Abiotic Factor with Geoff "Zag" Keene and Henry Feltham | The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook

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Hi, I'm Corey May, Senior World Director at Haven Studios, and this is The Game Maker's Notebook.

On today's episode, I spoke with Jeff Keen and Henry Feltham from Deepfield.

They worked on the hit survival game, Abiotic Factor.

We chatted about the importance of relationships when working on a small team, how much the final game changed compared to the initial idea, how they used early access to shape the experience and marketing of the game, and much, much more.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed recording this.

Welcome to The Game Maker's Notebook, a podcast featuring a series of in-depth one-on-one conversations between game makers, providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment.

The Game Maker's Notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a member-driven organization dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment.

Hey guys.

I'm so glad that you were able to make time today to chat.

I have a bunch of questions I want to ask you.

One of the reasons I love the Academy so much is that if I play a game and fall in love with it, I can ping my friend Megan and say I just played this amazing game.

I really want to meet the people that made it and she makes it happen.

So I think that's kind of how this occurred today.

I'm not really a journalist or a podcaster.

I just love what you did so much.

I wanted to just sit down and talk to you about it.

So I hope that's okay.

I don't expect to ask anything too crazy, but I guess we'll see where it goes.

I'll just dive right in.

I did try and be semi-professional, so I typed up questions and I'll ask them and we'll see what happens.

Jeff, I want to start with you, if that's okay.

We'll talk about the company and the game obviously, but I just wanted to know a little bit about you first, where you come from, how you got to where you are today.

I don't know.

Just everything.

Start from the beginning.

I want to know everything about you.

Yeah, cool.

So my name is Jeff Keen.

A lot of people call me Zag.

A lot of the community knows me as Zag.

Everyone at work calls me Zag.

So you may call me Zag if you'd like.

When I was probably in my young teen years, i was doing level design and things in unreal one.

Uh, i was doing a bunch of uh starcraft, custom maps and things like that.

Um, i didn't really start game dev proper, i think, until i was about 17 when my father and i started making a game called detour.

Uh, it's just a very terrible game, but we got it on steam back when you could still get anything on steam um uh, without uh, I guess it wasn't as uh, um oversaturated as it was now.

Um and then uh, we did that for a few years and worked on a game called unfortunate spaceman, which is like a deception game.

Uh, and then I um worked with a publisher, new blood, um with Dave Oshry, who I think was on this show at one point.

Um, and, uh, he was like, Hey, I got a friend in New Zealand who works at rocket works.

Uh, do you want to, uh, go work in New Zealand.

And I was like, Oh, that's funny.

That's a good one.

Uh, so it turns out he was actually not joking.

Um, so we we zipped off to to um New Zealand to actually make some money like making games, instead of just kind of squeaking by.

Uh, and, uh, I worked at Rocketworks for a couple of years.

I worked on uh, a couple of titles and, um uh Icarus, and then I met Henry while I was there and we sort of eventually left Rocketworks because the Dunedin studio closed down and we were sort of looking to do our own thing.

And now we're here doing Deepfield.

All right.

I have two questions based on that that I want to know a little bit more about.

The first, and I think easy one, is why Zag?

Where does it come from?

Yeah, think it was an old clan we had in starcraft with my friends.

We all had like zag and then a number or something.

Uh, i think i'm the last zag, i think i'm the last one to keep that that uh, that name, and then it just sort of stuck.

It was just all right.

And then there was something else.

You said and i think i heard it properly that you make games with your dad.

I did yeah yeah uh, so my dad's a programmer.

He was sort of a more of like a corporate programmer, I guess, or like he worked in, you know, the medical field or whatever, doing systems and things.

But obviously he always liked games and stuff and he got me into gaming.

So, so we sort of initially started, you know, making, making games.

We weren't very good at it.

I've learned a lot since then and he doesn't work in games anymore, but it was definitely a good half decade of of that with him.

Yeah.

I don't know.

There's something really cool about that.

That's not something I've ever encountered before.

Like the idea of like father, son.

Um well, it's interesting when you, when you, you've got, you've got a good family dynamic or something right.

You know, my dad and I are friends, I guess you'd say.

Uh, but once you work on games together uh, it's very stressful, you know, and you sort of it's a it's a lot to to put a group of people through.

So, uh, I think it, um, it's it's for better or for worse we both you know parted ways professionally but uh we still keep in touch so it's all good oh that's i don't the very very awesome um backstory so it seems like you've always been working or wanted to be working in games so you've just done it your entire professional career it sounds like yeah i spent yeah academically i wasn't very good like at at school i didn't i didn't actually graduate high school uh at about 17 i started or 16 or so i started doing homeschooling and then i sort of just kind of stopped and then i went and made games and i just kind of never never stopped doing that um so i'm not i wouldn't say i'm very good at doing like homework i'm not very good at with my grades uh i might not even be very smart um but I definitely have always liked doing games, and that's kind of all I've wanted to do.

I remember failing classes because I was just doodling maps and stuff for Unreal or whatever back in the day.

So it's always been there.

Henry, I sort of have the same question for you.

I want to know all about you, how it started, how you got into the games, and all that good stuff.

I'm a writer by trade and I think inclination i could screw up.

I've always written, i always have, and i just i just something i do and if i stop doing that i get sad.

Um, i wrote a story, a short story uh, in a new zealand publication about in about 2005 i think, and it got quite a lot of coverage.

And one day somebody rang me up and just said uh, would you like hey, would you like to try writing a video game?

And i was like hell yeah, like uh, Are you going to pay me to write?

I don't care what it is.

I'll do it.

Plus, also, I think I've always been interested in the technical side of writing and form.

So the idea of writing on a new form is really exciting.

I had an idea that I wanted.

Or I'd enjoy writing games.

But as I went through that process with this crew, who were probably one of the first larger game dev crews, certainly in Dunedin but probably in New Zealand as well I sort of came to the realization oh, I'm a gamer.

I've always played games.

I've always been into gaming.

And it was a wild ride, a steep steep, steep learning curve.

Um, and that company we did, we got about i don't know, it was a guy called casebook back in the day.

It was like a sort of a find the object game with a um uh, with like actual video component, because we could do this amazing kind of um, almost like mri uh creation of 3d spaces using cameras and that, folded it turned into basically weapons contractors, as they always do, And you don't need a writer for that.

So I went off and I worked in film for a while.

And eventually Rocketworks started up in Dunedin off the back of Dean selling, I guess Daisy, Dean Hall selling Daisy to Bohemia.

And I just finangled my way into that and worked on a few projects.

And yeah, I remember a day when we were like, we really need another designer in here.

We need a producer and a designer here.

And Dave Oshry came in as a sort of package deal with Zag.

And do you understand?

When we were first hiring him, I was actually a bit wary.

I was like, where's this guy?

He's got quite a lot, eh?

But I just sort of grew to want to work with Zag and came out the other side of Rocketworks with a lot of respect and a lot of love.

And we decided hey well, now that Rocketworks is moving its center of gravity to Auckland, he hit it off to do that, push space a bit, and that kind of thing.

And it was a while later, after I did some film and TV work, I was like, what are you up to?

And he's like, well, I'm in Deepfield.

And I'm like, this sounds great.

Let's do this.

And we've been doing that ever since.

So I became a producer by circumstance really just uh, there wasn't much in the way of production capacity inside rock that works at that stage.

So i sort of, as a narrative designer, i kind of filled the gaps, because i think narrative design you tend to know what, like what everyone's doing, because you need to know how to understand how their bit integrates into the game and the animators and the 3d artists and the sound designer and all that.

So i was sort of talking to people and before i knew it i was a producer, never formally trained uh, but have been doing that role for rocket, for um deep field, as well as um writing and um narrative design with with jeff, like we, we work very very, very closely together on story, which i think sits at the heart of a lot of what we do.

So i think, like the other zag is the other writer on um on on, on erotic factor.

It's just that i'm the one who actually tends to type it out.

Um, that's a nice segue can uh, to my next question.

But um, i met, i met dean.

I met dean, um very briefly, when i was working at google.

They i think he was pitching icarus and he took the meeting while he was skiing or snowboarding.

So he just like, you were in that meeting.

I remember oh, you were in that meeting too, or you just heard about it photographs and i was like, are you seriously at the top of a fucking?

He took that meeting and i and we the whole time we were like, is it a bit?

Is he just like, does he just think we're assholes?

And so this is what's going on?

But he literally pitched the game while he was snowboarding down down a mountain and it like i wasn't sure if it was like this is how i'll get them to remember me, or i care so little about this that i'm just gonna enjoy my.

My day on the mountain.

Is that was it stadia?

Back then yes yeah right okay um funny oh, my god oh, that's amazing, I mean, I'll be honest.

I think everyone in the industry goes, yeah, it sounds like Dean.

Yeah.

All right.

So it's normal for him.

We got him.

I've never met someone who knows.

I've never met someone who knows Dean that wouldn't go.

Yeah.

All right.

Yep.

All right.

So back to where I was, as I thought what you were saying, Henry, was a really natural segue.

We covered sort of how the two of you met and then reconnected to to work on a biotic factor.

And what I'm curious about it then more specifically is what is your relationship?

I mean, you started to touch on it, Henry, in saying that you both, I guess, are writers.

But at the end of the day, there's got to be, i don't know, a system or a way in which you work together or collaborate, and so i'd love to know more about that, like the division of responsibility and yeah yeah, and the bottom line is that like, zag's the ceo, and so if we disagree, like for any length of time, it's zag's call and it's got to be someone's call, and i um, i trust zag a lot uh, but the way is um, and i've got two heads and zag has about 30 um, i'm a, i'm the production director, so i oversee at the high level, like you know, what people are doing and when um, we have a producer under me who actually does the tasking and that kind of thing uh, and we have i'm a narrative designer, so i like, but the the process, like pitching like uh, like what the storyline for an update might be, you know uh, but that that storyline, that pitch is has, in fact, has been being gestated in sort of one nascent way or another, probably since almost the inception of the project.

And every time we're talking about story, we're saying, oh, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?

Do you think players want to visit this?

We would love to go to this place.

We'd love to see this.

We think that this, you know, if you had this experience, that would be real fucking dope.

And when the time is right, I basically take, you know, sort of pull these ideas together and say this is the update where we're doing this.

But that process is incredibly organic and really just one endless piece of storytelling that goes back and forwards between Zag and I, And then we just decide when the right time is to do X, Y and Z, And we're always we're just sort of building out the future continually.

And I think it's very, very backwards and forwards.

And then once we've actually got, once we know what's in there, I start saying okay well, we want, we've got these characters.

You know we talked about having these people.

And then I've started getting more granular on it, saying okay well, what are they actually going to?

What's the uh, what's the actual outline of the story we're telling?

Write it down, agree on it, you know, and then what's the uh?

And then then start generating scripts and and that sort of thing.

And at each stage, at each stage, SAG reads through every element of it, gives notes, rinse and repeat.

And so we took we basically we're never very far from being And a very similar hit space about Zach.

Anything you want to add?

I mean, that's a that's a quite specific way we work together.

The real way we work together is I go to Henry and say Henry Henry Henry, I have so many cool ideas.

Here's what we're going to do.

And Henry pretends he's going to he's going to constrain me as the producer.

But then he usually just ends up agreeing.

So I think that's how we actually work together.

Uh, but, uh, I don't have to say no.

Yeah.

Um, I won't.

I won't talk about it too much here, but like our next project we're kind of getting into like the story of it and how we want it to to go.

Right.

And so currently we're in that really fun phase uh, where just like we can do anything and go any direction with it.

And we're trying to find that path and stuff.

So I send him, you know every, every couple of days, I send him like a paragraph of like all right, I had a bunch of thoughts.

Here's what we're going to do.

And we just go back and forth.

I mean it's, it's all very um, creative work, i think, and it all ties into kind of the design of the game too.

Um uh yeah, it's.

It's uh, we're sort of i think henry and i are probably spread across the widest part of the team we're sort of we have, we have our hands in almost everything.

Um, at some level, i do wonder, because both so you're both ceo and working on the, on the creative, and then henry, you're both a producer and and narrative designer and, And the CEO and the producer are normally the people that say no to everything that the writers want to do.

So how do you know when to take on or put on or take off hats?

Or is it because you ride those lines that you're able to?

I don't want to say constrain yourselves.

Or do you find, I don't know, each of you arguing with the other half of yourself when you're trying to to put these things into the game?

I have to imagine there's some tension there, both internally and between the two of you, depending on what hat is on.

Yeah absolutely, i mean we we um, i mean we pivot.

We pivot quite a lot between um uh, kind of more creative ideas and things and and sort of the technical side of how we run the company.

Um, just this morning i was kind of uh given you and henry a bit of an earful about some production stuff that slipped through, but at the same time, like i'm also um, like hey henry, i have more ideas for this other stuff we need to talk about.

I think we just i think we compartmentalize pretty well.

I don't know if that's perfectly healthy um, but we're really good at you have to have mentalization and and moderating uh, our scope early as well.

We've we've been around the block a few times.

We've seen a lot of projects go off the rails.

Um, we're at the point where we're like we know if a feature is like way too big or if it's going to be a problem, like we can see those coming um, and we occasionally get caught off guard, but not not much.

A lot of abfs development was very carefully planned and i think we actually hit our scope targets really really quite well um, which i don't think a lot of game devs can say um, so we're pretty proud of that, definitely.

I feel like there's also like an eternal tension uh, i'm in, at least in our team between the role of a producer to say, look guys no, but also the role of the producer to find, to figure out how to say yes, say like this is awesome, how do we actually make this happen?

Um, and by nature, and maybe because because of that um, that narrative design kind of producer conflict in my own head, i try and i try and move towards yes as much as i can.

Besides, if Zag's got his heart set on something, what the fuck does it matter what I say?

It's going to happen.

There's more give and take than that.

Were there ever during the development of the game, major disagreements between the two of you in terms of either a decision to be made or a direction to go in?

And I know you say well, at the end of the day, Zag's CEO, so what he says goes, but like.

Were there times that you were able to successfully fight for something, or were there times that Zag talked you off a ledge if there was something that you really wanted and he helped you see another way through?

Oh, yeah.

I mean there's always disagreements, but I mean there's nothing I can't easily call to mind, something where we hit a real brick wall with each other.

There are ongoing issues, which is, which are eternal, but more sort of like human and not actually not, and not specifically between him and i.

It's more about like managing our team, which is always where the you know, i guess the human element will um make things more complicated.

Uh no, i think we can.

I think we communicate well.

I think there's a lot of respect we have.

I mean, we haven't we don't shout at each other a lot, but we do.

We have some very, very frank conversations and we get there because we're just, we're just trying to, we're trying to figure it out.

You know, we're trying to figure out what's what needs to happen here, what's good for the game, what is the, what is, what is the answer, and we're both, we're both vectoring towards that generally, you know, rather than rather than each other yeah yeah, i i'd add to that, i'd say um uh, and you kind of already said it, i guess, but uh uh, i think, i think we usually know what the problem is and it's usually not like something the other person uh did.

It's actually the kind of there's just a whole stress about managing whole team and things and i think there's not a lot of people for us to vent to um.

There are other directors and they have their own kind of segments of the project and things.

Like we have qa and art director and all that um, but but i think, at the end of the day, like we have one goal um, and we know, we know that the, the stress and issues and the venting is to each other a lot and maybe at each other a little bit because uh, there's not a lot of other people to do that too.

We can't like vent.

I can't vent to like one of the artists, you know?

Um, so we tend to uh, I I think I think there's definitely like a burden there, kind of like a mental toll it can take a bit.

Uh, but we, I think we manage it.

Okay.

We do.

Okay.

Um.

So I think under all of it like as well, there's a real like.

The foundation is one of like.

I think we're both quite grateful for each other and the relationship and where we've got to.

So, like, it's hard to go too wrong.

But you know there's definitely stressful times when there's this game.

Deal for fuck's sake, right.

It's hard.

Games are fun to play.

Not always fun to make.

Are you are you close outside of work or is it primarily like a work relationship?

I'm just trying to get a sense of like, I don't know.

Are you asking for friends outside of the office?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

No, Henry and I are friends.

I don't I don't like hang out much.

I don't I don't hang out with anybody much.

I'm I'm a bit of a hermit.

I moved into like the woods.

But yeah.

Yeah. our interests are quite aligned as well.

And like, yeah, yeah.

Well, we and like socially, like Zach's actually one of my, you know, one of my favorite conversationalists.

I liked, I could, there's certain things in the universe.

There's only a few people I know how to, who know how to talk about in the way that works for me.

We were sitting in China over breakfast and Zach was like started asking me.

He was looking around and he was like he was having a thought.

He's like, so like, he was reading like noodles for breakfast or something.

And Zach's like, I'm trying to figure this out.

What is the purpose of society?

And I'm like, man, I love you.

Shanghai did a number on me, okay?

I don't know.

I'm so here for it.

Yeah, it's good shit.

I think there's something really interesting there.

I know that on the projects I've worked on, I've had the most success when I consider the creative director of the project, my friend outside right.

Because you can, you could to your point, you can have those more frank and difficult conversations with a friend, I think, in the way that you can't necessarily with a coworker.

Maybe that's just my personality, but I find it much easier, right?

When the when the person that's sensibly my boss is is just a boss and not a person that I know or respect as a human being, I think it becomes much harder, especially given how, to your point, like difficult and contentious and hard making games can be that I think having that relationship makes a difference.

I'm just so fascinated and we can talk about it a little bit more later there's something and whether it's intentional or not, that feels felt like very effortless in playing Abiotic Factor and I'm sure that the production was not like easy.

But you even started to say that like there was a plan.

You followed the plan.

I know all games like have their ups and downs, but I don't know for, for whatever it's worth, it felt like there was, I don't know, a strong friendship or understanding at the at the heart of it.

Um, maybe that's just me like reading into it or because I'm biased and loved it so much.

No, you're not, you're not reading into it too much.

Um, first of all, I don't, I don't look at myself as Henry's boss.

Um, sometimes I get bossy, but I look at him as a peer, like there's five directors at our company.

Um, And, and I don't look at them as like, I'm on top of all, you know, I'm doing all this.

Um, I, I think we have a much better kind of friendship and understanding.

Um, I mean, honestly, like, okay, so like, let me walk through real quick.

So.

So Henry, I sort of became friends with at Rocketworks while we were working there in the studio and we went through quite a hardship together which was the whole dissolving of the Dunedin studio.

Um, and I think that definitely kind of, uh, strengthened that bond a bit.

Um, connor moran, our art director uh, he started uh, working with me on unfortunate spaceman.

He just he liked the game and he followed my old stuff.

I completely skipped my dead linger chapter, by the way, my bad in my backstory um, so i didn't know if you wanted to talk about that, so i was just gonna like i'm very happy to talk about it, i just forgot like.

I just like zipped over it.

Yeah, i'm not very good at talking about myself, so so i i don't have like a elevator pitch of my life uh, planned very well.

I should have, I should have rehearsed before this.

Um, anyway, uh, so, so, uh, Connor Moran is our art director.

Um he, he became the art director on unfortunate spaceman cause.

He followed my uh, the dead linger stuff back in the day.

And he just, he was like, this guy seems really cool.

Um, he seems genuine with his community, all this.

Um, he tells me this a lot.

I don't know why he loves reminding me of this.

Um, and then he, uh, he jumped into one of my streams while I was working on a fortunate spaceman.

And I think I made him a moderator and we started talking a bit and we ended up playing pub G like every night for six months or something.

It was crazy.

Like when pub G was on the up and up and, uh, we just became like best friends basically.

Um, so our art director is one of my best friends for sure.

Um, uh, our QA director used to be a partner of mine actually, but she is now just our QA director.

So you could say we were close at one point.

Um, that's Kate, that's Kate Colvin.

Uh, we have uh Tim Ponting, who's our business director and he's been a very, very good friend um for many years and uh also helped us get through kind of the the rocket works.

Uh, dissolution here in Dunedin.

Um, And so, yeah, I would say, like, is the company run by friends?

I can't say – you know, I don't know how Henry's friendship is with other people, but like I know what my friendship is with everyone on the team and it's quite close at the head.

I don't – personally, I don't see how I could produce without being friends with everyone.

Like you've got to be – I mean, I personally need to be friends with people, to work with them, and I find ways to do that.

Because you need to have that relationship.

And I think all of us, the director starts from the directors on down.

All right.

So you open the door.

So I do want to know not specifically about necessarily Deadlinger, but you worked on a bunch of other stuff before this.

And so I'm really curious if, coming into this game, there were, you know, lessons that you had learned, or or or certain things that you took away from previous projects that you wanted to make sure you know got addressed on this,

Right.

Cause I feel like sometimes we learn so much from the things that go wrong.

Um, that that I I'm assuming that there were things that that helped set you up for success, or at least less less chances for for things to go wrong this time around.

Yeah.

Um, I would say everything.

Everything we did set us up to where we are now.

I mean... Excuse me.

I would say everything I did wrong with the Deadlinger, every scope creep, every mismanaged thing, every just pretty much everything we did wrong is is all stuff we applied to abotic factor.

Um, and same with unfortunate spaceman.

There were so many community missteps and updates and scope creep and other things um that I just shouldn't have done.

Uh, and we, we applied every single lesson.

Um, and, and, and there were so many, I couldn't even list them.

I mean, it's, it's the way we talk to the community.

It's the way we manage our tasking.

It's down to like just how much communication we require from the team, everything.

I mean, it's, it's top to bottom just made us exactly who we are.

Everything every bit of advice or or feedback I give to Henry, for example, is is stemming from my history of all that stuff.

And and I think it's safe to say like listening to the past is is the only reason that ABF was a success.

10% was looking forward, I guess.

Yeah.

10% was accurately identifying the market from which we could draw from the past.

Yes.

The couple of examples, just random examples that come to mind.

I worked a little bit on Spaceman in the latter stages of its development, but not a lot.

But not a lot.

We learned, don't do async co-op.

It's really hard.

Yeah.

But all of the lessons we got through that process mainly from Zag Kate Connor on running large-scale multiplayer games

That's huge, right?

And that's also your kind of credibility when you're out there looking for funding saying hey, we've done this before.

It went OK.

We can do better.

I think one of the foundational things in our company is just the love for and the delight in co-op experiences that we've learned over time.

That's what we want to make.

That's what we think the best experience in gaming, but maybe even one of the best experiences on the internet, is working together with friends to solve problems.

So that's something we learned from early early gaming experience, both as as gamers and as game makers.

Um yeah, those were huge.

I also think the the um we we, we knew the joy in building fun worlds, like the world the spaceman world is is rich and ridiculous right uh, i mean, i think when we bought that and we bought that ethos forwards into abf and they just turned it up whilst also kind of turning it down like um, Trying to hit a really even tone, that kind of thing which I think really contributes to how the world has been received.

That less is more storytelling, right?

Where we have this really rich, detailed world, but we only give the player pieces of it.

To say we're inspired a little bit by Dark Souls or Elden Ring would be an understatement.

Let it live in their heads, that kind of thing.

And just what the story is and this is maybe something we can get into down the line is just how important story is for us narrative.

I do want to dig into it in a couple of questions, so be ready to talk about that stuff.

But I definitely agree with you.

I'm very fond of saying that it's much better to have fans angry at you for information for, like what they don't know, than to have them mad at you for what you've told them right, like.

Let them be frustrated that they don't have all the answers, rather than being furious that that the answer you gave them is really shitty.

So oh, we've got both, don't worry i've i've, i've done a fair amount in in my life as well.

So i, i get it, but i, i think you're right.

Like that that the, the.

I want to know more.

It's like a.

It's a good, it's a good carrot, it's a good hook, it's a, it's a good motivator.

I know, even when i was playing through the game, like right, like like, stopping at all those terminals and learning like a little bit more about like what was in that room and like what happened here, i don't, it's nice, it's nice.

I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

So it really, it really resonated um for me.

So yeah let's, let's start talking about the game.

I, i think i'm i'm interested in in how it started like like, when did you, When did you know that this was going to be the next project?

What was the spark?

Yeah, how did it begin?

Yeah, so I think I'm going to be – I'll be totally honest and say exactly where it started, I think.

I've always been a big Half-Life fan.

Obviously, we have our Half-Life inspirations, right?

You can – art style and things.

And there was a moment I was playing –

I think I was showing my partner Sven co-op because she'd never played Half-Life before.

And I was like, we should play through the co-op Half-Life stuff.

And I was sitting there like in the game, we were playing just two of us running around or whatever.

And there was a moment where I was like, wouldn't it be kind of funny if you were just like looting the vending machines to survive?

Because there's these vending machines in the game that spill the stuff on the floor, right?

And that's been the thing ever since is like underground facility looting, vending machines, and that was that, that idea that stuck and i just like jotted down a couple sentences about it.

You know oh, you could do this, ride some trams whatever, and that that game in my head at the time isn't what we made um, but it definitely spun into what we made, you know um, and i think there was a time, henry how long was it?

A couple months, a few months into development where we sort of found that loop kind of connected, and we just had this.

There was this moment Connor and I were play testing and I think we had gotten the robots in and we were struggling to kind of figure out what the gameplay loop was and how to keep it engaging.

And we had, like you know, loot the stuff, eat some food um kill the robots to get an item to open a door.

And like that that night.

That play test is when I came back to the team in the morning and Connor and I were like it was the best play test we ever had.

Like, this is the game right here.

And we just followed that.

There were so many other questions to answer, but, but that's, that's sort of where it all began.

It was just like, how do you, how do you do a survival game?

Make it not a very large area to explore.

Cause you know, we can't just do sprawling procedural landscapes or something.

And how do you keep it engaging, you know, in that, in that small space?

And, and the first time I think we felt really engaged.

Yeah.

So I think, I think the moment we connected with kind of that loop that's, that's where it all began down the path into this whole thing that we made.

Yeah.

And then I, I sort of, we started to touch on it.

Like what, how was development of the game in general?

Like once once you, Once you, I guess, hit that moment where you started to see what the game could be and, I assume, not too long after you started building the game.

Was it like, was it, I don't know, was there a plan at that point?

Did you start breaking down like where it would go?

Like what, how did it, how did it grow?

I would say the plan was pretty clear from, from the outset.

I mean, if we discover things, we always discover things along the way.

And I think you're onto a good thing when the game is telling you what it wants to be.

I think, I think ABF was telling us from quite early on, from like that play test, like okay, this works or this doesn't.

One example would be early on, we're like, we want you to feel like you're a scientist.

We want to feel like you're a brainiac, but you're not brawny.

You're smart, but you're not strong.

And the progression curve was just too high, too fast.

You got to feeling like you're just cracking things too swiftly.

And the game was like, this is wrong.

And Zag spent a whole bunch of time trying to figure it out.

And then one day his partner Chris, who's a marketing producer, was just like well, what if he just had nets to start with instead?

And we try that.

And it works.

And you can feel that it works.

So the game, that reinforcement loop where we discover what's working, that's been fairly clear to us, I think, the whole time.

Um plus, you've had a pretty clear, clear vision from the beginning, i would argue we always knew how we wanted it to end.

So when you've got like, the ending to a story, it's quite, it's rather easy to move towards it.

Well this actually, there's a cliche saying you've either got the ending or the beginning of a game, but in our case we had both, which meant we had like, there was always that like we're going from here to here and we're now we're filling out the middle.

But um uh, tony from epic said to us like oh, i was looking back at the original pitch you gave us back in the day that the original when you were first talking about it, and it's like it's one-to-one with what you actually made uh, which i think is indicative.

I, i was gonna ask about that uh in a little bit but um, i guess i'll skip to it real quick, because there's a saying, at least in film, and i think it's true for games, that like you make three right, there's the one you pitch, there's the one you build and then there's the one that like, goes into player, audiences hands, and so i was going to ask you, like how different are those three things?

But but do you feel that it is the same experience, like what you pitched to to what you built?

Obviously not one-to-one, but you, you see a through line, like it didn't change in your mind.

That, i think drastically, or dramatically yeah, i think.

I think um, My original idea was something a little more.

I always think of it as more gray.

There's something more gray about it.

Darker, dimmer, I think.

I think we had a brighter game in the end.

So that's one part that I think deviated slightly.

There were parts in the game like originally I wanted to have no guns, basically because we found early on in playing the guns were really overpowered.

I sort of lost that battle over time, both to the community and to our art director.

Um so uh, but.

But we sort of compromised in some places, and I think we could have been more creative in other places too.

I don't think we did enough like science guns and stuff if I had to, you know, look back.

Um, who knows, maybe in the future we'll still add some.

Um, but I I uh, I think the game the gate early on.

We well, we have one of these old, this old, old sketch of a scientist that that Connor made.

And he had a filing cabinet on his chest and it said on the filing cabinet said brains over brawn.

And that was our motto through the whole thing.

Bob.

Right.

And every time we started straying from that we'd say oh remember Bob, you know, and it kept us on track a lot.

You know, we sort of you know, normally in the game it's kind of a power fantasy and you're just like dunking on the enemy or whatever.

We really had to invert that and keep it inverted the entire time.

And it was tough.

And it still is tough.

Even just every feature we add, we're like, is that making the player too powerful?

And that's the challenge.

And I think that is a different game than I sort of imagined.

I don't think, I don't think my original pitch involved so many little gadgets and things you make and all this stuff.

I think it was, it was a much simpler game too.

It definitely wasn't like a three year development game.

I think I told Henry six months and we're good.

Don't worry about it.

Um he, he reminds me of that uh frequently.

Uh, that I said that.

Um, I'm putting it on the tombstone.

Oh, um, yeah.

So uh no, you're dying before me, by the way, I'm going to uh so um, but i actually i uh yeah i'm i'm uh, i.

I think i'm very proud of what we made and i don't i i think i've made enough games at this point to know that you'll never make the exact thing you you want to make.

There will always be some compromises, there will always be changes.

Um, you kind of asked earlier about like, how was the development?

I mean, there were moments in development where we're like this game is not working at all.

How are we going to ship this thing in, even a year, like in the state it's in?

And and also like, how are we going to ship this?

Uh with, with the, the objectives don't work or something like they just don't make sense to the player.

How do we explain it to the player?

And we came up with solutions.

We're like okay, you know, npcs are like signposts.

They tell you where to go.

Next, you got to find more of them.

Sometimes we'll like add more npcs in because we felt like one the world was a little too lonely.

But also um, you know, players just couldn't figure out where to go.

So it's like cool, just have someone tell them.

You know, maybe they say it in a poetic way or something but Um, that was one thing.

Um, early on we had, we knew we wanted sectors like okay, we want an office sector manufacturing security, hydro plant, whatever.

Uh, that was all planned really early.

I even have like gray box of of the hydro plant like damn from like probably first few months of development.

We were like looking at how to build that area out.

Um, and then we rebuilt it all when we actually got to it.

Uh, But we had all the doors open originally where you could start an office sector and just kind of wander into sectors, and it didn't work.

The game wasn't working.

It was like too easy.

We couldn't figure out how to keep the player from just like walking into a high tier sector and getting high tier loot right away without like really lame restraints.

Like, oh, you can't break that box without a tool that's better or something.

We didn't want to do that.

It felt too, I guess it felt too gamey.

I guess it didn't feel as like realistic the way we wanted.

Yeah, too artificial, I guess.

But we ended up going, okay, cool.

So what if we did a more linear experience and we're like okay, you're gated at these points, but within that area you can explore all over the place.

And then you go to the next place, explore all over the place, like biomes or whatever.

And that really, that sort of solved a lot of problems.

But originally we were planning like the whole facility would just be kind of open and you could just wander it.

But that comes with a million problems that our storyline actually solved quite well, so that was uh, very stressful.

I was gonna ask about that um because you you had mentioned, i guess, that the, the story, was a very big part of of crafting the experience.

So is it something that you started working on as early as just the, the sort of gameplay prototypes?

You said you had an idea for the beginning and the end of the game, like early on.

So yeah where, where and how did that sort of work in terms of thinking about story at the same time that you were were building like what was that process?

I'd say we had a um, like an idea always right, we always knew where we wanted to go.

Yeah, like i'm not, i'm not imagining that right uh no no, i think i think my first pitch didn't have story.

That's why i was like oh, six months, right.

I was thinking like we could just make a fun co-op game.

I've got the original picture right here.

It's so good.

It's a small, small scale co-op survival game inside a science facility inspired by half-life one crafting survival game, but indoors brutalism and trams.

Yeah.

Six months.

Yeah.

Six months.

Boom.

Um, and, and, uh, uh, that original pitch didn't really have like a ton of story.

Cause I thought it wasn't really important.

I was like.

I was like well, we will, we'll have like the facility and, you know, maybe we'll have a couple NPCs or something.

But it'll be kind of more like funny right.

Like just um, Like the Half-Life 1 NPCs, where they're just kind of running around yelling and stuff and they can follow you and help you.

And then at some point, probably around the same time, we were having the door problem and all this other stuff we got really heavy into like okay, hold on.

The story is actually not just a small part of the game.

It's actually the part we also enjoy about the game.

There's a huge tie here to the rest of the world.

And Henry can probably talk more about the evolution of that.

I mean, it was...

It's that slightly dark souls-y thing of like us falling in love with the environment and the way the environment was telling a story to us and us wanting to know more about that story and then evolving it in our heads.

And, as we realized, it became like the story that we started telling was one of the mechanisms for guiding and gaining progress.

And it just kept sort of reinforcing itself that the story here, this world where we were creating, had a history and we were kind of almost unearthing it.

And I think the way we created it in the game is actually quite similar to the way the players experience it, which was quite rewarding.

But we fell in love with it.

And again, it's that less is more thing.

We just like a world that speaks for things much larger than itself that we don't fully ever resolve.

It should exist and evoke ideas inside the players' minds.

And then, as we went through, I would also argue that it was the story that really started telling us how to make the game, what the experience needed to feel like and be where these beats needed to happen.

I'm also a big believer in narrative design as a production tool as well, because it will tell you what your art assets need to look like.

It'll tell you if you're getting really tired.

It'll generate you a list of audio assets, if you let it.

And it was enough of an organic process.

There weren't major beats in it for me in terms of the way we were working on it.

It just felt like unearthing.

This then, where we started at A and about here, realized how important it was, then i knew where we wanted to end and so it was actually just a case of like building it as we went and at each stage we roughly knew exactly what we wanted to happen.

Yeah, we invented new characters.

We found okay the the uh, the thing we want to do or solve here will be sold by this character x.

And who is that person?

Oh, it's um, it's carl hill, you know um, uh.

But it felt very much like unearthing, something that almost already existed.

And we were just sort of revealing it to ourselves and then to players.

I think creativity kind of works that way, at least for me.

It feels like I personally don't feel like I have ideas a lot.

I feel like I just sort of arrive at them and they're always there.

I was like, oh, that makes perfect sense.

I'm sure I'll look back in like a year at the next thing we're working on and go yeah, that was always just kind of the shape was always there.

I was just trying to figure out the edges of it.

That's a very good way to put it, though, unearthing it, yeah.

That's a lot how ABF felt, was just almost discovering the game as we built it.

Yeah, I think that's a good thing.

I mean, good design is like that, though.

Good design sort of indicates to you what it needs.

And when you're straying from the path, if you are paying attention, And story is a huge part of that.

I also think the big thing for us was that we were looking at a genre that is very story light generally.

I mean, you've got games like Nautica, Sons of the Forest that have these stories in them, but they're still quite light and they're not necessarily co-op.

But there we were offering an experience that was both co-op and had a story.

And people were like, and we ourselves were like well, if you had a story, and does that really limit replayability?

Is that a risk?

Is this a thing that is this way actually being dumb here?

Are we, are we going to shoot ourselves in the foot?

People are going to play it for a while and then bugger off.

But what we discovered is that it's actually like the biggest hook in the game that I'd say.

I'd say that the level experience, the level design and the story, which are hugely, hugely interconnected right.

That this is what people say most often about the game.

I love the level design.

I love the story.

And then, the uh the replayability element is actually just the fact that if you play abiotic factor with different people it's a different game you experience it differently if you um if you play it single player versus co-op it's a different game so there is that or there is that that churn that um that replayability there but it's almost like an epiphenomena uh it's i i want to talk about the solo and co-op stuff shortly but before i do that i do want to just ask about the tone, because it's so, to me, impressive that you were able to strike this balance between something that has stakes, that is genuinely scary in moments, but then also has this, it's an absurdity to it.

The word goofy keeps popping into my head, and I'm like, it's not that, it's not goofy, it's absurd.

But it's also got like yeah, there's like real darkness and real stakes.

It's so elevated in some points that it tilts back into the absurd, and so I wonder if those things are able to feed off each other.

Again if I'm just making shit up, but I'm so impressed that you're able to balance comedy and drama.

That gave me a really consistent and clear piece of direction very early on.

Do you remember that, Z?

What you said?

You need to repeat it.

Remind us.

I mean, you were just like, look, it's the situation.

The game is serious.

The game is a serious game.

But the situations that players find themselves in, and some of the characters find themselves in, give rise to the absurdity and the comedy.

And that as a guide for a writer, as a reason to just do that, was like oh yeah cool, I got you.

Yeah um uh, the.

The tone's always been so weird because like okay, so it.

The game kind of started out as like what, if funny scientists i mean, you've probably seen some of the scientist memes, right like the half-life one scientist guy yelling ah stop, or whatever, you know, it's all, it's all all over the internet at this point there's kind of a zeitgeist of half-life, i think lately too um, which i think we we correctly predicted when we started abf um kind of saw this sort of trending curve of memes coming back.

Um, But it started out kind of as meme-y, kind of funny.

But when you look at Half-Life, even you see this.

You see, you know, the scientists are quite funny.

Maybe not totally intentionally.

I don't think Valve.

Originally I think they even said in the documentaries they're like we didn't like how goofy it got.

But it's one of the biggest things people remember about Half-Life is it's kind of goofy.

The voice acting is kind of funny.

But people can also be like jibbed and turned into skulls and meat and stuff.

So it's like very brutal, right?

And violent.

And I think that was sort of we sort of followed on that same trend.

We're like, OK, so we sort of want things to be whimsical, but but also gritty.

And and there's a serious the serious threats here.

And then, as we got deeper into kind of the stuff, the environment subjects, which of course are based or inspired by kind of SCP style things which I'm a big fan of.

I like cosmic horror.

I like objects you can't look at or you go crazy.

I like gazing into the abyss type stuff.

I like creatures that don't follow the normal rules of physics.

Just things that manifest strangely to to people and humans.

And I think we all have weird dreams and things occasionally that make us realize the human consciousness and the way we uh view the world is not exactly how it probably is.

It's probably just what, what we perceive.

Right.

And so I like tapping into that just through all of our stuff that you know doing, things that are for lack of a better word kind of fucked up, like you know having having ISs that are just sort of way too messy for humans to be interacting with.

And this, this organization gate, is trying to figure out how to constrain them and contain them and study them.

And it's, it's just this constant push and pull between the horrors of the universe, or other universes even, and like our human existence, as frail as it is.

Right.

Yeah.

I love that shit too.

All of the above.

Yeah.

We make the player very frail.

Right.

And and we kind of, I think we we, we almost sort of set up that um, you know, the contrast is very, very wide right.

Uh between um, the things you're up against and how unprotected you are uh and, and and.

Science is here to save you.

Right.

Um, and of course that's you know.

That gets into some of our story, like is science.

You know, maybe have they gone too far this time, type stuff.

You know, we have a lot of kind of conversations like that in the game.

Uh, and, um, And Derek Mance, of course, delivers all of that perfectly, I think.

And the bureaucracy behind it as well.

Anyway yeah, it's all I think the whole thing is.

It's this sort of it's sort of wrapped in an irony.

But it's a serious, you know, we treat it very seriously as a survival scenario.

It's just everything else around it is the absurdity and the dark kind of dark comedy around it as well.

Well, I don't know.

Bravo.

Thank you.

People talk about comedy and darkness like they're opposed, but they're not really.

I mean, humans' natural response to a lot of threats or terror beyond your immediate ability to process it is often irony, absurdity. like comedy, cracking dad jokes.

I feel like they actually sit a lot closer together than people say.

And I'm trying to think of recent films that have handled this really well.

For some reason I'm getting everything everywhere all at once.

As an example of what sort of tones will just sit actually quite comfortably together if you let them.

I love it.

All right.

So i think zag, it was you that said at one point in an interview that, like you're not the biggest fan of survival games.

So i'm curious if one, if that was like a misquote uh, or two, if if it, if there's truth to it, and sort of how it inspired the decisions that you made in approaching because because i think you're right, there are, it is a survival game, but it It dispenses with some of the I think we would agree, the more tedious or repetitive elements.

And so I'm just curious to get your thoughts on the genre and whether or not that was a true quote.

Yeah.

I think a lot of survival games are really boring.

It's a true quote.

PC Gamer got it right.

I, i i find a lot of survival games very boring.

I find a lot of them just ticking off boxes and going through the motions and they got the hunger and the thirst and all this other stuff, but they don't have anything of substance to take away from them.

You kind of if you like grinding, you've got the grind, if you like, just kind of being in a world.

You sometimes have that.

I think a We've all played like early access survival game number 27 in the forest, with like trees, chopping and picking up rocks.

And then like there's no like wind or anything or ambience in the air, because it's like not finished yet.

And it's like it's like well, if you're going to ship the game out to the public, like make sure it has some of the mood in the atmosphere.

I don't know if I'm that good of a game developer.

I don't think I we've like turned the survival genre on its head or anything and done some new thing really, but I think we know how to get our tone right and our mood and the atmosphere of the game.

And I think like if you look at our creators recently right, that's like 90 of the battle is just getting like a place people want to exist in, you know.

And I think a lot of games really, they, they focus on all these mechanics, you know?

I worked on Icarus so I can talk about it negatively.

Icarus has added like their 50th crafting bench to the game.

And I'm like, that's fine.

But like, where's the, the meat of it?

I mean, they've added some really cool stuff on right, but my point is like that, when i was working on icarus uh, there were no aliens or anything.

There weren't even planets in the sky.

And i was in the, in the studio, like i was well, i was remote from here, but i was, i was in the meetings and i was like guys what, what a space game game, space aliens, what's going on here?

Why aren't we?

You know, and and um uh, those came around eventually, i think.

Uh, i haven't quite received but um, i find a lot of survival games are just sort of doing mechanics and And more things.

And just flooding continent.

But it's so meaningless.

And it's so.

It's just iterations of the same thing.

And it's.

There's just something about the repetition of it.

And kind of playing.

I play one game.

And it's got the same mechanics.

And I play another game.

And it looks different.

But it's got the same mechanics that I just played.

And no story to like set it apart.

And it's just like.

My my personal like I'll try out a survival game on Next Fest.

My timer is like 10 minutes per game almost before I'm just like, you know, not interested.

But I'm also a pretty harsh critic, not of my own work and other people's work, I think.

So maybe maybe that's just me.

But I think it definitely is.

Why ABF came out the way it did is because there's so many things about survival norms that I'm not a huge fan of, and we try to avoid them at all costs where possible.

Yeah.

There's a couple of critical ones, right?

We just inverted the obvious ones being inside rather than outside, being smart rather than strong, you know.

And it doesn't take a lot to really kind of give the whole thing a completely different vibe.

But I'd say one of Zag's strengths as a designer is is Vibe.

I joke that our company does two things.

We make vibey co-op games, but it's not too far from the truth.

I think the point about Vibe is really important and I think you're right especially to distinguish or stand out when to your point even about Steam, that every day there's 10 billion more games on there and I think Vibe is hard to quantify, especially for like bean counters.

So i think it helps a lot that you are the ceo and also get to insist on vibes first.

So i don't know, i'm just saying plus one to that.

I keep doing that.

I think it is something that helps.

Uh one, distinguish your, your company and your games.

But like makes for better, better product right, because we're all looking to escape into places and the the more i don't know personality or or feeling of place or space that a game provides you with, the more likely you are to spend hours and hours inside of it.

The other thing I want to ask you about, because this was really interesting to me, is I put in, I want to say like 70, 80 hours into the game.

And I still have more to do.

But I've been distracted.

I have work.

And I don't know.

I'm going to get back to it.

But I played it entirely solo.

And I feel like you were talking about how the games you build are really meant to be played co-op.

And it's just interesting to me because I felt like my experience was enhanced by being solo and alone in there.

That was just sort of the story I told myself.

And now I'm really interested in trying it out with a couple of friends just to see how it changes things.

But I am really interested.

It's just interesting to me that it seems like you came at it from a co-op first, whereas I still feel like the setup feels so much more.

I don't know solo right.

Even just taking something like Half-Life as an example.

It is about that lone scientist thrust into this insane place.

I'm wondering, and I'll just play it to figure out what some of my experiences would be like.

I forget the name of the place, but when you're going down the hallways where the car is and you've got the things spawning behind you, you've got to go through the portals and to into like the blood realm like i don't know what that would be like with three other people like that felt like very like near even being in hydro like it was really fucking hard at first um and i feel like it may have been easier if i had had people i don't know if the game scales and so i would have had a similar experience but i i'd be curious the thing i'm most curious about or at least that i that i that you may have the information about is like do you have telemetry for the game do you know like what percentage of people play alone versus co-op do you find that there's it's weighted more towards one than the other and then more interestingly to me maybe it's like do you also find that there's a difference in perception of the experience based on whether people play solo co-op or if it is similar just i'm just curious about all of that and feel like you'd have access to that data um yeah so so we we do have a little bit of data um we did more analytics early on and we kind of stopped as much recently but We definitely did analytics during our playtests early on before early access launch, where we had some closed playtests, essentially.

And it was really interesting because we found in the playtest, more people played solo.

But we found after release, actually, more people played co-op.

And we were sort of thrown off too, because we worked on Icarus, which had a really high solo player count.

So our expectations were set a certain way, going into deep field and making about a factor um, but one one of our core pillars was always it has to be fun in solo play, like it has to be.

We yes, we're co-op first, but but we, we had to make sure solo play worked because we knew, at the end of the day, it's hard to get friends together.

Sometimes you know that one guy isn't there.

So what are you going to do?

Just not play?

Well, you go start your own, your own campaign or whatever right, um?

So it's, it's um, I guess.

I mean, the experience is definitely different and we do have scaling and we do, we do all that kind of stuff.

I think one of the main things I find when playing with friends is we can delegate tasks.

So you're not you don't feel the burden is spread out.

I mean, it's just, it's the same as any.

Any game really, I think, is sort of you feel less like things are dependent on you.

Yeah, you can.

You can offload some of that, that mental load and stuff, and so it's maybe less daunting a little bit.

It's a little safer.

Um, it's harder to do horror with multiple players, which is why we thought the layak was so great, because it sort of would scare one player at a time.

Uh, and that worked out fantastically.

Like, we have people still asking to remove that from the game and we're like no, that's like the heart of abf, like we're not touching that um.

So I did spend several hours trying to just get it back in its containment and eventually gave up.

I just zap it with the light and farm the stuff.

Well, I was reading a Reddit thread the other day and they're like, actually I kind of like the Layak.

It's sort of like having a friend around, so I'm not feeling as lonely.

She'll show up occasionally.

I'm like, great.

That's awesome.

You freak.

Anyway, no, but... That balance between solo and co-op is hard, though, eh?

That's tough.

It was always something at the forefront of our minds, right?

Like I said, it's a pillar, you know?

I think, in any given co-op game particularly, you know, survival games, making it fun for both single players and groups scaled up.

It's so hard.

For us.

I mean, you get the natural kind of interplay between the solo player has more resources but has to spend more time doing stuff, whereas the multiple players have more manpower and can go out and get more stuff, but then they clear the area out faster and have to go further afield.

And you spend more time waiting.

You spend more time waiting for your player to be done or like oh, I got to run to the bathroom real quick.

On solo, you don't have to wait for that guy.

I'd argue that it's two very different experiences.

And I mean, maybe not very different, but definitely two quite contrasting experiences.

And you see people talking online about hey, I really recommend, if you play cop, go and do a single player run.

It's really different uh, and that goes back to that kind of replayability thing i was talking about.

Yeah, i mean, i think there is something inherently built in that way, because i think that when i eventually play it with other people, it will be a different experience right, because it's it's now not just the story of the place and the people in it, it's the story of the group that i'm i'm working with or fighting with.

But there were definitely times i wish i did have other people with me, if only to like have someone to deal with growing crops or going fishing, because there were like things i wanted to do, but then i was i i was pulled to like want to progress also.

So yes, i i am looking forward to eventually um getting to do that.

All right, what else do i want to ask you?

Um, i just a little bit about like the early access of it all and like how that does or doesn't in inform the, the sort of development and evolution like were there big discoveries during early access or was it?

Did you go into early access for other reasons?

I'm mentioned playtests, but i assumed those were more internal and then friends and family stuff and not necessarily based on on stuff from early access, or am i wrong?

And there was a period where you were using that to like figure things out?

We did, we did pretty solid playtesting for each update.

So every update had a playtesting phase that we got data back from um.

Uh, maybe that's not exactly your question, but that the uh i would ask i would say that weren't so much discoveries and early access, except i mean except the discovery directly after early access where people were like really, really excited by this game.

I mean i got this text from zag like on the saturday or something he's like, if i'm reading this correctly, it looks like 50 000 people have bought our game in the last two days and we were like okay um and, but the cycle was basically, you know um, drop early access, develop content.

Uh, listen very, very closely to what people were saying.

I mean, and early access was forced to us because we didn't feel like the game we could ship at 10 at that point would have been the game we wanted.

So it was like, well, obviously, it's broken up into sectors.

Therefore, we had this luxury of saying, okay, the first four are looking really good.

Drop those.

People go through it.

Figure out what they like and what they're breaking and what they don't like.

Let that inform how you construct the next areas and then rinse and then drop those rinse and repeat.

My take is similar.

I don't think ABF could have been built the way it was built without early access.

I think there were too many unknowns about, like I think we.

You know, with a multi-year project there's some luxury of a shipping on early access without needing to.

So we weren't like, we weren't bleeding money and needing to make sales immediately.

Right.

So we did it very deliberately in the time we wanted to do it.

It wasn't forced on us in that way.

It was forced on us, I think, like Henry suggests, in the design realm.

Making a game over several years and seeing how people pivot over time.

I don't recommend developers just chase what the community says.

But there is something about having a plan and then letting it sort of permutate as the community gives you feedback and plays it.

And this is where that narrative kind of story like linearity kind of helped, where it's like OK, office goes to manufacturing, manufacturing goes to labs.

We could drop the sectors actually in chunks as we progress the story.

And if we were more open world game, I don't think that would have worked as well.

It would have worked okay.

But I think for ABF, it was almost perfect.

It really was a coordinated decision to go to early access.

And we took a few risks with it um, and we worked really hard to make sure those updates weren't too far apart.

We got a lot of good feedback about how prompt we were in early access, because a lot of games that'll be like eight months no contact um, and uh uh, i think it.

I yeah, i think what we built couldn't have been built without the community like it was.

It was critical um, were there any specific things that came out of early access that like hadn't been on your radar, that went into the game as a result of like off talking to the community?

Yeah yeah, i mean, i mean probably probably a bunch, but but it was, i'd say it's a hundred little things, i think all the big stuff and a lot of the quality of life.

We were like yeah, we want to do that.

Yeah, that's planned.

You know we, we anticipated their needs quite well.

I, i don't want to like brag too much, i'm really not trying to but like, look back and there's so many things.

We were like we think this will be a problem and it was, and we were ready for it or predicted it or fixed it before it became a big problem and i'm just really, i'm really proud of our planning um uh, and our perception of the road ahead.

Uh and, and early access would let us do that.

Basically um, If we don't do early access in the future for a title, we're probably still going to have some kind of core early access group that's playing it through development, because getting that feedback is so critical.

I think way too many developers don't put their games in front of enough people who are really going to play it.

They're scared like, oh, if I give it access to 100 people, they won't buy the game.

In the end, they'll just use it as a demo.

It's like yeah, but if those hundred people don't play it, those hundred thousand are never going to play it.

Right.

Like you got to look at the big picture.

Um, but yeah.

And, and some of them were brutal.

I mean we had we had an internal playtest group that was doing all the updates before we got to them.

And we had a couple of people in there kind of like implode, like with.

They're like this game shit, you're never listening to us.

And they like fucking left or whatever.

And, um, And they were probably right.

A lot of the stuff we were doing was shit, but we applied a lot of that feedback and we made it happen.

It's better to get that bad feedback as early as possible and not in the Steam reviews after you ship it.

It does also put you on the line because you've actually got to service it.

If you don't really access it, you have to get those updates.

You have to do what you say you're going to do and you're in, you and you, and there's a time frame, so you need to be quite um rigorous with yourself and with your team about hey, this is, these are our goals, this is what we're doing and we're gonna, we're gonna hit that date and then we're gonna do it again, and then we're gonna do it again and you know uh, so it becomes, you're shading into like lives, not quite live service, but it's there's just, it's quite, it's quite tight.

Do you have a dedicated like community person that liaises directly with them?

Or is it something that different people on the team jump in to do?

Um we, we have chris doing our marketing and uh, community management.

She sort of wears two hats right now.

Um, but i also step in and do a lot of.

I just talk to the community a lot.

I try to get on discord and just answer questions.

I usually like to do it in a way where i'll like grab a random question and reply and it'll spook everybody a little bit like, oh shit, they're reading everything, they're watching everything um, and we are, we are uh but um, the melinda gates approach yeah yeah the the, the death audit or whatever um so uh uh, but we we um we, really uh, i i would say, talking with the community and keeping them like pacified between updates is really smart um, but but henry's right, it was, it was shading into kind of live service, like hitting, hitting update every three or four months is is our size was quite a lot.

Um, we definitely like ran the team a bit ragged.

We're trying to sort of ease off that a bit, but we do know like people need updates.

So it's you know.

So we're scaling up a little bit is what we're really doing, um to get more hands on deck.

Um, but we, uh, we, we, I think without the community, like we wouldn't have what we have.

And so, uh, we better be talking to them and listening to them throughout everything yeah that's that's been it's been huge very random and maybe the answer is no but was there ever anything that the that large portion of the community was like you need to do this and you were like absolutely not and you sort of stuck to your guns on it and it turned out to be correct uh guns actually um firearms yeah so so we've had i mean i i i said earlier i kind of lost the battle um yeah this feels like it's been a recurring thing the guns yeah man uh we okay so we had like we had like okay you could get the pistol at the end of manufacturing and then you go into manufacturing and you just start headshotting all the the soldiers and then it's like okay we'll put an accuracy thing on it and it's like okay cool but then um players complain like they can't grind accuracy enough to fight the soldiers And then it's like, okay, well, we need to give them other options, right?

So it was this battle of how do we make guns harder to get, still able to get, still fun when you get them and worth it, but also not overpowered and making everything else in the game inconsequential.

And that was the hardest thing.

And I've had scathing reviews on Steam and stuff where they're just like oh, the whole gun system's stupid.

Like, why can't we just pick up a gun and run around like Gordon Freeman?

And it's like, we're just not making that game.

And it's been so back and forth.

I mean, internally, externally, everything.

I'd say I've mostly stuck to my guns on it.

I don't think I succeeded completely.

And I'm not so proud that we didn't come up with maybe some better alternatives.

But...

It is what it is.

And I think it kind of worked out in the end.

It goes to everything though.

It goes to vibe.

It goes to, it goes to pillars.

It goes to like the fundaments of design.

It goes to the experience that we intend.

Right.

So like everything is, everything we understand is saying no, no.

And, and people, I mean, I love our community to death.

I'm so happy with our community.

My God, they're wholesome.

And I just I have.

He's about to say something mean about the community all the time in the universe.

I will say, No, no, that's what I mean about humanity, is that people know what they want, but not necessarily what they need.

Yeah, yeah.

If you give players everything they want, they'll have less fun.

Even if they're really passionate about it and they think the game sucks, it's like they're probably still having more fun than if we did what they wanted.

No, I think that's really fair.

I think you're right.

I think if you just dumped in a bunch of guns and made it a super easy, it would almost be like a cheat code and then it would lose some of its appeal.

For what it's worth, when I played, I rarely used the guns.

I was so nervous about being able to repair them because the repair cost at the time seemed high.

Now I've found more and more of them, but like it got me to just stick with, like building melee weapons, mostly spears.

I like the like fast speed, the sledgehammer.

Yeah, I like the speed.

I feel like I've like found my groove.

Um, i guess we're slowly running out of time, but i want to ask a few more things, so i'll just like skip some of this stuff.

Um, you know, this one could be fun.

And maybe when, when and how did you like know that you succeeded?

Was it before launch?

Was it at launch?

Like yeah, when was the moment that you were like okay, we've got something here?

Um, it was uh, it was.

It was like a month ago when someone made a 20 out-of-bounds secrets video about Abotic Factor and I was like that's it, we've made it.

We're now one of the games people are doing the out-of-bounds secret videos about.

They care enough to go look at all our lore.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's my mark.

Yeah, I saw people cosplaying the Halloween last Halloween and that was like oh oh, it's like that now yeah, but more more seriously, i mean i mean we knew we were onto something good um, i mean early access launch was pretty good uh um, and and then i mean one point i was kind of pretty nerve-wracking in a way um, but it's, it's maintained.

It's what's weird about abf is it's never had like a massive, like you know, huge mountain.

It's almost been like, it kind of went high and then kind of stayed high.

And it's kind of been.

It's like how steep is the tail right now is kind of where we're looking at it.

And, um, it's just really healthy.

It's like, it's just healthy.

And it's, it's, it feels so it doesn't feel like viral phenomenon, but it feels stable.

And that's what we like.

We like stability.

Um, as as as whimsical as ABF looks on the outside, um deepfield is this very tightly run, well-oiled machine and we're very strict and stringent about production things and how we run things internally.

And having having a runway of of x number of years to pay everybody and keep making games is like all i could ever hope for and that's what we have.

So yeah um, when i when i think we looked at um, we looked at uh, you know, um 10 bonuses or Christmas bonuses or whatever, and we were talking about the team and what we can afford and all this other stuff.

That's kind of when it sunk in.

I was like, oh, wow, we have done well.

It's so hard to actually isolate metrics in a way. yeah yeah it's so hard to know yeah it yeah it is because we never really interact you you see it from so many different angles you get like maybe someone made a video over here or some some cosplay over here or made like uh uh you or you go and you see like we were in china and like somewhere comes up to me and he's some kind of scam he's like check it out and there's like there's a video of abf with like a million views on billy billy and i'm like wow i had no idea uh and it's it's one of those things i guess i'm like it's sort of you you you look you vaguely understand every time you're confronted with new evidence of it but once that's out of your face the feeling goes away and you're just making the game again and it's almost like fresh every time for me actually every time someone comes up to me or someone goes like who makes a game that i know it's like hey i really like your game and i'm like rad you know uh so um it's just it's one of those sort of it's like one of those myriad things that you infer from but you never see that you never you never see the thing itself maybe if that makes any sense yeah and there's to add on more sorry there's uh there's also like little moments where like i'll get an email where someone's like this is you know my top five games or like or they'll talk about um i think some guy said he played with his he's playing with his dad or something you know and um uh there's just moments like that where you're like there's some there's some guy or some kid or something playing this game, you know, at the age I was playing games that had a huge impact on me.

And it's like, we're that game for them.

That's yeah.

I think that's, I think that's all I could really want as a creative person.

So has your dad played the game?

Oh yeah, he's not very good at it, he didn't get very far.

I, i keep making, i keep trying to make him play it.

Uh, he's just real busy.

He gave us really he gave us good early play to play, his feedback.

So you hit, you know, play test with him and you came out.

Yes, also he, he plays a lot of valheim, so he plays their game.

Uh um yeah, that's such a parent thing, that's like the perfect parent analogy.

I have one of those as well.

Just quickly, like very early on, almost like the second playtest we ever did.

Maybe even like the first one where other people outside the company could come in.

So like really, really, really early friends and family.

I didn't know this, but my brother, my brother and my dad jumped in and were playing together.

And I don't know if they've ever played a game together, you know.

But at that point I was like wow, that's like, that's like literally why I'm making games.

And like, that's in hindsight, you should have seen that stuff and gone.

I think we're onto something, you know?

All right.

I mean, I think on that we can, we can wrap it up.

I don't want to keep you much longer.

It's been an hour and a half.

Wow.

Um, I really appreciate you both taking the time to sit down and I don't know, humor me this way.

I'm, I'm just, I really appreciate it.

Uh, I'm, I am, I'm certain that the people that watch this will too.

I think that your, your story, your company, um, Your success, it's all very inspirational.

And yeah, I don't know.

Congratulations.

I'm so happy that it's all working out.

I love your game.

I'm going to continue playing it.

I'm going to try not to be part of the machine that makes you produce content constantly.

But I'm excited to see more, experience more.

And now you've hinted that there's potentially a new game coming someday.

So now I'm even more excited.

So yeah, thank you.

Yeah, we've got lots planned.

Yeah, we're really happy to keep working on it.

Me too.

It's good.

Awesome.

And we like talking about it as well.

So thank you for giving us the excuse.

Yeah, part two.

We're going to do part two at some point.

Yeah, there we go.

Thank you for joining us for the Game Maker's Notebook.

For more information on the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, our podcasts and our other initiatives, please visit wwwinteractiveorg.

[The Art of Co-op Survival: A Deep Dive into Abiotic Factor with Deepfield]-[Abiotic Factor with Geoff "Zag" Keene and Henry Feltham]

📋 Summary

Crafting Co-op Excellence: Insights from Deepfield

The Roots of Collaboration

The "Vibe" and Design Philosophy

The Power of Early Access

Balancing Comedy and Horror

Looking Forward

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Art of Co-op Survival: A Deep Dive into Abiotic Factor with Deepfield]-[Abiotic Factor with Geoff "Zag" Keene and Henry Feltham]

📋 Summary

Crafting Co-op Excellence: Insights from Deepfield

The Roots of Collaboration

The "Vibe" and Design Philosophy

The Power of Early Access

Balancing Comedy and Horror

Looking Forward

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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