere you go.
It also brought in billions of new gamers, people who had always seen gaming as not to be super reductive.
15:33
The Kittens Basement playing a video game was the sort of that was the stereotypical image of a gamer.
Now it's everyone.
Now it was everyone.
Anyone could play, you know, Clash Royale or, or you know, gosh, I'm going to, I'm going to mess this up.
Everyone's going to get mad at me for the mobile games, Brawl stars and these games that are much more approachable.
15:53
As I said, they're in your pocket.
So you're sitting at the gate waiting for your flight.
You could, you could play solitaire for 5-10 minutes, right?
It, it, it made the game industry so much different and there were different business structures that came from that, right?
16:09
The the free to play model completely changed the way the industry has has kind of progressed.
Right up until that point, it was very much a premium product business.
Yes, there were post launch downloadable content packs you could buy and things like that, but very much you paid for the game you wanted to play on the day it came out or the day you bought it and that was it.
16:32
And now you had created these products that millions, 10s, hundreds of millions of people could play for free.
And then they would transact, oh, I want to buy this, I want to buy that.
And they would, and it created new play patterns.
I've, I've mentioned that before.
It also the, the, you know, the, the notion you mentioned about kind of addiction, it also created some, some unnatural, unhealthy ways to engage with content, right?
16:55
Where we want you to come back, We want to engagement is the key.
So bringing you back is my #1 incentive as a game developer, if I'm, if I have a game like that.
And so how do I make you feel bad about not being there, right?
And we, we talked about this a lot in, in our games is how do we make it so that you can come at your own pace?
17:13
But we still need to make money.
We still need to make money as a game studio.
So it's an interesting balance, but so mobile was huge tectonic shift.
And then there was the pandemic.
I think the pandemic is another one that we're still kind of figuring out our way from, you know, depending upon where you were and how you, how you, you know, the laws and the rules of, of where you were, you were, you were stuck at home for at least a few months.
17:36
If not some people were at home for over a year and cut off from their friends, cut off from their loved ones.
So interacting over the Internet and playing games together was a, a way to bring people together.
And you saw a, a shift from, you know, I play a game with you and it's got a very specific, specific focus.
17:57
Let's say we're playing a Co-op, you know, strategy game together.
We have our, we have our world.
We know what we're supposed to do.
There were these games that came out that were not just hanging out and spending time together.
You didn't have a purpose.
You didn't have to go defeat the enemy.
18:13
Animal Crossing from Nintendo was a great example of that.
Perfectly timed, if you could say So what they call a cozy game now, which was, I don't wanna stress, I don't wanna have this, you know, this goal that is bearing down on me.
18:28
And I have a time limit to get to it.
I just want to hang out on my island and, and plant some flowers.
And, and it did.
It worked really, really well.
And, and I think the industry grew, as you can imagine, way faster than anyone expected because all of a sudden everyone was home and was spending money on nothing but that.
18:45
And again, I'm oversimplifying, but you get my point.
And then everyone started to get out and the world started to get back to, you know, to to the normal balance of things and the games industry kind of panicked.
And that's where we are right now, which is pulling back from a lot of the the investments that were made, thinking that it was going to continue on this incredible trajectory.
19:08
And it's not anymore.
It's now getting back to it's normalizing.
I guess it's the right is the right way to say that.
And so where do people want to spend their time?
They're still playing games.
They're still playing games at record numbers, but it's changing.
And, and so I'm, I'm going on and on and on.
But I think those are the key ones, at least in the last 1015 years, those key moments that have not only, I would say, driven innovation, but also driven the industry to grow, mature and actually have had to figure out risk for the first time, right?
19:36
Figure out how to manage actually a downturn in engagement in certain, on certain platforms.
And you know, there was so much investment after, during COVID and, and right after, because it was like, hey, people are going to spend all their time doing this.
Let's just throw more content at them.
19:52
And quickly we're finding that there's only so much time in the day that you have for all of your entertainment, right?
And so you, you don't, you aren't sitting at home for 12/13/16 hours a day just consuming TV shows, movies, video games.
20:07
So now you have two hours, an hour maybe?
And all of those things, a book like, how am I going to get some of that time from you as a game studio?
20:15
Speaker 2
That's interesting.
Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that.
You know, kind of like the the huge swell of attention that went towards gaming because of COVID.
I could definitely see that now thinking through what that looks like in a post COVID world where people are not diversifying their attention span and and how how you're competing with Netflix.
20:36
It's not just other games.
You're competing with what other people, you know, with a bicycle ride, right?
How do you get people's attention there?
Now we're here and we talked about where technology has gotten gaming and where gaming has gotten technology.
20:48
Where does the gaming world look in 5 years?
Where do you see the gaming world kind of evolving over the next five years or so?
20:53
Speaker 1
I think, I think what you're going to see, you know, I think we saw it.
We're seeing 2 extremes, 2 ends of the spectrum.
We saw the investment and the, the incredible excitement about the growth of the industry during that, that COVID, the COVID years.
We're seeing a dramatic pull back now where a lot of investors, especially those who are not historically in this industry, they, they, they invested because it was a great investment opportunity pulling back quickly.
21:21
And almost as you can imagine, any of these things pulling back sharply, dramatically, don't want anything to do with it, don't want to touch it.
It's too much risk.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle and I think you'll start to see it normalize somewhere over the next few years, hopefully sooner rather than later.
21:37
Because I know a lot of people aren't aren't making games right now.
They're scared to make a game that is going to fail.
And so I think you'll start to see that changing in the next two to three years.
I would say even starting this year, but certainly as we get 3-4, five years out, it'll become more of a steady state.
21:56
Hey, we know where the industry is going.
We know what people are playing and we're not going to just sort of cut everything off.
This is this is a really interesting time for games because the industry has matured as we've talked about, it's also matured.
I'm going to use a word, I'm not sure it's the right one, but I think it's the right one for the moment.
22:13
Artificially, there's these things that have happened that have pushed it into certain places faster than I think it was ready.
And we talk a lot about what it takes to be successful when you launch a game now versus before.
Everything was new before, so everything was an innovation.
22:30
Everything was a new type of game.
I remember sitting in the Babbages or The Game Stops when I was a kid and every game on the shelf was something different.
It's not that way anymore.
And so I think you mentioned it.
Some of it is timing and messaging and and getting the right audience to to pay attention.
22:48
There are games that launch now.
Historically, if you launch a game and it didn't do well in the first month or two, it was never going to be good.
It was never going to, it was never going to be successful.
Pardon me.
Now you see games that launch and they have a slow ramp up because a, the technology allows you to do that, but also because people can then be a word of mouth and other mechanisms get people to come play with them.
23:12
And all of a sudden, 345 years later, they're doing incredibly well.
So it's an interesting time when you look at where we are right now to where we'll be in five years, I think optimistically, I think the, the industry will have will have kind of found its footing again.
23:28
It's it's an unstable footing right now just because of the fact that there's been so much pull back.
I also think that you look at technology and you referenced it technology like AI, there's, there's other, I would say other innovations over the past few years.
23:44
Web 3 was one that that kind of popped up for a period of time.
The games industry was really pulled in as like, what are you going to do with this?
Isn't this incredible?
And kind of pulled back and said no, no, no, there's no great consumer benefit here.
I think AI is kind of in that same boat right now, which is it's going to be great for, you know, for cutting costs and other things like that.
24:08
But is it good for the art form of gaming?
Is it good for consumers?
Because I think what you will find is unless AI can give you a tangible, real, tangible customer benefit, it's going to be perceived negatively in the community.
24:23
Gaming is very much a tight knit community.
And so those are the sorts of things that I think we'll see flesh out over the course of the next few years.
I have my own personal opinions on things like that.
And, and, you know, I see AI as a, as a tool, a way to, to create things, to makes jobs easier.
24:41
I don't think it's a way to remove, I would say, huge swaths of, of costs from game development the way that I think a lot of people are hoping.
But it definitely will play a part in where we are in five years.
24:55
Speaker 2
And it's tough to tell the economics of video gaming, right?
Because on the one hand, I could see how much investment goes into making a Halo.
But at the same time, in the other extreme, you have kids in high school making video games with, you know, the technology's been democratized.
So you can make apps pretty simply.
25:12
And so it's like these massive extremes.
And I'm sure stuff in the middle, which is you can spend billions on a Halo and you can spend like, you know, 500 bucks and build an app and just throw it out there and see what happens.
And and then with, you know, AI, yeah, sure, you could spend, you know, tons of money building your own LLM that's going to do all kinds of wondrous things and design and build a video game for you.
25:34
But where I see it also potentially playing in is the storytelling part.
We talked about video games and there was that that fascinating story component to it.
And back when I was playing video games, initially the story usually split in very limited ways.
25:50
You know, it's like at this fork, you have one of two choices.
You go left, you go right, and then your story evolves from there.
But it's almost always at this binary step.
And then games started becoming much more complex.
But now you play Zelda and you can go in all kinds of different directions, but still the board is fixed and the bad guys are fixed.
26:07
And then it starts evolving more where you now Minecraft build your own worlds.
So to me, that storytelling component and the flexibility now becomes almost limitless with an AI agent that can help Foster and build that for you depending on which direction you go.
26:23
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
And, and, and I mean, we could, we could sit here and talk about AI for, for well, well over the time we have there.
There's so many things, even just building a relationship with a character in the game that knows what you've done and knows the decisions you've made.
You could even think beyond this amount getting into crazy theoretical land, but you know where it knows what you did in other games and can advise you based on that.
26:48
So there are absolutely incredibly powerful ways that AI can benefit you, especially, as you said, in narrative and also in guidance, you know, in helping you through games.
You know, a lot of games are, are quite honestly challenging by design.
27:04
And some people, you know, we talk about play patterns, don't have the time to devote, you know, 10 hours to, to memorizing the, the, the Wikipedia.
That is all the rules and all the options.
How do you guide someone through those games?
AI can absolutely be a powerful tool for that.
27:20
You still get enjoyment out of playing and out of experiencing that universe.
Maybe you aren't, you know, the, the the Grognardi.
I'm going to learn everything about this game person and but you want to be able to engage with it.
So I think there's numerous ways that AI will be unlocked in gaming.
27:37
I think those are the pieces that get me excited about technology like that because it's, it's additive, it's secretive to what we're building, the universe we're building.
You talked about, you know, build the universe and, and bring people in and how do you get them to, to feel at home there?
And I think they're those are ways that that it can be used.
27:53
Speaker 2
Yeah.
And yeah, like you said, I mean, we could go on forever on all the speculation of how AI is going to change the industry and everything else in technology for that matter.
And, you know, and we've talked about these leaps that the technology in the industries had, you know, going from a very pixelated environment to something that's more refined to a storyline that evolves to, you know, I remember certain things as a kid remembering back when video games made leaps like all of a sudden became 3D.
28:26
You know, it's like, wow, this is like 3 dimensional.
And that was amazing.
And then eventually Quake came around.
It was so interactive and so amazing and I remember witnessing the whole Pokémon effect with virtual reality and how that affected the world, right.
And so all these things are like these massive inflection points.
28:43
And now obviously AI at the at the, you know, the very beginning of influencing that.
And, and all of this is obviously brought an industry that's matured as well.
28:54
How the Gamer Has Changed
How have you seen?
How has the gamer, like the actual gamer changed in that time?
Do you see a different perception or how you market, how you story tell, what's your perception on the gamer?
And it's a the gamer's evolution over the last couple of decades.
29:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, their expectations have changed and, and, and evolved and obviously a maturing industry, there have been there's been fragmentation into different communities sort of gamers, right.
And so as you, as you're asking that question, I thought of a quote, and I don't know if I can attribute this to him, but one of my good friends who, who was, who led a, a, a pretty big game studio in Finland, always use this one quote that said, in, in the games business, you need to forget everything you've learned every five years.
29:38
And I obviously it's hyperbolic, but it talks about change and it talks about growth, right?
It talks about, hey, if, if we sit as the old man on the lawn, get off my lawn forever, we are never going to stay with the industry.
And, and so you need to have a, a level of curiosity.
You have to also have a level of quite frankly, introspection to be able to to listen and learn from the community.
29:58
And I think the community is, as you said, has evolved a lot during that time as well.
It is now when you talk about bringing a game to market, it's, it's amazing how if you say my game is X and you say what category it's in, it will change the expectations immediately of the people playing it.
30:21
As opposed to if you say it's another type of game, even if it's the same game, because there's expectation.
There's oh, you said you make strategy games.
I expect, I expect critical thinking.
I expect problem solving.
I expect to be able to do some sort of resource management.
I'm getting into the weeds here, but there's all of that.
30:38
And then if you don't provide that, even if you've given what you think is a strategy game to that customer, their expectation hasn't been met.
And so I think that level of growth, maturity, and also expectation setting and being able to as a game developer provide, in all honesty, messaging is and storytelling is so important, the right set, the right expectations with the community.
31:03
The other piece of it is the community believes, and rightly so, that they are a part of the process.
Do not just give me a game at the end of this for the most part and tell me this is your game.
I want to be a part of you making this game.
And you see that not only in, in, you know, some of the big games, how their communities grow and what they build post launch in terms of the the new content that they put out, but also even in, in indie size studios providing more to customers upfront before they buy the game and getting feedback.
31:36
It used to be again, this is the the old person, you know, old marketing person who used to to launch physical products, you know, physical disk we used to put in a store.
You didn't tell anyone about the game other than through the trailer and through your marketing, right?
That was they saw nothing.
They knew nothing about the story other than what you told them.
31:53
Now you open a lot up earlier and you build that community through that trust, through that feedback loop with customers, which I think it's really exciting.
It's scary too, because if they hate what you're doing, it's hard to come back from it.
It's hard to rebuild that, but it is it's actually a very honest way to do things that it's refreshing and it's, it's actually really exciting to see a mature gaming community that wants to be a part of the process.
32:20
If they buy into the vision of what you're providing and are a part of that, they're loyal.
And then when you see the growth of, you know, the influencer community and streaming, that's become it's it's own marketing vehicle.
Because if you can get people who have an audience excited about your game playing your game, all of a sudden their audience trusts you, believes in what you're, what you're you're building.
32:42
Speaker 2
What you guys have is a very engaged clientele, right?
And we talked about Microsoft and Amazon in the beginning and their approach to designing, which is very, they have different approaches, but it's still very close to the client.
Find out what they want.
You know, don't go off and build something in a vacuum somewhere and come back and expect people to like it.
33:00
You guys have effectively your customers are designing with you, you know, they're like code developers, you know, say like, no, no, no, I don't like that color.
Make it this shade of green or something like that.
So it just puts your, like, your, your thumb is on the heartbeat of what these people want.
33:18
And, and it's interesting how fascinating, how passionate they are, right?
Because one of the things that I saw this industry is being, you know, when we think about the business, I kind of think of it as also like fantasy.
Because I can't remember a single video game.
33:33
And maybe there are different ones, but the ones that I always played, I almost identified with the main character.
If I was playing Zelda, like that was me when I lost, I would get pissed because I'm like, I can't believe I just lost, right?
I have built an entire arsenal of weaponry and points and coins and all that stuff that's mine.
33:50
I built that over hours and hours of dedication to this game.
And where this character goes defines where I'm going as a person.
I identified with that and so I, I, to me, a lot of times are are Quake, you know, like any one of these games, it's like I identified with whatever character I was playing.
34:07
So for me, a lot of it was not only the video game and entertainment aspect, but there was a fantasy involved in that as well that came with the story, The music, the whole arch of the character was part of what I defined and identified with, which is what it got me addicted to it.
34:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, and I mean, that's why those worlds are so powerful, right?
That's why people spend so many hundreds of hours in them.
Then you layer on games now like that are open-ended, like Minecraft that you mentioned, where I can make my own universe.
You know, my daughter plays Minecraft.
You you mentioned it in the in the bio, in the intro.
34:38
And it wasn't this last spring break, but it was, it was a couple of vacations ago.
We didn't go anywhere.
And my daughter says to me, she's 10.
I want to make a roller coaster theme park this week, Dad and so she just sat there and he was fascinating Nick to watch a 10 year old building roller coasters in Minecraft.
34:57
She knows where to start.
She knows how to get all these things going.
I I, you know, I could build blocks and I could build the, the, the, the entrance to the, to the theme park and that sort of thing.
She could get this thing working.
Like she, Oh yeah, yeah, I got to run this.
I got to run this power cord over here and I've got to put these.
35:14
And I can't even remember all the different tools she used.
And you flip that switch over there, it starts that roller coaster, dad, and you know, it goes through the loop, but don't sit on that part.
Like she within minutes could do this.
And, and you realize how much time and energy and you said passion goes into from a customer statement.
35:32
You put part of yourself into this.
And, and I see that every day when we talk to, to customers.
And we're, we're in the building process of our game, right?
We're, we're still in the, we are building the game.
It's why I love the studio that I work at right now.
I love our, our, our team because they have that, that quote that you have to be comfortable forgetting.
35:51
You know, what you've learned every five years, because part of that is, is quite honestly listening to somebody else who doesn't have your experience and going, oh, they may be right about this.
Like that's, that's hard for somebody who's been in an industry for 20 something years, has a lot of pride in what they've done to be able to take that feedback.
36:10
Oh, I, I just spent, you know, two weeks writing the story and they don't like this.
I need to change that.
That's hard for people.
And I love that about our, our team and, and, and, and honestly, good game studios have that ability to, to listen.
36:23
Speaker 2
So, you know, exactly to that point, you know, these final few minutes that we have, I want to kind of pivot really quickly to innovation strategy, you know, and again, looking at it from the outsider, you know, I have to keep saying that clause because I've never been a part of that industry.
36:37
How to bridge the gap between low-cost and high-end games
I can talk.
And so I'm blue in the face and innovation for healthcare and life sciences.
But in your space with everything that we just talked about, with the emergence of new technologies, the evolution and maturity of the business, the evolution of the gamer and in all, you know, the storytelling and everything, the competition that's out there, the availability, what your investment strategy is.
36:58
You know, do you go for the cheap phone apps that you can build in a weekend or do you invest, you know, a half a billion dollars into a Halo?
How when you sit down in the studio that you're in right now and you guys are thinking about designing a new game, how do you how do you approach it?
37:15
Like, especially because we're talking about fantasy, right, Johan?
I mean, like literally, you can take it in infinite directions.
So how do you then think, how do you make the leap from we're at 0, let's build something that millions of people are going to want to be play all the time?
37:33
Like how do you bridge that divide?
37:36
Speaker 1
At every level, it's been different, right?
And so I'll, I'll, I'll use right now because it's closest, nearest, nearest and dearest to my heart.
But also it's been the most, it's the most recent thing that I've had to go through, right?
You, we, we, we are self funding the studio, right?
So it's our money going into this.
37:52
As we look at as we looked at what we wanted to create, there's the the basic formula, right?
37:58
Strategy Games Are Resurrected
What are we excited about playing?
What are we excited about making?
What are we capable of making right though?
Those are the quick things you go through.
And if you've been in the industry long enough, you, you know, so like, you know, hey, all right, well, we've got a bunch of folks who came from ensemble studios and, and have a background in strategy, as I mentioned earlier.
38:14
So let's start with that.
Let's start with we luckily strategy games are going through a a bit of a resurgence right now.
So trends, right, there's, there's kind of a, a return to some of those nostalgic games of old for a number of reasons.
38:31
We can spend hours talking about it, but let's just talk about it in the bucket of what's happening in the industry and, and are you capitalizing on a moment in time that's right for what you're building?
And that's, and that's important.
So listening, learning, I, I, we don't, I don't want to call chasing a trend, but certainly being acknowledging what's happening within the industry, figuring out, you know, how do we map what we're good at to that straight so we can build strategy games.
38:54
But it was that wasn't enough, right?
That's not enough for us because you said we want, we want a game that is not only one that we want to play and we're excited about and have a passion for, but also that millions will want to play.
And so then you look at, OK, what, what is something that could be new, something differentiated about a strategy game.
39:11
There's a lot of games, as I mentioned just now that are coming back that are really tapping into nostalgia.
And either they're remakes of old games that actually we worked on, like Age of Empires remakes, or they are, I would say, what's the right way to say this?
39:29
Spiritual successors, right?
They're based off of a, a, a franchise that that was quite successful, but it's a new, it's a new IP.
Our approach was OK, that that's, that's great.
That's, that's what people are doing.
And it's, it's having success.
39:45
We wanted to do something a little different.
And that's where the risk comes in, right?
We wanted to bring something in that isn't necessarily what someone else is doing because it differentiates you, you, puts you in a place where you people immediately take notice.
And, and we use our, our history.
Certainly, I would say we use our heritage as a way to get people to notice what we're doing.
40:05
But also it's, it's modernizing and it's, it's, we talked about play patterns and, and all those sorts of things.
So we looked at what are the trends in games, what are the trends in platforms and in usage, right?
So we see right now mobile is, is growing still.
There's a new generation of EC.
40:22
Gaming that is mobile now it is these little portable PCs are becoming very successful, led by the Steam Deck, which is made by Valve Corporation.
And the idea that strategy games have always been games that you sit at your desk, you spend hundreds of hours playing them.
40:39
You mentioned it.
You, you, you devote so much time.
Is that where this audience is going?
They're getting older, they have kids, they have families, they have jobs.
Is that where we want it, all of our money?
I mean, I, I used to play Civilization when I was in college, I would spend 20 hours just learning the game.
40:58
I don't have that time anymore.
So our hypothesis based on our own growth and, and, and, and in talking to to customers was, hey, there's a growing trend of people that want smaller game experiences, but still scratches that strategy itch.
41:17
And so again, all of this is, you know, what can we do?
Well, are we excited about building it?
Is there a trend?
Is there a growing audience?
Is there somebody who wants to play this game?
All of those things come together.
And it just so happened we were lucky enough to be in a situation where we could fund it and we had people who know how to make this game.
41:36
And you know, we each have our own roles to play in that space, but it quickly moved us from the ideation phase to let's get start building, let's get the folks in to start building this thing.
And that's really fun.
And I said to you, the one fun, the one great thing about the, the folks I work with is that we kind of have this, we have this ability.
41:57
They're comfortable being uncomfortable.
And I love that, right?
I love the idea that we sit in rooms.
We're fully remote, so we sit in our own rooms and we talk about things that have been on our mind.
Why is this not feeling right?
And we're, we're comfortable sharing that.
42:13
The other day I was talking to our game designer who'd spent a few hours writing a story and I said, I just don't like this story.
Like I, I didn't want to be cruel, but I just, I don't, it doesn't connect with me.
And he's like, yo, honey, you got to give me more than that.
And so I, I, I tried to verbalize, frustrated, well, frustratedly, how I, how I felt about the story.
42:31
And eventually we worked out that it was just a couple of lines in the story that just didn't sit right.
And and then, you know, we went with our Mary Wake.
I want to mention something.
Making a game remotely is really hard.
42:44
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah, It's the, it's a creative field, right?
I mean, a creative fields, yeah, It helps to be in front of a whiteboard with a colleague or multiple colleagues, you know, just drinking a beer or over lunch and having a conversation face to face.
You can iterate and scratch and exactly and so on, right?
43:02
Speaker 1
Precisely.
And so, so being able to work well with folks remotely is invaluable.
It's, it's, it's, it's so different than the, the, the creative process, as you mentioned, Nick.
And so you, you don't want to schedule time for a brainstorm.
43:17
You want to be able to have a, a coffee and, you know, lunch and talk about the things that are on your mind.
And I love the fact that we're able to do that.
I think all of those things drive, I, I guess drive what decisions you make around products.
We are a small studio, so we can't make a Halo, we can't make an Age of Empires, nor do we want to.
43:36
But I would say when you look at it also from the context of what are your limitations, what can we do with what we have?
That's an important piece also in in defining what we're going to do.
43:47
Speaker 2
Yeah, it makes sense.
And and you know, looking at a product portfolio too, it makes total sense.
When you're a small startup studio, you want to think obviously there's like short term horizons, there's midterm, there's long term if you want to go for that moon shot of what's going to be the big game in five years.
But you guys have to show value today.
44:03
And you focus on kind of like what are the trends?
What are people playing?
And especially you see convergence now you have, you know, 3-4 decades of history of where the gamers going.
So you see where the puck is going.
It's like, well, they're probably going to be here in two years when our game is ready.
You look at your skill sets, you look at your history, you know, you look at your domain expertise of how you know how to write a story, where to publish it, where to market it, what story to tell, all that kind of stuff.
44:27
And, and I think one of the interesting things you said there is also you're looking at a specific demographic of clientele, which almost reflects your own, right.
You're, you're thinking about, I don't have 20 hours to dedicate to learning this game.
So you're thinking about yourself, which actually brought me to a whole different set of questions, which is basically you get to dog eat your own dog food in such a fun way.
44:49
I mean, you know, I've been in software.
So there is elements of the product we're building.
We get to eat our own dog food and and try it.
Does this help us be more productive or whatever?
But it's not.
It's fun in a way, but it's not fun like we're playing this game as we're building it.
45:06
And then I can also think about the dynamics that go into being in person in the office, because now you and your colleague Michael or Johan or whoever you play the video game now you, you, you bump into each other in the kitchen and be like, hey, did you get to this, you know, phase of the game?
45:24
Oh, my God, that was amazing.
Or this didn't quite resonate.
We should really change this, right?
That in person dynamic as you're playing your own game must be such a thrilling experience.
45:34
Speaker 1
Yeah, it, it, it's it.
It's hard to to really explain it to folks who haven't been in it because it's both thrilling and fun.
And also you get really angry sometimes because you care so much about what you're doing.
And so you have to try and funnel that feedback in a productive way because it is gaming.
45:54
It is something that you imagine not only yourself, but others spending hard earned money on.
And they're free time.
It's free time that we're we're asking people to spend that they could be spending on other things.
And so there is something you have to honor there in wanting to make it as good as as fun as possible.
46:11
Oh, this was great.
I had a really good time today, but I didn't like these six things.
We're never going to be perfect, right you Even the best movies have moments that drag on or, you know, those sorts of things that they didn't get quite right.
Same thing with video games.
There is no perfect video game, but you want to kind of look at it from that perspective.
46:29
And so you spend so much time and I've played this game for hundreds of hours at this point.
And every time I play it, I try so hard, Nick, to just think about playing it for the first time.
And it's so hard to do right the first time.
If I give you this game today to play it, you'll be playing it for the first time fresh.
46:46
I play it today and I already know what I'm going to get 6 hours from now.
And so it's very hard.
That's why we bring in other folks because I want to, I want to not only have have my, you know, understanding and feeling about the game projected into the feedback that we give, but also I want people to be able to tell us, hey, by the way, I know six months ago you changed this.
47:09
It isn't good.
Like that's hard to hear.
We made that change so long ago.
We've just kind of glossed over because we played it so many times.
Oh, that's that didn't go over well with you.
All right, you need to rethink it.
It's fun to be able to say I played video games for work for sure.
47:26
So at its basis level, but I think it also is, is one of those things that requires you to to have a bit of discipline to be able to acknowledge the fact that you're you're playing something that, as I said, people are going to spend their hard earned money and their time on.
47:42
You need to make sure that when you spend this time, you're not just goofing off and playing a game, you're picking it apart.
47:48
Speaker 2
Now that makes total sense.
I mean, and, and, and you're competing in a very in a fiercely competitive environment where all thousands or hundreds of thousands of game, you know, developers are all competing for a very fixed amount of time in a very fixed pool of potential customers.
48:07
And so you have to be super diligent and very strategic and thinking about how you shape your game so that it differentiates and you've been so generous with your time.
So I want to be cognizant of not running too far along into this.
So with everything we talked about, I mean, if you project into the future, what would you recommend for your son was like, Dad, this is what I want to do.
48:30
Advice for Nick’s son
What advice would you give them right now to say like, OK, great.
This is these are some of the things you should think about and how to position yourself to be competitive and successful in this field.
48:39
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it's a wonderful question when I think about quite a bit because of what you just said there, Nick, having kids and, and, and, you know, I think everything that I do, you know, obviously being in games, there was probably 3 pillars for me of, of what, what made me interested in, in, in gaming There was.
48:58
Is it something that I get excited about?
I have a passion for which we talked about growing up that way.
Is it something that I think I can be good at?
And then I think the most important one for me in some ways is what legacy can I leave right?
And what, what impact can I have on the industry that makes it better for others to come into and to, you know, perhaps easier to get into or certainly more evolved than it was when I, you know, I said I could, I, I, there was no, there was no major for gaming when I was a kid or when I was going through college and, and school of, of everyone who's our age.
49:34
So how do you leave that in a way that is valuable for the next generation?
And I think to your point, the industry has moved so quickly.
I think for the next generation, they're coming into an industry that is mature, that is kind of there's a playbook written in many ways for it already, which is both exciting.
49:55
You can have a major in college to be a computer science major or to be, you know, in narrative game design.
You know, we've hired folks out of out of college who that was their major.
That's phenomenal.
They're so much smarter than I am when they come out of college.
They've they've they've worked on games, they've built games to your point, right.
50:11
And I think that is that to me is, is, you know, if if someone wants to get into the games industry now, part of it is following that path, follow the path that's been that that those who have come before you have kind of forged.
But I've mentioned it earlier, one of the key things for me was meandering through my career.
50:30
I was in sports, I was in fashion.
I always kind of knew I wanted to somehow get here, even if I didn't know it, Like I wasn't saying it out loud.
I had to go into those industries, learn, learn what I loved, learn what I didn't like about them and take some of that with you.
50:48
I think there is there's value in experience, in understanding and lateral thinking, not to use an academic word word, but like that kind of thing to be able to get real world experiences and then bring them to an industry like this that will always be evolving.
I think that's the fun of it.
51:04
The one piece I always say to my my eldest is if you want to get rich, don't get into video games because you're going to spend most of your career probably working on games that fail or games that have you know that they're going to be games you work on that don't even come to light, that they get cut before they even launch.
51:21
So there's a lot of failure in games.
You have to be comfortable with that.
But once you find your foothold, it's a wonderful industry to be in.
And so I think being able to listen and learn, I think we talked a lot about kind of checking your pride at the door.
You you see a lot of industry folks now who talk about their history.
51:39
The best ones are the ones who keep rewriting it.
Keep like trying something new.
51:45
Speaker 2
Yeah, you, you mentioned the lateral thinking.
It's exactly what I was thinking.
You know, it's like, sure, there is the now with the evolution of the field, you have disciplines, you could study this, right.
But there is also something to be said for the meandering path that you took, which I've taken a lot in my career as well, which is like, you got to see parts of the world and different industries in such a way that now when you're tackling a problem in this field, your brain can't help but be like, oh, wait, you know, I saw something similar when I was a in fashion.
52:11
Maybe we can apply some of these principles there towards how we designed this game and so on, right?
So I'm a big fan of divergent and lateral thinking because I think it just kind of like brings ideas and enriches what you're doing currently.
So hopefully kids as they think about this industry, they think, yes, discipline and learn the field, learn from the people that came before you, and also try to diversify enough so you can bring new blood and new ideas into this.
52:39
Fleet Breakers
But with all that, Johann, this has been incredible.
I mean, it's fascinating to see how quickly it's evolving your role in it.
And, and I'm looking forward to you want to tell us a little bit something about, you know, the game that you're working on right now so we can keep an eye out for it.
52:52
Speaker 1
Yeah.
So that the game that we're working on, it's called Fleet Breakers.
It is as I mentioned earlier, a strategy game.
It's actually, and I'm going to throw this one out there for all those who, who who know the industry, it's, it's an action strategy roguelike.
So the idea of blending a couple of different genres, the idea of blending strategy games with the this sort of up and coming trending genre of games called roguelikes.
53:19
I say that it's been around for about 20 years.
But the idea that you can play a game, die or lose and start over, but you bring some of the things that you gained during that last playthrough.
I'm oversimplifying it.
It's a new way to think of strategy games.
53:35
I mentioned it earlier because it used to be you had to be perfect.
You had to come up with that 20 hour plan and get it right.
You don't in our game, you can try something new.
You can experiment with a strategy that you hadn't used before because you're probably not going to succeed the first time.
So you can learn something, bring it with you, try again.
53:53
It's a fascinating idea.
We've been, as I said, play testing with folks.
You'll be launching later this year, so definitely look out for it.
We have a Steam page up, it's called Fleet Breakers.
You can certainly search for it on on Steam, which is the the PC marketplace and we'll be having an early access launch later this year.
54:12
Speaker 2
I look forward to seeing that.
As I said, it almost takes like a video game with resurrection built into it.
54:17
Speaker 1
That's exactly it.
The premise is entirely that and and and and it is entirely about getting comfortable with failure.
