hey everyone and welcome to the level design lobby you're joining me your host lead level designer max pears but not just my silky smooth tones will be glistening on your ears today that sounded way more sexual than i meant it to but i'm joined by the incredible art director and all-around great guy from the opposite side of the world prashant thank you very much for joining me mate glad to be here i'm excited to do this yeah man and thank you very much for taking the time like i said we're on opposite ends of the world right now but it's great to be able to chat with you today about so much that's going on and for yourself mate you as introduced you you are that of the art director and now co-founder and towards that of look north world how is the new venture going for you mate um it's it's been great uh it's been amazing we Yeah, we started about two years ago.
I think we're a little over two years.
I think June, July of next year will hit our three-year mark.
And it's been quite an adventure.
I haven't worked at a company that moves so quickly and is so fast-paced.
The timeline for the games we work on is anywhere between three to six months, so very rapid iteration.
And sometimes we have just so many projects happening simultaneously.
I think there was one point in our company where there were like 14 or 15 projects happening kind of like all at once and you know we, we had to divide the team and sort of um, you know, gather resources, partners to kind of like fulfill.
You know all the games that we were working on.
So yeah it's, it's just been crazy, it's it's unlike any other game studio or process i've been part of, you know.
So it's it's, it's been great.
That's great to hear man, and I really want to break that down with you and again hear about your process and you know, like you said, managing 15 projects and especially in a director level as well.
It must be hard to keep your eye across all projects in that sense, man.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, what we ended up doing was we, we basically split the team in half.
We figured like, you know, there were two art people on the team, like full time.
So we were like okay, like you know, one art person on one team.
The other art person will be managing the art on the other team.
And we did that down the line.
We had a designer on each team.
We had an engineer on each team.
And then we primarily relied on co-dev partners external co-dev partners to actually make the game.
And we operated more as a publishing studio between the client, between the dev partner, to get the games done and out the door.
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Wow, man.
That sounds like, yeah, quite a lot to manage, but also, like you say, a new perspective.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, very much so.
So...
I said, do you want to take us back a little bit first and go really interesting?
Like what brought you into games?
How did this all come about for you, mate?
So I, you know, I'm sure like most people, I grew up playing video games.
Of course.
I also, you know, I watched a lot of anime.
I was really into cartoons and I, I primarily have like an art background.
You know, I, I grew up drawing and painting and absolutely loved it.
I was very much influenced by video games.
I was playing at the time, comic books I was reading and I think I remember very distinctly the first time I played like Street Fighter 2 at my friend's house and just like loving the character design and like loving the style.
Right.
And trying to figure out.
Like you know, I didn't see a lot of games in the US kind of like have this, this like style of art direction and character design.
And I was like, oh, it's made by this company named Capcom.
And I started to go through this rabbit hole of, like you know, kind of like japanese art styles for for fighting games primarily um, you know, fell in love with that.
But yeah, i went to school for for art.
I knew i was going to be an artist somehow, didn't know what industry or you know where, where i was going to end up.
I got a degree in illustration painting from purdue and then i had a few friends who knew about uh nomen.
It's a school in los angeles.
Have you heard of this?
Yes yeah so yeah, so this, i mean this yeah this, this school was um like uh, life changer for me, right?
It was a school where, if you have any sort of artistic background or inkling and you want to enter the games industry or the movie industry as an artist like, they basically take those skills and teach you all the digital tools and the pipelines you know to enter the industry.
At the time I was there, I feel like it was a lot of it was focused on entering into films, like doing kind of like high end like 3D models, VFX work and stuff.
But I feel like there was always people there who wanted to enter games.
You know there were people there who were like excited to you know be part of Blizzard or Riot or Naughty Dog.
And those companies were also like, you know, around LA too, right?
So you also had kind of like the reinforcement of like, oh, like they're right here.
And you know devs from those companies would visit and like give talks and even teach some of the classes.
So I feel like when I was closer to the games industry in LA I started to kind of see that as like viable option.
And it was exciting, right?
Like anyone would love to work in video games.
You know especially, you know, if you're in your mid to early twenties, it's like a, it's like a dream job, right.
So yeah, after Gnomen, I actually got a job at a studio called Gentle Giant.
So it's based out of Burbank.
They primarily worked on like mech heads for like Star Wars and Marvel.
They did some VFX work and I worked doing like of like sculpting, like with lidar data and worked on some of the mech heads for for star wars and marvel here and there and yeah it was.
It was really neat.
I think it was my first job kind of like in the industry and i i felt like i really started to learn kind of like what, what it really meant right, to be a digital artist in the industry.
Luckily i had a.
I started to work on a, on a side project with a friend uh, doing some some concept art for a game that they were working on, right.
It was like, it was a fighting game.
They were working on Unreal Engine and they needed some like environment concepts and character concepts.
And one of the guys on the team, he was like, hey, I, you know, I'm working for a studio.
We actually need a concept artist.
You know, do you think you'd be interested in this?
And I was like, oh my God, yeah.
Like, you know, I didn't really have a concept portfolio at the time.
Like I had some stuff, wasn't really fully developed.
But I wanted to get my foot in the door, right?
Especially as a concept artist.
So he brought me to The studio was Industrial Toys, which was Alex Ropian and a bunch of ex-Bungie devs.
They were based in Pasadena.
I went to the studio.
I met everyone.
They were working on a first-person shooter for mobile at the time.
And like i love the aesthetic of it.
Right, it was like you're, you know you're on an alien planet you're you're, you're fighting aliens, you know it has this like sci-fi aesthetic and you know, they gave me an art test.
I took the test, worked super hard on it day and night.
Oh and i, there was something in there, you know i i look back at that test.
I'm like, oh my god, this is garbage.
There were, there were people at the studio who saw something in it, you know, and they're like, Let's bring this guy on right.
And so I started as a contractor with them for, I think it was about six months.
Came on full time.
And yeah, at Industrial Toys we worked on Midnight Star, which was the first versus shooter for mobile.
We got acquired by EA around 2018 to work on a Battlefield game.
And so, yeah, we were at EA for five years before they canceled the project.
That time I went from concept artist to senior to lead and to concept director.
It was a really interesting time, right?
Because we were a small studio.
We had to scale up like we were working on a huge franchise.
And so yeah, I got a lot of experience, just like you know, kind of becoming a leader.
Like you know shift the individual contributor to the leadership role.
You know managing teams working with outsourced partners.
And then yeah, after this was closed, a few of the, the people on on the team and i we came together to start uh look, north world.
Yeah, we started two years ago and or a little over two years ago, and now um, now we're here.
No man.
That's incredible and like i guess, how have you found?
You know, the industry's in a weird place right now, as we both know.
Everyone listening to this knows so to take that, you know, that leap forward, that risk.
And for you guys, you know, most companies fail after the first year.
So if you guys still be going on and still make an amazing thing, how does that feel?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I think we tapped into something that looks like it has future potential, right?
I think, working on UGC games and working on platforms like Fortnite and Roblox, I think we we noticed that that's where an audience is right.
That's where a younger generation is.
That's where they're playing games.
And you know, I think for us to partner with code devs, like externally, and then have this kind of aggressive dev timeline of like we must make a game.
It kind of felt like an alternative to building out these giant teams internally, dumping millions of dollars into a game that might take years to make and then not knowing you know the risk is so high at that point.
Like with what we're doing, we're able to take like shots on goal much more often right to see, like you know, what sticks, what we can be more successful.
We're not stuck to any one genre.
We can experiment with trends and, you know, what we think about our players.
And I think this strategy has worked for us so far.
Right, we were able to pivot if we need to, to scale up and ramp up if we need to and then, like you know, pare back down if we have to as well.
Because uh we, we have so many uh contracting partners and i was asking man like, how did how did this like tech come to your attention?
Because i first came across it?
You mentioned, like younger audience, you're seeing stuff with roblox, user generated content there.
The first time i saw it within fortnight which, as you mentioned, was actually with the tournament of wembley for tennis over here in the uk about a couple years back.
Yeah, and so, to see this stuff taken off, how did it come to your radar?
That's, that's a good question.
When we initially came together um, And we're like hey hey, like maybe we should form something like this.
So we had the idea.
You know, let's all kind of like come up with ideas, pitch it to one another and you know, see what seems like it has kind of like a viable future.
And there's also something fun that we want to work on, right?
At that time, I think it was only like five or six of us.
And you know we had just come from EA and, like you know, we just wanted to do something that, like we love, that resonated with us.
Yeah, and i think like, as we were kind of developing pitches and thinking about what we wanted to do, we saw that um, epic was like pouring more money and resources into uefn right, and really making this platform like almost like the future right of, you know, of unreal or or of fortnite, and really wanting, like devs, to come on board and and make something right.
And we, at that time, we also saw that you know it had been around for a few years, but i think, you know, within within like that year or a few months, like the tools had become like much more robust.
There was a lot more support.
And it really seemed like it was something that we should at least try.
You know, I don't think we thought of it as, like, this is our future necessarily.
But, like, there's something here, right?
And when you jump into UEFN, like, you know, a lot of us are familiar with Unreal Engine.
And UEFN is a version of Unreal Engine, right?
So it was easy for us to jump in and just start making.
You know, An engineer can jump in and start making.
A designer, an artist,
And we were seeing that, like, people were on UEFN, like, playing games.
We saw that the audience was there.
And so it was worth it for us to, like, try stuff.
Like, get in there, make something, put it out, you know, let's see if it works.
And at some point, we realized there's something here, you know, we should proceed.
And we all saw that other bands, he also wanted to have presence, you know, on the platform.
And we would.
They were coming to us and being like hey, like I have, you know, we have directors of these brands like, can you work with us to make a name?
And so, you know, they wanted to work with us.
Man, I wanted to ask then, because like you're saying, these brands are approaching you.
It's, as you said, like, I saw it through Wembley.
I've seen other, like, other brands work with this and that.
I guess my question is is Because it is such a quick turnaround time?
You guys are constantly working at that pace.
How do you guys try to keep your fingers on the pulse on what is working with the player audience?
Because there's so many, I imagine, options for the player.
How do you keep track of that?
Yeah.
I mean, we have people on the team who are constantly adding data, constantly analytics.
We also have people on the team who are like building up our community.
Actually, you know, tap to like what players want, right?
We can engage them, like, directly here, you know, what are they looking for?
Like you know, do they want their FS or, you know, do they want something a little different.
You know.
And I think so just to look at every time UEFA has update tools.
Also look at leveraging those, like sometimes you know there might be um like robust tools to racing game people.
You might start looking at that as, like you know, maybe we could go um, you know, there we should do, but i think, like engagement with our office um, and then just yet, analysts and and uh uh drive like decision make on on what types uh you know we should make next.
Yeah No, it's interesting again that you've got someone or a couple of people looking at that bit there.
And obviously, I imagine you're all keeping track of that.
And in this quick turnaround pipeline you've got mate.
You mentioned that you work with Outsource and other incredible people.
How do you find communicating, especially, you know, like we're connecting half across the world.
COVID brought more tech for us to all communicate remotely.
How has that been?
It's been...
You know, I think largely it's been positive and I honestly don't think we'd be where we are if we didn't have this energy of relying on partners.
I think a key to making this work is you know in the beginning, the partner we work with.
I don't think any of us had worked with them previously.
I think it was just a few of us had contacts in South America, knew of these studios existed, but we didn't have a first-hand experience.
So I think what we had to do initially was kind of have shorter contracts for kind of like oh, like let's do something really quickly with this partner and sort of see you know how smoothly things go.
You know, do things with the crowd.
You know, are there any uses on the internet that we dealt with?
And I think through that process we've found some developers that we're really working with, that we've been working with for years actually, who are out of South America.
I think the more we work with them, the longer the bond grows.
And the understanding, the expectation, how it works, how we work.
We need to supplement the dev process with more developers or whatnot?
It's been pretty good.
Because America is located on the Pacific in the West, our company is pretty much throughout the US.
We don't have a central location.
Because America is in three hours of us, it's time zone, right?
It's actually worse when you wake up way earlier.
I know that, you know, our teams in Philadelphia or in Colorado are all working.
And so, like I jump on and you know, make stuff by the early day of like our meetings and stuff like that.
So, I think there's been some adaptation.
You know, I think when we were working with At EA, we were working with a lot of partners.
And I feel that that difference can be a little painful, right?
We would always be like, who's going to stay on until 8 PM to take this call, right?
I remember me and two of the guys I work with, it's like, OK, I'll do it this time.
Or like, I did it last time, do it next time, that kind of thing.
But here, yeah, it doesn't get like that, which is good, because we can have some like life balance right we can kind of end like a set time um which is nice right i think you know you don't always have that so i guess that you're saying like the the time difference can be a struggle i worked with over some people over in the the philippines like a few years ago and yeah same thing like some of us had to wake up over like 5 a.m sometimes to then go meet and all of that it's a real challenge But I guess with that one, you mentioned as your career advanced, you've evolved into leadership and you're also mentioning about like working with the teams, time difference, different cultures in this.
I guess, how do you build that stronger bond?
Part of it is, as you mentioned, like the more projects you do.
But is there something that you do to like show hey, leading by example, this is what we're after.
Or hey, you're doing this really cool.
We can learn from that and apply it to our pipeline.
How does that kind of work for you?
Yeah.
It's a little bit of both actually.
There have been times when you know our dev partners, you know the ones we've worked with, they've gone out of their way to sort of like, do a proof of concept of something right.
Even you know, if they've, they might've heard that we're working on a project that we might have some questions about or don't know how to do.
And there've been times when you know they weren't on that project but they kind of went and did their own research and sort of did a proof of concept and said like Hey, we heard you were having trouble with this thing over here.
You know, we, we think we got something working.
Right.
So I think it's, yeah, I think it's like a two way street.
Um, you know, they've been able to, especially because they are the dev partners and honestly, like I think them and us are learning the limitations of like UFN or or whatever the platform is.
Right.
It's like this, this isn't a platform that we've all been working with for 10 years.
And it's not the same as working with Unreal Engine, right?
And so a lot of times the dev partners will kind of have breakthroughs or figure out workarounds or solutions to things, because they have the time and resources to do that right.
Like they're in the position to do that.
I think some of us, you know, because we primarily work as like a publishing arm.
We're trying to oversee the projects as much as we can and Sometimes we don't always have the bandwidth to actually like jump in there and do some of the problem solving.
But I would say, like the first year, we were around our core team, like the five or six of us.
We did make a bunch of experiences for UEFN.
And I feel like we learned a lot about the engine.
You know ourselves, you know we got our hands dirty.
And I feel like we built some experiences on our own that kind of became the benchmark, right?
So when we would collaborate with external partners, we said, like, hey, we made this experience.
It resonated a lot with people.
This is the quality level, like, we're looking for, you know?
So yeah, it's been both ways on that.
That's great to hear.
And you, you raised some points that just made me want to ask more, like more questions, which is great.
The you mentioned there about you guys get your hands dirty and again like this isn't the uh, the platform you've got like all 10 years it's kind of still quite new.
You're kind of pioneering with that one and learning the limitations.
I guess how do you balance that with also the expectations, with you like getting in with that with different brands as well as then speaking to outsource, like how do you guys balance what to deliver, the time frame, all of that?
Yeah um, that i mean i feel like it took a bit of trial and error to actually figure out like what, what works right, because i think sometimes these pipelines um, they're they they get a little complicated right because like, And sometimes there's the dev partner, then there's us, then there's the client who's hired us, but that client who's hired us might also have another partner who's hired them to make the game right.
So it can get actually really complicated, and I think it becomes very important for everyone to be on the same page as early on as possible right,
Yeah.
There was one particular client that we worked with for, I think, over a year, maybe a year and a half.
And they were a client that was bringing brands to us, right?
They would sign up brands.
They would sign a contract with a brand to make a game.
Then they would come to us and be like, OK, we have this game idea.
Can you make it?
Then we would go to the dev partner and be like, OK, here's the game idea, right?
And initially we had theories about like OK, this type of game we think it might take um, you know four, four or five months to make.
Uh, and so we, we would try to execute.
I think, I think some of the issues we'd run in is like QA, right.
Or, or just enough play testing, right.
Because, like we might actually finish the game quote unquote, but then there wasn't enough time for for us internally, or or even external partners, to just play testing, to try to break it.
Right.
And we would see the things um kind of happening in live service, which you know like.
I think that's just generally how things are now, because so much is in live service.
But you know, over time we were kind of like hey, we want to try to mitigate that as much as possible, right?
So then we would start to kind of like pad out the timing of like you know, like maybe we might need three or four months of dev, but then let's say we might need some additional time, you know, for preparation of marketing materials, shoot a trailer for the game, because all that stuff can only get done once the game is done.
And we need some additional time to playtest the game so that when it's out live it's not running into these issues that we have to scramble and try to figure out.
Why is this happening?
Where is it happening?
That sort of thing?
So yeah, it's been complicated.
I think we've been lucky that the partners we work with are understand that this platform is new and this way it can get new.
And they've just been along for the ride, right?
They kind of understand, like, we're all experimenting here.
You know we want to see it as, like you know, something that you know we're taking the time to put into.
Yeah, and I think it's also great because, as you mentioned, it's new.
There's so many different people.
You guys keeping your own quality standards you're looking for, because i imagine there's, with so many amazing people experimenting with this, and that it's easy for quality, as you said, to slip, because it's live service, because people then can update iterate, but i think yeah, you holding that is a really important one.
Now i'm a little bit conscious of time, mate.
There is another topic that we spoke about that we wanted to talk about on this, and that's kind of like the use of ai and i'm really curious for you to talk about, like How has that been?
Obviously, your pipeline is slightly different for a different style of product.
How is that working with you?
How are you using it?
And kind of what are your thoughts on it, man?
Right, yeah.
AI is interesting.
I will say that I do use it, you know, in our pipeline.
But personally, though, I don't know how to feel about it in general, right?
Yeah, I get you. it just sort of is what it is.
Right.
And I think for now I'm treating it as a tool, but I feel like you.
You hear stories and theories about like where it can go and what can happen with it.
And you're like, you're like, I don't know.
Like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's tricky, I would say.
Um, but yeah we, you know, I think, because we're a company that tries to that, that moves quickly um, and has so many projects, you know we we, we definitely want to try to leverage AI, right.
Because it looks like something that helps you do that, right.
Move quickly, you know, work, workable things at one at one.
Um, so everyone at studio kind of, kind of.
You're mentored with AI, right.
Relating to their discipline, right.
And some people have, I think more success successors again, gaining that, um, Alex.
European worked on and was just released last week.
It's called Dungeon Tots.
It's on UN.
It's an RG, and the dungeons are procedurally graded, so experience the same dungeon twice.
But something did in that game was it used meshy AI to create this troll character that ran around in a dungeon?
And I didn't work directly with the artist who did that, but I spoke to them extensively about the pipeline because I don't understand how successful was this or this right.
And they meshed out a model, but it wasn't a model that wasn't game ready.
They basically had to apologize to it.
They had to retext.
You know they had to, and and the game I was like well well, you know, do you think, think you know you, you AI, like they like helped you.
And they were saying saying you know when, when you smash the mesh and you type the type prompt for troll dungeon troll, troll it's.
It gives you a bunch of different options, right?
And you can teach one and then, and then build on, build on top.
So to me it sounds like it kind of eliminated, like the concept part of the process, like the generation um, which is interesting.
Being a concept artist, i was like oh okay, that's the part of the pipeline, it kind of it.
Kind of, and it was cool because i i saw the model and you know, the textures were really low quality.
But i think when you look at these ai models and the textures, you know it's they kind of like imply things right, like like.
It's kind of like you'll look at the hand and you'll be like oh, i think it kind of looks like a glove right, or it kind of looks like there's like a bandage wrap on the arm.
It won't be like, you know, a 2k texture of a bandage, but you, you kind of there's enough there to be like okay, i think that should be a bandage.
So then you, you know, when you do the texture, you actually paint that in.
So i think it worked in that way, like as a really nice kind of like base template to kind of like you know, do the the game ready model on top of and to do like the high-res textures on top of um.
So yeah, so that character is running around um in that game.
Yeah, something else a designer has done was um.
They've used Gemini within the Google Sheets to sort of organize data, but also to scrape data from websites.
So one of our designers yeah, they were trying to build out a spreadsheet and they needed to grab Part of the data they were organizing was skins that were in Fortnite and they were able to ask Gemini to go I don't remember the website, but to ask it to actually pull images of Fortnite skins and populate spreadsheet with it.
And it did it right.
They were also able to use Gemini to.
You know, I think he knew what he wanted to do, but he didn't know the formulas.
And so Gemini was able to tell him like oh, this is the formula you need to do to, you know, analyze this data and come up with these results.
And so that was.
That was a pretty interesting thing that he was able to do.
Uh, one of a game I was working on with the designer.
He he created a design doc for the game and I had been out for two weeks.
You know, I came on board.
He's like, it's the project we're working on.
Here's the design doc.
Uh, I was able to put that into, uh, Google notebook.
Yes.
It created a podcast about the design.
So strange, isn't it?
Uh, really useful, but like such a, an interesting.
It's.
It's really interesting because, like you know, I I'm able to do art and listen to the podcast right.
Whereas I think if I had to read the design doc, I have to focus and it's the one thing that I could be doing at that time.
So it was interesting to be able to absorb information while getting another task done.
Something else that we've done is for UEFN, and even in Roblox the thumbnail for the game is like a really big part of like engagement right.
There's kind of like uh, I don't know if there's like a secret sauce to it or what, but you'll see that some thumbnails are more successful than others.
Um, and I feel like, because engagement is is driven by this, like we've, we spent a lot of time developing thumbnails.
Looking at what works.
Try to understand why it works, you know.
Looking at analyst data.
Um, and, I've recently started to use a chat GPT image to modify thumbnails, right.
And do quick iterations.
So some of the thumbnails we'll we'll we'll actually create internally like the, the initial uh, the initial version, or we'll work with the outsource partner to to create one.
But then I'm able to take it into chat GPT, and say like Hey, can you change this thumbnail to instead of a bear in the background, can you make it a shark?
Keep the logo intact in the upper right-hand corner, but can you change the setting from a jungle to undersea?
And the results are actually good, usable results.
It's not perfect, though.
I think in most cases, I've had to take the image into Photoshop and do a little bit of touch-ups.
But that pipeline I've been able to come out with 10 to 15 thumbnail iterations that we could test immediately, within half a day.
I think getting that amount, you know, if we, if we work with an artist or a studio, would probably take, you know, a couple of weeks.
You know.
So this is a pipeline that I think we're we're we're, we're trying to figure out, like what is the best pathway?
Like, you know, how do we, how do we build a pipeline where we're using AI plus artists?
Um, and then like, you know, seeing like what, what sticks, right.
Like what, what works.
Um Yeah, I feel like those are probably the most significant ways that I've used AI, like in my pipeline and other people in the studio are using Cloud for coding and data scraping and other things.
Yeah.
It is quite fascinating where it's all going.
I was using one.
I'm not an animator, but I saw this one that can help basically auto-rig.
Oh, right.
Yes.
And like, don't get me wrong, it wasn't perfect, but the fact that it gave me, like you know, a 70 working rig was so impressive, you know.
Yeah, so I think you're.
There's one other example I have and I think you're kind of like alluding to it.
I was using Unreal 5, so not UEFN, but like based on Unreal 5, and there's a plugin called Ludus AI.
Are you familiar with this?
No, I've not.
So it's like there's kind of this claim like oh, like make a game in whatever X amount of weeks using Luce.
And I was curious, right?
And it's a plugin and, like you can type in prompts and the thing that it can do is actually just generate meshes, right?
So in Unreal 5 it's something like you know create, like I want to create, a sci-fi room.
Give me like five variations of walls, like three floor textures or floor meshes, and then maybe some kind of like hero assets, right?
I think it took like five to eight minutes and it just generated these things, right?
They weren't like optimized, but they looked sci-fi, they looked stylized and were like things you could actually use to like block out like a level right was kind of amazing, i think.
The other thing uh, was that i tried to use meshi ai to to create this goblin character right, which i created.
Um, i brought it into unreal and then i was trying to use ludus to kind of like animate it.
Yeah, this wasn't able to rig it and animate it, but it was trying to tell me the steps in blueprint to do it and me kind of coming from a concept art background, like i've never had to work with blueprint right, i've never had to really look on of Unreal Engine and understand how things work.
But I think this AI started to bridge the gap where I was like OK, I think I started to open Blueprint.
I started to connect nodes and see what's working.
And I didn't quite get it to work.
But I was impressed that this guy made me go into a part of Unreal Engine that I wouldn't have gone into on my own, and so I was like this is this is an interesting result, you know, of using no man.
It's it's like I said, I think, like I said, I don't know where the world's taken us.
I'm in terms of it and I'm not like go pro AI or anything.
It's it's more.
I am very fascinated about what?
Because, regardless of people's opinions, it's it's here.
Now it is advancing, it is changing things right and just seeing how it is all changing changing, as you said, like i don't animate or rig, but it's allowed me to look into that.
You don't open up blueprint, but it's now made you curious and you've tried this out, so i don't think necessarily it'll be all bad, like i'm sure there will be some bad, but also like it is just yeah, it's just fascinating seeing everything come out of it in in different ways, like voice acting i don't mean get rid of voice actors, right like early stages when I was on Mafia, the old country or Hellblade.
Like, just as the prototypes, here's the robotic voices instead of me recording the lines.
Right.
Exactly.
Get it.
And it just helps see what the narrative is, you know?
And yeah, man.
Yeah.
It's, it's, I think it's just, it's, it's great.
Great for prototyping, being the sketch, sketch, right.
It's, it's not great at kind of, kind of new, the polished final.
I don't like it.
Like you still need.
You know human, human team team creation should actually be getting like.
Like, at least right now.
That's the.
That's the case, it seems.
Yeah no man, i'm just seeing the time of this.
I just want to say thank you very much, man.
I don't want to take up any much.
You've been very generous with your time.
This has been a very great conversation.
I've enjoyed listening to you.
I'm sure everyone else will, and i guess, if people want to reach out to you, learn more about what you do, look north world, where's the best place to reach you, mate?
Yeah um, so look north world, we have a discord.
Um, we have, i believe we have a twitter.
Um, if people want to reach out to me um, i can provide you with an email address.
Um and yeah, we can.
We can go from there.
Brilliant, we'll put all of that inscription down below also, congrats to you as well, because you touched on it.
But we're talking about so many things, But you've just launched that of Dungeon Noughts as well.
I saw some videos of that coming around, and it looked like great fun.
So congrats to you and your team as well on that one.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
It was really nice talking to you.
This was great.
Thank you very much.
Like I say, if you ever want to come on again, mate, you're more than welcome, and I appreciate it.
So if you want to reach out to me, you can do so via Twitter or Blue Sky, which is at Max Pez.
You can email into the show with your questions, leveldesignlobby at gmail.com.
Thank you all, and we'll catch you all next time.