The Development World of RPGs with Jeff Gardiner | The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook

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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.

Everyone welcome to the game makers notebook.

I'm adam orth.

Today i'm joined by jeff gardner, founder and ceo of something wicked games.

Jeff's had an incredible career.

He spent nearly two decades at bethesda game studios, contributing to some of the most influential rpgs of the modern era, including fallout 3, fallout 4, fallout 76 oblivion, skyrim and a host of other expansions.

His work helped shape the standards of open world storytelling branching, quest design and large-scale player agency that continue to influence the genre today.

In 2022, Jeff founded Something Wicked Games with a team of veteran developers from Bethesda, Obsidian and other leading AAA studios.

The company was created with the goal of delivering ambitious story-driven RPGs while building a healthier studio culture in a fully remote environment.

Their debut title Wordsong, is a preternatural open-world RPG based Set in a fictionalized medieval Portugal, blending history, myth and the occult with player-driven storytelling.

It represents both a bold creative vision and Jeff's next chapter as a leading shaping figure in the future of role-playing games.

Welcome, Jeff.

Thank you so much.

We got it.

I got through that.

I finally got through it.

That's very kind.

How are you?

Is this your first time in Scotland?

My first time in Scotland.

Me too.

I love it.

Yeah, it's really great.

For those listening.

We're recording this episode live in person at the DICE conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.

And Jeff, in my episodes, I really like to dive into how people found games, like that kind of first seed, whether it was interest in playing or creating and then following that thread through today so how did it all start for you um it's funny we just watched a talk with a gentleman they haven't met and i was really it's very similar to mine so it all started in i am um i'm getting on in years um i was i'm a child i was born uh of the seven gray beards yes the gray beards of the industry now i uh in the 70s started with dungeons and dragons i was uh the kid in stranger things who had four friends that were all nerds um I, my, uh, still to this day, best friend, Dave's older brother had a basic edition edition of dungeons and dragons that we borrowed from him and never returned.

And we were like seven or eight years old and that was it.

Like that was my 10 years through high school.

I, I just fell in love with creating worlds and this sort of uh, almost tribal storytelling, like campfire level storytelling that dungeons and dragons innovated in in spearheaded.

And I think many of us in the that, because not only did it instill a love in gaming for me, but instilled a love of this sort of like viral story.

There's this sort of on the role playing, which is you pick a role and then situations occur and then you try to reflect what your character would do in those situations not necessarily what you would do, and it was just, it was fascinating um, and so it started there and and then i got you know my atari uh, my super nes, played gold box, zelda And fell in love with video games.

I was very into tech.

We grew up – my same friend Dave got our – I grew up in this tiny town called Hilton, New York.

3,000 people, one stoplight.

I think they have a second stoplight now.

And he had a PC.

His father worked at this big company called Kodak and he had one of the first PCs, probably in that whole town.

And we sat there and played this game, a tech space game called Zork.

Zork.

Yes, which still to this day hasn't really been replicated, because you typed in prompts and tried to get through this weird mind maze.

Right.

And I will never forget, like you're in a room with a bucket over a well.

And if you typed kick the bucket, you would die because that meant kick the bucket.

Right.

The kick the bucket is a is a phrase meaning you croak.

And but those little things just stick with you.

Obviously, that was 40 years ago.

And.

And then I got my own PC and started playing video games, consoles, the Atari's and Nintendo's.

And just, I loved it.

I love gaming.

And then I just went to school.

This is, I can, this story can take the whole 90 minutes.

So I'm going to try to truncate it a little.

I went to school to get a degree in creative writing arts.

Um, my father wanted me to be in business administration.

I went to school under the guise of doing that.

Never took a single business class.

Took all so many English classes.

I figured that had to be my major.

I couldn't decide between lit and creative writing.

I chose creative writing.

Um, I, I took it, I got a track in fiction and drama.

Um, I took so many English courses in my senior year.

They told me I can no longer take them because they would no longer count as credit.

Uh, and then, I had that situation too.

Yes, I got in a van, moved to California.

And as all writers do, I ended up bartending.

I bartended for a number of years on Sunset Strip in California until I went back to school, got a master's degree in information technology, which led me to building websites.

And then I met a guy at a party who I'm actually here with today.

His name is Mark Morris.

He was working at THQ doing licensed IP SpongeBob games or something along those lines.

And he had a friend of his named George Collins who had a studio.

He was working at a place called Seven Studios, where I went and became a designer on the remake of Defender, which is one of my favorite games.

I used to play it in the arcade.

Got a chance to be a designer.

And this is back in the days when we made games with 15, 12, 15 people.

It was PlayStation 2.

But what I love about those days... These days are back again in a lot of ways.

We can talk about the state of the industry at some point, but... Oh, that's a big topic today.

Yeah, yeah.

I've got a lot for that.

What I loved about that is I got to do a little of everything.

And in doing so, I now have an understanding and respect for all the disciplines and all the things that take to make a game.

I think once you're siloed you sort of can get blinders on and you can only see your problems and you can't see the problems as a whole.

So anyways, I then...

By hook and crook I became lead designer of a licensed IP for Marvel in Activision called Fantastic Four.

Ironically enough, they put a movie out this year.

So I got story credit on that, lead designer credit on that.

I shipped it and it became an Activision greatest hit, which means they reprint them.

They sold through so many copies, they had to reprint it.

So apparently it's still a poster of it, still on the wall somewhere in Activision, maybe in their basement.

And then I met Todd Howard at an E3 event and i saw him pitch oblivion and my dnd little bells went off and i started salivating, like i was like i'll do anything to work on this game.

So i took a massive pay cut, went from lead designer to producer and moved over 2 000 miles to outside of washington dc where i spent 16 years at bethesda.

All right let's, let's pause there for a second, because that's, that's an interesting uh place.

But um, i wanted to bring up two things real quick.

So you and I have the exact same origin story.

Grew up in a tiny new England town.

Okay.

Got fascinated by games.

Um, went to college, blew out all the courses that you can take in your subject.

Mine was music.

Okay.

Yours was English.

Both moved out to California right after to go chase the dream and ended up in video games.

Yep.

Um, the other thing, um, I wanted to bring up was this kind of, like D&D.

So D&D and your experience, like the kick the bucket story you told.

Sure.

This is a recurring theme with people I'm interviewing.

A lot of people are having these really memorable moments with these early games that are prompt based, where they all have this one story like your kick the bucket.

Someone I interviewed yesterday had the exact same story, but different kind different, different thing.

Where, where um the game creators would would cross over from from game into real life and back into game based on on what you're, what you're putting in there.

And I just think that's a really interesting note because, um And I want to get into this later also but with the onset of AI today, and especially RPG games, the possibilities there are pretty uniquely interesting.

And the idea of putting a prompt in and having it come back to the player in a unique way like that now, that if we were to do that now, based on how it was done before, it would take a lot longer now because we would have to do that more and more and more, because the amount of people playing the games and the amount of options

So I just think that's, that's a really interesting point.

And most people from our generation that I'm interviewing have that same exact story.

And it's just really unique.

Okay.

So Bethesda is obviously a huge, massive part of your story.

So you've, You got Todd to hire you.

You moved to Bethesda.

Well, take us through that, because this really informs who you are, what you've done and what you're doing now.

I owe everything to Todd and Bethesda Game Studios as a whole.

When I started there, I was employee of Bethesda Game Studios.

I was employee, I don't know, 50-something, 40 or 50-something employees.

They had shipped Morrowind to great success, but they were still a small, independent studio in a lot of ways, especially compared to larger game makers, even at that time.

And this was, what was this, 2005.

It was October 2005, because in about a month, I'll have 20 years in DC.

It was an amazing experience, don't know what to expect.

Right, i was you fly out for one interview they, there was no zoom calls.

Back then right like, i had a couple phone screening flew out for an interview, spent all day with them, you know, went to this hotel across the street and but this isn't, it's not the middle of nowhere by any stretch of the word, but it's still like an industrial park sort of.

Um, there's a lot of office buildings around, is what i mean to say.

There's not a lot of.

There's nothing really within walking distance.

You know, there's like a gas station, some other things, and but but i just, you feel that energy and it's sort of hard to describe when, when you just feel something click and i felt the energy there.

They had acquired the fallout license at this point.

That was public, so i geeked out over that um, i geeked out over moral wind i, you know, and then i, like i said, i saw the e3 pitch for oblivion and and there was things in that like it it's.

There's this analogy that I like to give.

Like I, I grew up in Led Zeppelin was sort of a little too old for me.

So I got into Zeppelin when I was like in my early teens, but at this point they had broken up and disbanded.

Right.

So they were like mine, maybe not even Nirvana.

Nirvana is like way too old for that.

So I don't, I don't even know an analogy to that today.

So how to touch I am musically.

So anyway, but, but now when you listen to Led Zeppelin, they don't sound that unique to a newer, to a, to like my, my kids, because not only they, they have, it's not anything to do with their, age it's it's the fact that they have done it everything that they have done has been replicated they they were they were innovators right so but now you don't see that it's hard to if you're experiencing it in 2025 you don't see that because you weren't around so a lot of what bethesda was doing back then was totally innovated they they added havoc physics into an rpg right right it was three-dimensional like even that was pretty innovative because the rpgs are fallout 1 fallout 2 balder's gate 1 2 planescape torment these top down yeah you know turn-based sprites and and they were you were you were able to do anything you wanted in in the number the two games i had mentioned that i created before these linear 10 8 10 12 15 hour games and that's what the games were back then you know you you paid your 50 bucks and And you got a game, you experienced a 10 or 12 hours and that was it.

Right.

And this was even really before GameStop was much of a thing where you could even sell them back.

You were just out of the money, which was fine at the time because it wasn't the content to consume.

So anyways, these guys made this open world game where you come out of a cave and you see a mountain in the distance and you can walk to it.

Now, these days, that's like, OK, of course.

But in 2005, that was magic.

Yeah, it was literal magic.

Totally insane.

You know, in the in.

The technology that required to develop that, the innovation and stuff that that studio spearheaded.

I appreciate you saying that beginning was amazing.

And the fact that I played some small part in that over the years, it was really magical.

So when I went, I came in and at the time this is all public.

Oblivion was supposed to be a launch title for the 360 and it was delayed.

And I, any, it's a lot of game makers will listen to this.

My advice is to never be a launch title.

Never, never do it because magic in the horror of the launch.

There's advantages to it.

Like, if you have a unique IP or something because there's not a lot of competing titles you might unique IP.

Like if there's only 10 games available, your chance of selling your game would be higher.

This is the olden days.

Everything's new now.

And and but, so there was advantages there, but generally.

So we missed that window, and So I had thought the game would have shipped by the time I started.

It had been very close to.

So I was on it for six or nine months, and so I got an additional production credit.

And my role at that point.

Because I hadn't really found what I was going to do, they hired me just as a producer.

I was doing a bunch of different things there, external production, internal production.

They haven't even put me on the design department yet.

And I just started playtesting the game and sending notes, right?

And I was so happy to be playtesting a game that wasn't the same 10 hours over and over and over.

And over again, like when I had made a fantastic four.

I had to start playing it with the audio off because you're working these long hours and it would trigger me.

I wouldn't like just turn the sound off because I, cause that's what you did, right?

You, in order to craft a game requires constant iteration of polish.

Yeah.

I started in QA and the PS one era.

So, so you get it.

Yeah.

Actually before then CD ROMs, but Oh God.

Yeah.

I get it.

Yeah.

It's very hard to do.

And then you get a game.

You know when the game started expanding like we're talking about and it's magical.

But then you're also like then you go Oh, Holy shit.

Like there's so many more things I have to test.

God.

Yeah.

But the fun with that was I wasn't specifically prescribed things.

So I would be able to create whatever character I wanted and go in whatever direction I want, to experience different things.

And so even play.

Testing that game was a joy and because it was, you could create your own you and you engaged with what you wanted to and how you wanted to.

And i always thought that was the magic of bethesda games is you get bored dungeon delving?

You go talk to you go search around towns.

You get bored searching around towns.

I got all these component, alchemy components i've been collecting obsessively as i travel the wilderness.

I'm going to start delving into this system and so you sort of pick your own way to experience the game and it's not a prescribed um.

So anyways, it was magical.

I don't even remember the original source of the question.

But Bethesda was just, again, it was a very magical place.

And RPGs held such a special place in my heart.

That's why I'm still trying to make them.

Yeah, I mean, you've definitely worked on the best of the best of them in so many different ways and so many different beloved franchises.

You're very lucky to have had that experience very lucky, um.

So you know we're here really to talk about what you're doing now.

So how did?

How did bethesda end for you um?

So obviously i was lead producer of fallout 4 um, and every game adds to your life and takes away a little.

They're hard.

Games are hard to make um, And even anybody who's made a small game on Unreal or Unity and put it out and gotten feedback like they're hard to make in this they get bigger and bigger.

They're harder.

So I was blessed to become lead producer on Fallout 4.

And then I was project lead of Fallout 76, which was Bethesda's first endeavor into multiplayer and that architecture like borderline MMO architecture.

And we did it in three years, and it was very difficult.

And obviously it came out in a difficult state and thankfully we were able to turn it around.

I worked on that project for total of five years.

Many many for the first two years through many, many patches and in expansions and other things.

So people are still playing that game.

No no, i love it.

I still follow that game.

I still play it.

I i i'm so proud of what that's become.

It's super unique.

It's still very unique in that space and i'm just very proud of its uniqueness and what it represents to the community and how successful the fall TV show was at a fed into that.

And and the creators of that, the people who are at the helm of that right now are excellent people.

Um, some of my favorite that I got to work with over my time on 76 down in Austin.

And, um, so anyway, and so I was, I had done 16 years of Bethesda, a COVID took a toll.

Um, not, in, in weird ways.

Like there was some, as a gamer, it was sort of magical.

I was like, Oh, I get to play game.

I went back and played Baldur's gate one and two back to back, like 200 straight hours.

Yeah.

Like, well, you're sitting around, right?

Like, and so like, I got to go back and play with these RPGs.

And one thing I realized is I enjoy working.

I thought my retirement was going to be playing games endless hours.

Like I love consuming games, but I need to be creative as well.

There's, I always look at it as consumption and creation.

Right.

I can't just be consuming all day.

I need to be creating.

So I paint Warhammer miniatures and I still write.

And so like I need that because that's more fulfilling to me.

But then I take breaks and consume for endless hours.

I'm going through Path of Exile 2 right now for the third time or something.

But so I was.

I was sort of I had done what I felt like I could do at Bethesda and I had this opportunity you know, because of the Microsoft acquisition to take a break.

So I did.

I took a sabbatical and after the sabbatical, I realized that I needed a longer break.

So I took the sabbatical in about another four or five months and I started looking around, and in 2022 I mean.

These stories are well told.

Yeah.

My joke is you is a game creator, especially luckily with the pedigree that I had developed.

Um, thanks to Bethesda and my other work, I, you could find money under rocks.

I mean, it was, it, I literally was funded on my second phone call.

Wow.

Um, and that, and I had three term sheets by the end of that week.

Right.

And it ain't like that anymore.

Oh, no, no, it's the opposite of that.

Um, it's actually, yeah, we can talk about that, but we will.

So I got, you know, it was a lot of money and I want it and I debated.

So I had advice from, um, a gentleman, Raphael Von Lierup.

You probably know.

And he, he helped me, mentored me through some of this, internally indebted to him, love him um, hinterland games, um.

And he said, build what you can with what you've got and stay small.

And i did the exact opposite.

I was like well, that money was so easy to get.

I'm gonna do what i know how to do, which is like come up with this praetor natural cult, like i'm into old horror, like hp, lovecraft and in in alternative histories of templars and all these things that i'd always wanted to sort of do.

And i had a what i still believe is a really cool idea.

It, you know we, the elevator pitch, which I was never really supposed to reveal publicly, but I'm sure we'll.

It was I called it medieval matrix.

So you, you know you are a night in this land and we, you know we, we filed it down so you could play any, any gender or race you want.

So it's very Abe Lincoln, historical fantasy, sort of stuff, historical fiction.

But you you, you're initiated into the Knights Templar.

The initiation is kills you.

You go into the other world and in the other world, just like Neo and the matrix, you gain your powers and And you bring them back into this world, where magic is, heresy right.

And actual magic is real heresy.

So you have to be very careful in how you utilize it to solve, to engage with the NPCs in the quest line we had.

That's interesting as hell.

It's fun.

And so that was where we were.

And then anyway.

So I'll just go through the rest of the story.

So we're all clear, because this is all public information at this point.

I didn't interview, like I mentioned, a PC gamer a few months ago.

We...

We were very close to closing deals and a lot of people in my situation had closed deals to complete these big games.

And they're very expensive.

They take a very long time.

They're risks.

And a number of them failed in 2023.

They started to fail.

And then, when we were looking for further either publishing or Series A financing, that wasn't there.

So we did a massive run of layoffs in early March, which is devastating.

Devastating.

I never would want to put anyone through that or go through that again.

This industry is very difficult.

And this has been a history through the industry over 20 years.

This isn't new to early 2020s.

That's for sure.

And then we look for much smaller amounts of funding publishing any kind of help to finish the game.

And we developed a second prototype which takes the ideas I just mentioned but turns it into an RPG, roguelike.

So it was scalable, more sustainable and we could basically build again the scale to the budget we were lucky enough to continue to get.

And then that didn't work.

So we are now, we sort of submarine the rest of the employees we had to let go of.

There's only me and a couple of contractors right now.

And my wife was our operations director.

And so we've submarine and, and now we are lucky enough to have a little more capital.

So we're going to re-submerge and we're going to try to finish this and put something up.

Um, either kickstart it, or didn't you kickstart too?

Did you kickstart?

I didn't.

Okay.

I've thought about it a hundred million times though.

Talk about that.

Okay.

The kickstarters of the early 2010s are gone.

I mean even really good ones, get four or 500000, which is a significant amount of money, depending on how you go about finding developers.

But it's not enough to do a triple a game by any stretch of the word.

So we're going to either kickstart or put something up on steam just so something wicked has something, and we'll see what happens from there.

Um, i'm very excited, still very excited for the idea and i know the uh that we can um execute very well on it.

That i have no question.

I'm i'm like i said, i have.

I used to call the war in my brain.

So i was a creative for a very long time, still consider myself creative, but as i had to train my producer muscles because that's what i was at bethesda, so i'm very aware of budgets and timelines and restrictions and i try to make the smartest decisions just for a game, to see a pathway forward.

Unfortunately i couldn't, for a weird song last year, but i'm hoping that this year will be towards the end of this year, early next year.

That'll be different.

Well, i mean that that story is not um unique.

I hate to say right because of the um.

You know the scenario that we're in in the industry right now, which you did mention a minute ago is, is not unique to this industry.

I mean, I have never personally worked at a company for 16 years.

I've jumped around a lot for a variety of reasons.

And for my personal journey.

It's been great because I love working with new people and working on new things.

And it's been great for me.

But, you know, we talk about layoffs.

I mean, that was kind of like ingrained into my... head when I first started in the industry.

There's always been layoffs.

There's always been cancellations and budget tightenings, and there's always been the economic hardship of the global economy that bleeds into video games and entertainment.

I think we're hyper-focused on it now because it's probably you know, it's definitely worse than it's ever been right now with amount of layoffs, but it's not new.

And I I have always kind of been the guy who's like I'm never bringing anything into work that you know.

That you know that in heat.

Yeah.

Right.

After 16 years, I had quite a collection of Bethesda.

Trust me.

It took me two or three trips to clean everything out.

I've always been like, well, this could go, in the toilet at any minute.

So I'm just going to have nothing here.

So if, if it does, you know, like Robert De Niro, you smell the heat around the corner.

But I mean, let's talk about this because, because you're, you're actually a great example of kind of powering through it and managing through it.

I mean, you know, as you mentioned at that time, 2022, It was very easy to get money.

And selfishly, I wish I was looking for money at that point.

But I wasn't.

And there are a lot of studios that got a lot of money in that period, especially during that pandemic period.

And many of them don't even exist anymore.

And it's really hard watching that because... you know when you I mean you haven't experienced this but like when you're early in your career and you go through a layoff it's damaging it's psychologically damaging emotionally damaging and you kind of never you kind of never like get rid of it it's always like in the back of your of your mind hence the nothing on the desk for me anyway and thankfully I've only actually been laid off once in my career Um, so, but it, that kind of like scar stays with you.

And I really worry about the kind of future of our industry because we're seeing now, like this, wipe out of of a weird weird of both like junior and senior talent.

Absolutely.

Right.

And like how, how are we going to, How are we going to rectify this?

Like, how do we get young people back into the industry who are, you know, like we were totally like ready to do whatever it takes and also retain enough senior people who can pass it down?

I mean, we're losing generational levels of talent in the industry right now.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I think someone's going to give a talk about that tomorrow here the i can talk about this forever too.

So yes, i know a number of senior people who i personally worked with who are just leave.

They're just leaving.

They're leaving the industry right um, talented people who contributed a lot, not only to the games they worked on but to fostering the generation that comes behind us, which is why i think it's also hit.

Like you mentioned, it's also hurting.

I'm a very good friend of mine who works in this industry.

Um, his daughter um, got a degree, very good grades, had interned at studios that i won't mention, and now they are looking for they've been looking for job for a year and can't find it, and he's in the industry.

So he, if anyone has the connections to get her the inner, her resume at least looked at right, and i don't.

And that to me is the is listen like you.

And then the flip side, with the democratization of unreal and unity uh, anybody can make a game right.

You can get your buddy or a And sit around and try to put something up.

Some of them have been successful.

So there's my son, who is now in his second year of college, is making his own game.

And they're like, that's great.

So there's two sides of the coin.

But the experience that you and I got from shipping a lot of games teaches you a lot.

So in the industry... vaguely there's, there's like, I'll just talk about the design track.

Cause that's what I've been focused on.

That's where I produced basically at Bethesda.

And that's what I was.

So there's junior designers, mid-designers, senior designers.

Then you get into principals and directors and leads.

But as a junior, you would see a junior come in and you would know that they are going to try to do too much right.

They are going to take on that.

That woman or man or whatever is going to take on more than they can.

They're going to bite off more than they can chew is the, is the term.

And you don't want to discourage that. right?

Because that's where creativity can come.

Cause.

Sometimes you come up with amazing stuff, but you also as a senior lead, you can mentor and caution them and help them through this.

Oh, you're, you're already working 10 hours, 10 hours a day.

Trust me in a year or two, that 10 hours a day is going to get worse.

So don't do that.

Now don't crunch when it's not crunch.

We used to say, right.

And, and insert and learn how to choose your battles.

But again, these are things that seems obvious in hindsight, like the idea of, um, something wicked getting money and just making a game with the money we had obvious in hindsight but when you're in it you make decisions based on parameters of reality so these are the little things that can lead somebody on the way and like don't other people want to work with you know like with like these the luminaries like todd howard who have come along like i learned most of what i know from him right so you you want to be able to transfer that down because i mean Listen, I'm very happy to be in this industry.

This isn't a sob story for game makers, trust me.

I have had a great career.

We've had great careers.

Enjoyed most of the time doing it.

And what it is to me.

It's looking at the industry as a whole and hoping that we can keep moving forward.

There was the term, I call them comfort food games, black hole games.

It's weird.

Games still make a lot of money.

They still exist, but more people are spending more and more time with games that have been around for a very long time.

And so there's just – we all need to figure out where the cheese is.

There's a book from the 90s called Where's My Cheese?

And the analogy is there's a mouse in a maze and the overlord of the maze puts the cheese in this one corner and all the mice know to go to that corner right to get the cheese.

And then one day they move the cheese to a different place.

And the mice who still go to that corner don't make it, right?

So you have to be able to – innovate, think on your feet, come up with creative solutions to things, look at tools like AI and Unreal and find ways to do more with less or less with more.

Just something to make your game stand out, make yourself stand out.

Yeah, it's funny because it's never been easier to make a game and it's also never been harder.

And the never been harder part is a new part of that sentence that's only kind of like a year or two old like we used to always you know i'm used to saying it's never been easier to make a game right absolutely true and and now it's like you know you have to kind of wrestle with with both of those things whether it's um you know struggling with funding or making a game and putting out and getting discovered discoverability absolutely yeah there's what 1400 games that last year there was 1400 games a month on steam this year it's probably I don't know.

It could be double that.

I haven't tracked it.

And so I always used to joke on mobile.

Cause this was a problem in mobile 10 years ago too.

There was 5,000 games a month coming on the Apple store.

Right.

And so I would always say the best game ever made has been played by one person and no one knows it exists.

Like you would just not, you know, you hope for some virality or somebody to pick it up.

And usually in the cream often does rise to the top, but not always.

And you know, and I, that's why I I looked at steam, cause I've been a steam PC gamer guy.

Now for I don't even since Steam existed basically.

And I called it the renaissance of games.

Like I was into these turn-based, from D&D, I was into turn-based games.

And when I started making, I wanted to make fantastic for a turn-based game.

I loved turn-based combat.

I thought it was great.

I think, yes, because I had Final Fantasy Tactics.

And so it's not just a D&D RPG.

There was other examples of this.

And I was told at the time that if you say the word turn-based tactics to a publisher, they pretend like they don't know what you're talking about.

They're like what are you talking about?

We will, you know.

Like meaning they would never put money behind those games.

Now you go on steam and look for turn-based tactics games.

There's a new game released every day and they're often very good like it's never.

It's not even a question of their quality, it's just a question of i can't even come close to consuming this.

Yeah right, so even in a genre that i love, I have to pick my battles because I just don't have the time to consume it all.

Like Breach Wizard or if there was a game.

Tactical Breach Wizard.

There's a best – I haven't even played it yet, because I still have this backlog of games that I just – I'm trying to get to personally.

And trust me, I play a lot of games.

I would embarrass myself if I admitted it here.

And so it's one of those things where it's – it really is a – it's this weird blessing curse thing where again, like as a gamer –

It's amazing right now.

You go on steam and you wait for a steam sale.

And for two to $5, you can get more.

You can get a ton of games that can occupy you forever.

Or you pick, like your path of exile, or your your first person shooter of choice, or whatever those are.

Fortnite or Roblox.

You can play those forever.

You can play them forever.

There was a quote, there was a stat that there was just flashed up there.

There is 275,000 years of video games on Roblox or something like that.

Like some amount of content that is, it's literally inconceivable longer than human history.

It would take longer than mine.

We're going back into Neanderthal times.

It would take you if you started now to play all the content on Roblox and they stopped making it.

Yeah, I mean, I actually went to the Roblox developer conference last weekend.

Admittedly, I only know enough about Roblox that everyone who kind of doesn't play it knows.

I mean, it's not for me.

It's not for me either.

Right?

That's not castigating it.

I just didn't grow up playing those, so it's not for me.

Yeah, but man, it was fascinating seeing everything that they're doing.

Anyways, it was really interesting.

But when we're talking about the industry right now, the video game industry, we're looking at the same experience that the movie industry had, and then music, and now games.

There is a consolidation of let's call them labels or publishers or studios, by megacorporations.

Those are turning into these much bigger entities, but there's fewer of them.

And then there's, of course, a proliferation of platforms that serve the indie space.

And that's where things get really shifty, because I read somewhere that I'm not going to get these numbers right, so nobody send me emails about it.

But there's something like 700 million songs or something on Spotify that have never been listened to once.

Oh, my God.

And as a musician myself and someone who creates and releases music and has to put music on streaming platforms, that's so depressing, right.

Every time I wanted to write a novel...

I've wanted to be – my first love was creative writing, and I always wanted to write.

And maybe one of these days I'll actually do it or put something out.

And I go to a used bookstore.

I'm like, man, there's been a lot of books in the world.

There are a lot of books.

So it's the same.

So what I –?

I saw this article the other day, so I'm –.

These are not original thoughts, but it was an interesting idea that –.

Every industry has gone through this, right?

It's the consolidation of power and also the democratization of the tools.

So YouTube and cell phones have made movies and things a lot easier to make.

And then obviously books, now you can self-publish books.

You can write a book and put it on Amazon.

You don't have to go to a book publisher.

They serve a function for marketing, for discoverability.

Um, and probably good editing and things, but there's a lot of examples of books that have become very popular that were self-published.

Like there's tons of them.

And so you have both.

And so what you need to, what I think you need to do, is like listen, musicians had honestly, they got just kicked in the teeth.

Like Adam and I grew up and almost every band I had heard of sold was able to sell out midsize arenas.

Like that doesn't mean all bands were, but a lot of bands, like there's this Rochester war Memorial.

I remember that that was the.

That was the where you'd go see concerts and, and where I grew up and I saw a ton of shows that were so now these bands could never do that.

Like they, I go to, I go to venues with four or 500 people now.

And I think it's a better experience, but for the musician themselves, like there's, it's not a pathway to riches.

And it's what.

What they did.

Which was interesting is you know all of those bands when they're, when they have interviews.

Now they all get asked the same question.

What's your advice to give to young musicians?

And they're all like, don't get into the music business.

Well, you're going to start hearing that from video game makers too.

Like that's when my son is trying to become a game maker.

And I told somebody here that, and they just shook their head and like side to side.

And I was like, Oh, I agree.

And, um, sorry, but you know, sorry, Cole.

No, but you know what, you know what?

I mean, yes, I see where you're going with that, but I mean, people told me that too.

I know.

Yeah.

So it's anything that is, listen, it, I moved to Hollywood to be a screenwriter.

How many like screenplays were being made back then?

I think it was like 200 or something.

It was such a small percentage chance.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't put yourself out there.

I don't agree with that at all.

But what I'm saying is is that you need to as musicians.

They need to find other sources of revenue.

So you get into merchandising and their online stores.

But I can tell you as a musician, that stuff sucks, man.

It sucks because all of a sudden you have to shoulder all the burden of of all of that.

And it's like you know, I put an album out last year and I had to do all the all the tick, tock and social media.

Like I want to blow my brains out.

Like that was terrible.

I just, you know, I want to make the stuff, you know and it's, but that's not the way it is anymore.

But the labels, the music industry has put all of that on top of the artists.

Oh, no.

Well, that music, that industry, I can bag that industry.

They've been exploiting it for years.

That's happening now.

That's happening in games, right?

If you are a band of people, under 10 people making a game, you don't have a marketing budget.

You don't.

And if you did, it would have to be millions of dollars.

To get any kind of traction or wide audience for certain.

Or you get lucky on tick tock.

Honestly like yeah, it's funny, so like baldur's gate 3 is is a great example of a very successful role playing game last couple of years right, the one of the most, and it had a lot of elements that you would, from the outside, would never have been successful.

One turn-based combat, right like and, but it had dungeon dragons license.

Larian had made a ton of rpgs, so they had the chops and experience again.

This is where that goes back to that story too, like the experience that that staff had learned from shipping RPGs and the little things you learn add up, you know.

And so they were able to successfully execute on an amazing game and a very difficult genre, frankly.

And there I still think that what made them sell and what made them penetrate past hardcore D and D nerds like you and I like, if just you and I bought it, it would have not nearly had.

The success is there was a Tik TOK video up of um the druid turning into a werebear or something and copulating with the bear yeah, and it got a lot of views and a lot of people were watching that who weren't ever going to play balder's gate.

They were never going to play, they never heard of it right, and so all of a sudden, this became a thing, and i remember being out somewhere in, in an individual coming up to me who i would never assume would be playing this game, went on and on about it and, and so you, you sort of got to find the ways to stand out and thankfully it stood out and was an amazing game.

So if you get both yep, you can have a balder's gate success or even something not as successful, but it's still successful.

Um, there's a lot about that, though.

Yeah, if you get lucky and go viral, and you get lucky and the game is good no, i know like well, i think i don't think the game was good because of luck.

I i'm just saying like, when you're the odds of success so small?

Yeah, they're very small.

When you look at Elden Ring, another team that's shipped games for 25 years, you know.

So you see like, why you want to hold on to institutional knowledge, right?

Because their experience making those boss fights ended in Elden Ring, right?

And Larian's experience with making these games ended in Baldur's Gate 3 and hopefully didn't end there will continue to be successful.

I'm excited for a number of these games.

I think we're going to see some of the games that are like in the wings in the next couple of years.

I think hopefully will be very successful as well.

But again, like you, also don't want it all consolidated to three big rpgs that come out every couple years.

Right, you want to have these double a even experiences that are as compelling and successful.

Remember, success doesn't have to be tons of sales, it has to be some sales.

So because if you have no sales and studio closes but it doesn't have to be astronomical it you know you want to hit a bench, you want to set a budget and try to meet or exceed those sales expectations.

A lot of the pressure you get from vc and publishers is to these unrealistic expectations.

They're not, they're not even making your money back.

They want a five X or three or 10 X, a hundred X, a hundred X and X and that, and then they'll consider it.

And if they five X, that's a failure.

Right.

And which is where we have to have some kind of reality check on that.

I'll never forget working on a game and it was a sequel and we only sold 5 million.

And they told us it was a failure.

It's great, isn't it?

Trust me, I know exactly how you feel because I had the exact same thing a couple of times.

Millions of copies sold easily in the black.

But what happens at a larger publisher in my understanding is they'll set a sales expectation and they budget around that.

So even if your game makes it's money back.

If it doesn't hit sales expectations, they have to readjust their financial models and forecasting based on that money that they thought was coming in, that they might've borrowed against.

It didn't come in.

Yeah.

So it's, it's these sort of um, what did I?

Didn't go say uh, gold fever gambits.

You know, I was like that's, that's pretty much it.

Gold fever gambits.

Yes.

So if you're you're deciding to make a game today, you you basically have two choices and it's.

This is actually the same thing with music and movies also.

It's you ignore everything and you just make the thing you're passionate about making.

And we were lucky enough just to see a talk by Nintendo this morning.

I mean, it's easy for Nintendo to say, we're just going to do things that are great and fun.

It's easy for Nintendo, but it wasn't at one point.

No, absolutely not.

But you can either just immerse yourself into the artistic and creative expression and ignore everything, or you can try to game the system with the right genre, at the right time, with the right business model and the right strategy.

And that's also a way to do it.

And neither guarantee success.

Oh, not even close.

And neither even guarantee finishing or even you know the the old chestnut, like every game released as a miracle, is literally true.

Yes.

As you and I know.

Yes.

Including the big ones.

Oh yeah.

Right.

Especially the big ones.

The big ones.

Yeah.

But all of them.

Yeah.

All of them.

So, like you know, if you can take yourself out of what you're doing right now, and you know, presented with those two paths, what are you going to do?

Well, listen, it's easy to say, just go for the passion, right?

It, because that's sort of the obvious answer.

And I think that is where you will find success, or can, because if you just try to copy other people's success, you end up with a facsimile, and facsimiles are not as good as the original.

And so you have to find, even if you're, I want to make a real point.

That's.

That's like the genre i know.

I want to make a role-playing game great, like there are so many different kinds and things like are you going to focus on narrative?

Are you going to focus on tactical combat?

You're going to make it open world.

You're going to make a zone base.

Are you going to make a linear?

There are so many things like people call assassin's creed role-playing games.

They call path of exile role-playing games.

They call world of warcraft role-playing games like there's this.

So you, you have to define your experience and know at a core what you want to do.

I really believe and have hung my hat on a simple idea well executed is worth infinite crazy ideas that are poorly executed.

Like you have to.

You have to execute on whatever it is you want to do and you have to stick to it because it's over a course of a game development.

It's very easy to be distracted.

Used to call it the e3 syndrome.

E3 is long dead, but you'd have a new lead designer go to e3 and all of a sudden want to add three features to the game that they saw at e3 and everyone's like dude or the reverse.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, Getting ready for E3 demo and adding stuff.

Or yeah, the faking, the smoke and mirrors that had to go on that waste everyone's time.

So I think, listen, it's easy to say the first, but at the same time, there has to be a reality check if you have money from investors or a publisher or your own self-funded, you've mortgaged your house.

You have to understand that there is a business element to this that has to be minded to.

Should it be the driving force?

No. unless it's going to sink the ship, right?

So if you put, I assume, the simplest analogy for you you, you know you want to go a hundred miles and your car holds a hundred, your car holds 120 miles of gas.

You fill up the car with gas, which costs money.

That's all the money you have.

If you, if you take a circuitous route and you wind around and you don't get to your destination and you run out of gas, you're abandoned.

It's over, right?

So you have to figure out how to get to your destination the gas you have in the tank, So there has to be someone minding it.

I think it's what I always saw which was successful in my career is there's this.

I called it the war in my brain.

So there's this conversation that has to happen between creative and production, where schedule is a tool, not a cudgel.

And you have to be mindful of it.

But you have to allow creative to sometimes wander off in the field and find the fun stuff.

So there's this balance that has to happen over the course of a game.

In my experience in the beginning you allow a player or the people that are working on the game to sort of experiment a lot.

The pre-production phase.

And then once you define that feature set, then you get a little more narrow.

The producers take a little more power.

And then during production, you have to save time at the end of production for found work, for the cool things.

Like if we just did this, the game would be so much better.

Then you want to save time to do that, right?

You don't want to schedule to the day it's due, so you aren't allowing players to iterate and find the fun.

And then and then the the power of the production comes even more during alpha and then during beta, when you have to try to close a game.

So there's this, there's this push pull that has to happen because you i can talk about genres that i'm not involved in, like you see what happens when a creative individual has all the power, like george rr martin still hasn't finished game of thrones, to my chagrin and it's The anger of a lot of people.

And I'm not throwing stones at George R.R.

Martin.

I love his books.

I've read them several times.

I think they're brilliant.

But he is very successful and has all the power he does not need.

He doesn't have to pay his mortgage by pushing and putting a book out.

Had he had that pressure, I guarantee you that book would be out, because he would have to pay his mortgage.

Right.

And so there's this balance that has to happen.

And I think it's very important and healthy.

So I think passion is super important, but I also think there has to be some kind of realistic expectations on what you can deliver with that.

I think if you are just in anything, if you're just in music to make money or get rich or get famous, you're just in games to get rich or get famous, you're just writing books to get rich or get famous.

There was this quote from a van tool and they were like, then just don't do it.

If you want to get rich, there's a go get into finance, come hedge fund manager like, do something else.

There's many paths to money.

Um i, you and i got into this because again, like when i played zork when i was a kid, and i typed kick the bucket into a green screen text prompt and something actually responded to that, something clicked in my brain and i was like this is amazing, i want to do this and in.

It's amazing when you're able to see your vision realized on a, on a screen, and then just watch people enjoy that.

There's no, it's not a, it's a, it's true joy.

It's not pleasure.

It's like deep soulful joy.

Like the stories we had over the years at Bethesda you know where you know severely ill people played our games and in people like just just you hear these stories and they're so heart touching cause you're like you you've affected someone's life.

And it's amazing.

Like I said, like I'm not weeping for game makers and definitely not weeping for me.

I it's, it's.

It's been such an amazing experience to put something out in the world and see it being played and watching people gain joy from the.

It's like entertainment, sort of a flippant word.

And, but there's something deeply resounding about a good novel, a good piece of music, a good game.

And if you're able to execute on that at some point in your life, like it it's, it's a, it's a.

It's a sense of richness that can't honestly be put into words.

Yeah.

I mean, we make these things.

So because we're obviously creative, creatively driven, but we're making stuff to for people to escape into.

And, um, I think that's a really important thing to never forget.

Like we aren't curing cancer.

No, no, we are making entertainment and it, and it's, creative endeavor, but it's also a business.

And when you're able to marry those things and it resonates with the people who play the thing, that you were able to dream up in the shower one day and go through the rigorous task of finding money or getting it approved and then putting a team together making it.

I mean, it's truly a miracle that it happens and there is nothing better when, when people you know tell you this game was important to me.

Oh yeah.

Right.

This game got me through a dark period of my life.

You know this, this game, like I mean the best entertainment, both entertains and allows you to escape, but also can reveal aspects of it, can endeavor, it can create empathy.

It can end up you see things in different lights, like i never saw this point of view.

And games can do that.

I, i've seen it and you, obviously you can.

You can name movies and films and books, just because they're older, and stuff that have done this and and it it.

We're very privileged to have been able to, to take part in this.

It's, it's been great yeah, and in these days, like i've been lucky enough, so now that we have been sort of on hold, i have been using my creative like cycles to sort of reevaluate rpgs and try to look at like, is there ways to take the belder's gate co-op conversation, the conversation system, and make it more cooperative with multiple people?

Are there ways to allow a game to be played on a switch and a pc and a phone where you can still collaborate and play with players and still make it a game that appeals to those different uh interfaces?

Right, so it's fun for me like.

So in my downtime, like i just play games and sometimes i'm escaping, but sometimes i'm thinking and i get in the shower and i go this and this together could be something cool right, and and i just hope to get the opportunity to, to um, to put them again like, to put it out so people can play it right, like it or hate it, like i.

Just it is, i've made games that are reviewed very badly and i've made games that are reviewed very well and in you learn from both experiences.

You actually learn more from the failures um, And they're both – you mentioned the PTSD you get from laying off

You get PTSD from putting a game out with real bad reviews too.

And you get very scared.

And that can kill innovation, right?

You get very scared to like experiment and try.

And listen, like there's this – and I think in like metaphors and analogies.

And I used to downhill ski when I was in better shape.

And – if you one of the things you used to say if you never fall when you're skiing, you're not pushing yourself right.

You're just, you know.

So every once in a while you got to scrape your knees or fall, and and then you pick yourself back up and keep going down the hill.

Right.

But you learn and you'll get better, because if you're not pushing yourself and falling every once in a while, you're you're definitely not getting better.

Yeah.

I mean, you know when you talk about, like the aspect of reviews, good and bad um, you know, before the onset of the internet, a little different right.

Like it was like, you know, 10 to 15 magazines, right?

Absolutely.

And, and that was fine, whatever.

Oh, it's done.

But yeah, but yeah, but it's not this constant onslaught of hate.

Yeah.

It's it's, it's.

Um, you know uh, I was playing a game the other day and I was like yeah, let me, let me go.

I was doing research for one of these podcasts.

Uh, let me go look at, you know at the steam reviews and you know it took me less than 10 seconds to get to the.

You know red thumbs down on this game, but I played 500 hours of it.

Like that's.

That's a real hard thing to to kind of justify as a.

As a, Because you're like, on one hand, you know this person is giving their opinion on the game that they spent 500 hours on.

And they're probably giving that opinion based on what the game has turned into.

Because, of course, they've played it for that long.

A bad patch.

Yeah.

And they're upset.

Which is fair.

I'm not going to... It's totally fair.

It's totally fair.

But then like, then you.

But if enough of those go up, you'll stop people from even looking right.

Cause when you see mostly negative reviews on steam, I, even in a genre, I was like, you generally don't even click on it.

Right.

But it could be a bad patch.

It could be anything.

I it's, it's tough.

It's really tough, but it is the kind of democratic uh, you know, consumer driven place that we live in.

Yep.

And it's, it's challenging for sure because bad reviews are fine.

Like a player, a player says, I don't like your game.

That's totally legit.

Opinions are totally legit.

But also like you can get something out of that as a creator, right?

Every time.

A hundred percent.

And um.

So you have, when you start stacking up, like all the stuff we've talked about, and then and then this, this kind of um you know, the the very blunt, pointed feedback you get from players is challenging.

And some people are not made for that.

You know, some people can kind of take it.

I mean, you do, you carry it with you no matter what, no matter who you are.

I don't believe anyone who says they don't read their reviews.

Oh no, I don't believe that at all.

Everyone does that.

I know.

But like, you know, Some people aren't built for that.

No, it's hard.

Also, some people aren't built for building and running a studio.

Right.

And it's really important to like identify that in yourself as a creator, because that informs all of this too.

I mean, I'll put, I'll say something that will probably make some people raise their eyebrows.

But when I, so during that magical time, when money grew on trees for game makers and early 2020s, a lot of people got funded who had success at very successful studios, right?

So they were able to translate that success into getting money to make another game, which is fair.

But a lot of game development studios or game makers in my, in my experience.

This is again, this is an opinion.

The emails can send them to, Adam or no.

Do not send them to me.

My opinion was they never saw sort of the old analogy, how the sausage was made.

Like they never.

They were shielded often from some of the difficult decisions financial decisions that i made, which is which you should do to creative people like you should sort of try to keep them out of the financial decisions because again, like you don't want to create a person making all their decisions based on money right either success or failure.

But you saw a lot of studios they started and they funded and then they didn't and listen, you can point your finger at my studios just as much as anybody else's, so it you saw a lot of people who weren't involved with profit and loss and some of the decisions that like, every time you delay a game and you have like a massive team that is costing somebody somewhere millions of dollars.

Right.

Yeah.

And it is not trivial.

And and so you can point from a publisher's bad, this and that, but at the end of the day, like You have a massive team and you've delayed even a month,

Some burn rates in these massive games are $10 million a month.

So you are costing.

It's not just lining up marketing campaigns and all the rest of it, which is true.

You're actually costing real cash, which furthers risk.

That's why I was proud of our studio, because we endeavor to put prototypes out which we had, like we had fully functioning prototypes of two different, similar but different games, the end of our uh well, not quite the end, but at the time we had allowed it to make them.

And you, just you saw a lot of studios come out and then they're delay delay delay, and then the game comes out and it's mediocre, it's full of bugs, and you like that is also on the studio right, it really is like and oh yeah, i mean, i think when i started my first, I've done a couple studios now.

When I started my first studio, I think I was probably like 12 or 13 years in the industry at that point.

And at that point, I had a variety of design, creative, director, and leadership roles.

And I have seen a lot.

I know what it takes to make a game.

And let me tell you something.

The amount of stuff I did not know.

Same here. when I started my first studio was insane.

Like I actually thought I was going to be being creative and making a game every day.

Like that barely happened.

Barely.

In fact.

In fact, it can be a danger, because you have to be making the decision, the harder decisions, which are how do I keep funding the studio?

You have to be looking for money.

You have to be making sure people are there.

It is hard.

Making sure all my friends who I, you know, hired out of, Steady jobs, have health insurance.

Oh, no.

No, no.

I hear you.

So thankfully for me, like I – that's why my wife Jessica worked with – she had had experience running commercial enterprises right.

So I remember – and she told this story last night at dinner like –

I was looking in health insurance and I had hired this agency to help me with this.

And I would tell her what they're telling me.

She was like, that's not true.

And then, and then like, and again, more things.

So finally, you know, over time she's, she's like, okay, I'll help you with health insurance.

Okay.

I'll help you with this.

I help you with this.

And now she took over all operations.

So at least it allowed me a little bit of, little bit of game time.

And I can't, as a CEO or founder of a studio, you can't ignore the operation stuff.

Nope at all, no way.

And then let's just little things.

Like you have employees and you're like oh, this is their salary and you always know there's overhead to that.

But the amount of overhead in the united states to us individual salaries, it's it's 25 to 40 percent.

So if you're not assuming 40 percent over a salary yeah, you are misbudgeting your game.

Yeah period, you should maybe 50, so at least you have some wiggle room.

And and so these are the kind of things like you need to.

You don't want to figure them out two years in, like you need to know this from day one.

Or you're like I'm here to tell everyone, like you have no idea how many, how many different types of insurance you need.

Oh no, no, no, no, no.

I needed individual insurance for myself.

Like again, my highest thank you and praise to my wife, who is who's put up with this and encouraged me to do this and help me so much along the way.

Because again, like if I didn't have her, at best I would be floundering and And at worst I would have really really tanked the business.

But it.

But it allowed me again that at least 20 percent of my time, because I wanted to focus on culture.

You mentioned in the beginning, like I really want to focus on culture in in, because we did all remote.

Right.

And there is good and bad to that.

And I've learned some of the bad to that over time.

And I'm not as bullish on it as I once was.

But I still believe if you focus on that and you understand that's what you're doing, you can be successful there.

But at the same time you have to – you can't just run a studio like the studios were in the early 2005, where everyone's sitting in a room together.

You have to allow – you have to really have a culture of respect and trust and honesty.

And we call the creative – there's constructive criticism.

Everyone knows what that is.

We call it the constructive conflict.

So how do you disagree with an idea?

Like how do you – and we wanted everyone to be like, hey, this – I don't think this is right.

And having – adult conversations that weren't personal or angry or full of emotion, but giving a space where people can question my decision making.

Question it like because you want, because the worst thing is like in this culture that can creep in a fear, or these hierarchies that get too rigid.

You're in in a remote studio, like we.

We had a really startup mentality, like i don't care what your title is.

If this needs to be done and you can help, do it.

So you're going to help and so we.

Titles are meaningless.

They're meaningless.

In fact, the more you hold on to them, the weaker you appear to me, to be honest.

I used to say the metaphorical toilet cleaning.

If the toilet is clogged and I am the only person who can fix it.

I don't care what my title is.

I have to go fix it.

Thankfully, you have to hire individuals who have that mindset.

You have to instill it in your culture.

You have to reinforce it personally.

One of the big things in creativity is vulnerability.

The so oftentimes the best idea in the room is the scariest one to say right, and you want an employee, an employee or anyone to be able to say the big, crazy idea, because you never know how that might click.

It might click, but if you created a culture where that is not okay or you'll be looked at like that's, like somebody goes, that's stupid or something like, oh my god, like you're might as well just quit.

You know you.

You know you should become a.

Get into real estate, get into finance, do something else.

Yeah, like there's plenty of ways to make money in the world.

Well, that's a good uh, that's a good place to kind of pivot out of all the scary stuff we've been talking about.

Um, in my research um for this podcast with you, um I found um a couple of things that have a couple um terms that have come up.

One is radical creativity and one is smart iteration.

Um, let's talk about those things because, um, we've probably scared everyone.

Yeah.

They've turned it off.

It's doom and gloom.

Yeah.

So games design is an iterative process, right?

I heard that very early on at seven studios.

Continue that and instituted that culture throughout my career at Bethesda.

And there, I learned this in my writing degree.

Like you want to be able to, There's that Gandalf quote, even the wise doesn't know all ends.

I've made, I've been blessed to make seven games.

I don't, you start a game and you don't quite know where it's going to finish, right?

You have ideas where it wants to go, but you have to allow an organic process to happen along the way.

If you get too rigid, you'll miss opportunities.

And if you're too soft, you'll never get to the end, right?

So you have to, again, this is weird.

This is, these weird pressures that you have to sort of self-impose on yourself, to sort of to define what creativity means and go forward.

So, I love theater to process.

And so this is some examples of what I've seen over my time.

Like, so we'd get in a room to do feedback on a, like a level, let's say, or a quest.

And we did this at Seven Studios.

So, and I observed over time, this is the things you learn from doing it.

Like, so we'd have the designer or artist or whomever taking notes based on the feedback.

And then they'd go and fix that stuff, right?

And then you'd find that they people have this weird thing where it's called selective hearing.

They hear what they want to hear.

So if somebody said something that they didn't agree with, they coincidentally didn't write it down.

I'm not even saying that's a conscious decision, right?

But they, and so we had to.

I had to put a step in there where the lead or producer would come in and go.

Okay, you would, there was.

There was different feedback.

This is the end of the feedback.

So there's these processes that have to be in place and these checks and balances, and then you play it again, right?

And then you play it again.

And in in, in.

We would loosely define what an iteration was based on the analogy.

Is I paint these Warhammer miniatures right?

And you don't want to dig in on very specific details early in the painting process.

You might want to change your color scheme.

There's things you might want to do after you've blocked all the colors.

In right, you block all the colors and it's easy.

It takes about an hour and you go, oh yeah, that looks really good.

These contrast well, my eyes going to the right parts of the miniature, you know.

Or, if you like, put purple and green together and you're like that doesn't quite look good.

At least at that point you can paint the purple over with a different color.

But if you spent 12 hours shading and highlighting and executing a pattern, a filigree on that purple, you're never going to paint it over.

So you try to institute these stopgap checks along the way.

Radical creativity is, again, it's the crazy idea in the room.

Like I have some ideas now of things that I'm noodling in my head, and maybe not for weird song, but for other games and and they're sort of crazy right.

And I get nervous because I was like man as a producer.

I know this is going to be really hard, but you want to at least have these out and discuss them because you never know a tech guy might go.

I under I can do 90 of what you want really easily.

Well, let's do that then, right?

Let's get it in 90 of the way and decide if that last 10 that's going to take all this time is worth it.

My experience is most times that 90 is It's not good enough, but it's sufficient to execute on the vision you had right.

And if you don't express that crazy idea, they'll never be able to go.

Oh no, we can do most of that right now, right?

So again, like that sort of that culture of like you know, we had epithets I had it at Seven Studios where you just try to let people freely express their creative ideas and in a way that is safe.

And a lot of things are said no to, but, and then I called it the reason why.

So I learned this the hard way over my time.

Like it's very easy to say no to something.

And over time that becomes in the group.

You've worked together five games.

They'll know they've trusted, you've earned their trust and respect.

So when you say no, you don't have to get into it so much.

But in the beginning of a new team it doesn't matter how many games you worked on.

You know what your titles are, what award you've won.

You really should explain why.

Right.

And they may agree with you or disagree with you, but at least that gives them the respect of not just hearing a two-letter word, right?

And so over time, I had to relearn that over my years.

So when I sit down, I say, this is why.

This, this, this, this, and this.

And they might come with very good counterarguments.

Now, if we do 80% of it, we'll be able to get most of the way there.

And they'll go, okay, I'm wrong.

And being able to admit when you're wrong, it's so important as a leader.

One of the things I loved and I probably mentioned his name too much, but Todd Howard.

If he didn't know the name, if somebody used a term or an acronym or something he didn't understand, he would ask what it meant.

He was never afraid to ask what it meant, but that allowed everybody else in the room to go.

I don't know what you're saying and not feel stupid, right?

And those are the kind of things that are really important in a lead to be able to be vulnerable enough to go.

I don't know what EBITDA is right.

And to say it once and then learn.

So then you know what that is, right?

And you're not saying and then saying instead of the worst is when you smile and nod your head and you have no idea what that meant.

And then there's, but the person who said it to you assumes you do.

And then you go, no, that's that's how much money we're going to have at the end of the day.

That's an important thing to understand what I'm saying here.

Right.

Instead, you just nod your head.

So anyways, you learn and you you learn from making mistakes.

But I really like so it's funny you mentioned when you hold on a second, you dig into something.

But just quickly, one of the things I learned in you mentioned this was is when I started my, when I started something wicked, I realized that a lot of my I had to let go, a lot of the creative process.

I had the vision for the game and I trusted the folks that I had hired to sort of execute on it.

And I decided that I was going to look at that building of the business as my creativity.

Does that make sense?

So I actually sort of beat, sort of changed my brain set.

Go ahead.

So the reason why, right.

That's connected to no, it is right.

Yeah.

And I wanted to ask you um, I mean, I think I know the answer to this, or I think I know my answer to this, but when you are on a team and you're leading a team and if you're the kind of steward of the creative vision or the leader or whatever the vessel, whatever it is, I think, when you say no to an idea and you explain why in the right, correct way,

So it's supported that has to go back to the vision of the game.

And more often than not, I've found that, Oh, the vision of the game is not clear enough.

Right.

It's not clear enough.

And that's my fault.

Right.

So I'm saying no to someone.

I'm explaining the reason why. but it's my fault, right?

So making sure that everyone on the team is in lockstep with what the creative vision is, at least in that stage of development, because we all know that that changes throughout the development process.

It's always kind of morphing and changing.

But it's really important to marry the reason why with the vision of the game and how the team perceives that, because if they're not perceiving the vision of the game, they're not working to the same place that everyone else or other people on the team are.

And that's where resentment comes in and hurt feelings and also darkness.

That's how execution fails.

Yes.

Because you're not executing on the same thing.

It's the, So on weird song, word song, sorry, I pronounce it wrong myself.

Um, we look at um, we defined RPG which, again like to you, you and I might know what I'm saying about open world RPG, but we needed to make, we literally got into.

This is exactly what we're building.

Cause even people who have made RPGs like have totally different definitions of what that means.

Right.

And so and it seemed like sometimes it can seem like you're you're not talking down to people, but you're explaining things that should be painfully obvious.

But you need to explain the painfully obvious things.

Otherwise, you have that assumption that someone understands what you're saying and they don't, and they start working on something that's not quite the way you perceived it to be.

And that's where a lot of problems you can lose time.

You can lose um confidence.

You can lose all you can.

You can walk down a slippery slope that way and yeah, so defining the experience and the vision of the game is is paramount importance and revisiting, and it also helps you when you have to make hard decisions, because a lot of games are compromised and difficult i used to call it what's the least bad decision today and if you have a strong vision for the game and everyone understands what it is, it's easier to make those decisions right.

If you don't, then these decisions can be paralyzing because you don't understand where you're trying to go.

Do you think that the studio or company pillars and vision should be integrated into the vision of the game?

I don't know.

So it's funny.

So when I started the studio I did a lot of research and sort of looked at back in my career and what I experienced that was great, what I experienced that was not so great and tried to make a good.

I asked this question.

It's very interesting.

Yeah.

The Nintendo presentation that we just watched, their company pillars are in the game.

Yeah.

I think that ultimately, it should be in some regards because again, games are often a series of very difficult decisions with no right or wrong answer.

You're just making a decision.

Do we do this or do we do that?

And neither seem to be the 100% even close.

The easy decisions are the ones that are obvious.

The hard decisions are the ones where you're like, flip a coin, I don't know.

But if you have the watchwords for the game, for the visions of the studio, it's helpful.

So one of ours was trust, right?

And so...

When we were building the studio, trust was very important because, again in a remote culture, I can't see the person in the cube doing the work, so I have to trust that they're doing the work right.

And that comes from myself, and they needed to trust me.

And so we hired an IT person and when we got to 30 people because again I couldn't personally manage the email server anymore, and they immediately started putting in the key loggers and stuff, and I was like whoa.

Yeah, time out, like we're not doing any of that.

Like the end of the day, if somebody isn't doing the work, it'll be obvious in the work.

I don't need to key log them to know they're here at 9 am.

I don't honestly care right, but people do this stuff.

Like there's remote companies.

Don't turn cameras on.

You have to be sitting in front of your screen all day like no, i'm a big believer treating adults like adults and if the person doesn't behave like an adult, you have a conversation.

You're, you know, you're working 10 hours a week.

We need to have a conversation.

At the end of the day, it's.

It's about someone happily uh, someone being happy and comfortable in their role in in the output should reflect that and um, so anyways.

But that was an example of where we had this company culture and i stopped them and i was like over and i had to stop them so many times like no, we're not doing this.

Someone plugs a usb and i was like i don't care.

Like like, if somebody releases files online, then we'll care and I'm not going to like stop them from.

Oh, do you want it to stop us from gaming?

I was like, no, if they want to use their rigs to game, great.

Like I don't care.

That's we're making games.

Yeah.

I mean, these are all the things that you um, most people are shielded from when they work at game companies, and then they jump out and, you know, go into a startup.

Speaking of which, um, so what's your plan for the next, you know, what's your plan?

So we so something wicked is going to.

We are going to move forward with weird song in some capacity.

My business partner and I are right now seeking where we are going to find a way to either kickstart this or put a demo up on seam or generate interest.

There was a lot of interest when we announced an opening on night live, really excited about the vision.

I actually revealed more about the vision today than I, than I ever have.

Cause at this point it doesn't really matter. and um it's a good place to do it yeah yeah no and in just in just to execute on something that that proves the creative idea and like listen like you see like again like um rebel wolves is putting out dawnwalker and i met conrad a couple of times once or twice and i'm so happy for them and this people want rpgs they haven't stopped wanting them and there was like ballast gate 3

And then a bunch came out last year and I think Baldur's Gate 3 sort of changed the bar for them, so some of them were more successful than others, and I get all of that.

But people want RPGs, and they want fun RPGs.

The idea, like, listen, here's a simple idea, executed well.

Vampire RPG.

Period.

Yep.

How could no one have thought of that?

It's great and there was obviously Vampire Bloodlines and others, but it hasn't been done in a really long time.

Everything I've seen from that studio looks amazing, right?

And he's getting, like, a Gamescom game of show, like, good, great.

I wish him all the success in the world.

I hope that game sells a bazillion copies and is fantastic.

Like I love, I believe that the success in this, we all benefit from success.

That's why I really hope this industry sort of finds its footing.

So double a triple a, all these games can find their footing.

There will always be successes and failures and difficulties and layoffs.

But I, this last two years has been calamitous and I want, game developers to be happy and successful i want games to be successful because the gamers exist they want the games and um and i think we're here to make them for them you know and yeah we'll never stop we'll never stop right i i i don't covid was interesting i mentioned like i was like oh my retirement's gonna be sitting around playing hundred hour role-playing games and like i i need to make stuff i i'm not happy just consuming it's actually it's depressing to me so i love to make stuff so i'm hoping that uh, folks are excited as when, once we reveal more about the game and what we're doing, uh, people will get as excited as I am for it.

Well, when that time comes, you'll have to come back on and, uh, and walk us through all that.

Adam, it's been a pure pleasure.

Yeah.

That's really great.

Great conversation.

And I can't believe an hour and a half went by that fast.

Honestly, I looked at my watch five minutes ago.

I was like, Oh my God.

Yeah, we definitely got into it.

Um, all right, Jeff, thanks so much.

Um, this great chat and, uh, Really appreciate your time.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye, everyone.

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.

[Navigating the RPG Renaissance: Insights from Jeff Gardiner on Game Development, Studio Culture, and Industry Resilience]-[The Development World of RPGs with Jeff Gardiner]

📋 Summary

The Evolution of Role-Playing Games and Personal Origins

The Bethesda Legacy and the Art of Innovation

Navigating the Volatility of the Modern Game Industry

Cultivating Studio Culture and "Constructive Conflict"

The Future: Radical Creativity and Smart Iteration

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Navigating the RPG Renaissance: Insights from Jeff Gardiner on Game Development, Studio Culture, and Industry Resilience]-[The Development World of RPGs with Jeff Gardiner]

📋 Summary

The Evolution of Role-Playing Games and Personal Origins

The Bethesda Legacy and the Art of Innovation

Navigating the Volatility of the Modern Game Industry

Cultivating Studio Culture and "Constructive Conflict"

The Future: Radical Creativity and Smart Iteration

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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