hey everyone i hope you're well playing and making the games that you all love you're joining me your host lead level designer max purrs but not just me we've got an incredible guest with us here who when he puts pen to paper makes you care about these characters revolutionizes a storm we've got the incredible lead narrative designer tom us just huge what intro what an intro amazing i try i try and make everyone feel good about it yeah i was gonna say wow that's that's bigging me up there well mate it's great to have you as we we said just before we recorded like tom and i have kind of known of each
other but we keep missing each other really it's just brief interactions so i'm glad that we get finally a chance to sit down together mate yeah yeah yeah it's great to be here like thank you for having me here it's uh yeah it's gonna be really fun really fun to chat no mate so i mean as i said you're now a lead how long have you been a lead for it's one of your recent positions now mate hey everyone i just want to give a huge shout to hopefully have you vote for me for the game dev heroes what we do around seems to be more focused on that of the uk but focusing on celebrating those who contribute
so much to our incredible industry and it seems cheesy I know but I would really love for all of you if you can to take the time and vote for me for that of your game dev hero now I will send a link to this and have it down in the description below but in terms of things that need to be filled out along with your names and my name for your nomination name which would be be max pairs category design my email is level design lobby at gmail .com my role is lead level designer and the studio workout is people can fly if you wouldn't mind giving back for me giving to all of this incredible industry
that i have for the years i would genuinely really appreciate this as i would love to be part of this incredible ceremony with the game dev heroes many you know i've been doing the podcast now for i think seven years around there crazy to think along with sharing all of my talks out there for you to see with books about that of exploration traversal and combat and most recently that of the level design kit as well so if you wouldn't mind taking the time to vote for me and nominate me in the game dev heroes 2025 nomination i would sincerely appreciate that so yeah i've been lead narrative designer
here at great ape games for coming up two years in april so like wow two years oh my god um it's weird how time flies with that stuff before that i was uh lead designer uh supermassive games uh as well so uh but that was more of a game design position rather than a narrative design so yeah in those two years i've recently transitioned over into more narrative stuff nice man i was gonna say then mate because that's a you know it is a different switch of positions how did you find transitioning over to that um well first off i realized that this is the position i wanted to do which was really nice
um i realized like i've always been interested in narrative in games and a big fan of narrative games across the board yeah so i knew i wanted to do something similar uh of work in something similar and i've done things you know from game design level design all the way through uh so kind of had the the brief um the broad spectrum of all the different uh different facets of design but yeah no it was um it was something that when i started doing it just felt right that i was doing it and luckily working at supermassive game designers there are much more narrative and um yeah kind of cinematic focused
so that was something that really really helped with the transition to move over but it's funny actually what what i realized the moment i realized that i wanted to do narrative design was when i was chatting to some of the writers at supermassive um fantastic writers over there uh and i found myself as the lead game designer i was more interested in wait a minute why is this this it doesn't make sense that this character is doing this it doesn't make sense that they're saying this and then they were saying shouldn't you be like worried about like the mechanics and stuff and i was like don't worry
about that someone else will do that and i had this moment of oh wait maybe i should do maybe i should move they're just trying to kick you out at that point like yeah yeah no no i've got time i've got time guys don't worry don't worry i'll book this meeting room for a while we can we can stay here we can chat five hours i hope you're all free yeah yeah well we'll take it back to the the beginning then for you in terms of like what inspired you to get into games right obviously you've got into leadership position now you've done it previously on gamesign you've now switched to that have narrative
like how did it all inspire you to get into the into the industry um I always say this when people ask um it was it was a specific game I remember it it was uh the Elder Scrolls uh Oblivion that actually got me into it which is so weird I because uh I loved that game when I was younger when I was playing that and it was the first game that I actually went out of my my way to watch the behind the scenes and the interviews with people because i was just really interested in like some of the stories and watching todd howard talk about like how the game was made and things like that so and that was when i
was like i don't know 13 14 something like that and then since then i heard usually in in games that i loved i would go and i would watch all of the interviews with the developers and things like that just to try and sort of learn a bit more more about it um and then from there like I'm originally from Manchester um so yeah yeah yeah I know the war of the roses rages on mate it does it does yeah no matter what happens I think we should end this podcast now I don't think I didn't realize mate it's too late okay um so yeah I I when I was in school I I knew that I really wanted to I got really lucky
in the fact that I knew I I wanted to do this um from very early on because a lot of people don't um a lot of people realize you know in their 30s that they want to move into something more creative and it's a bit more difficult but you can still do it for sure but I got really lucky in the fact that I kind of knew I wanted to do this um so I went to uni in Manchester at a place called Futureworks okay which is like a specialized um uh college in association with UCLan um and I got really lucky because i did a game design course on there and um some of the the tutors that we the reason why i really
wanted to go there is because they always said the tutors that we have are also industry professionals so everyone that we talked to and was taught by was someone working in the industry at that point um and what's amazing about it now is that i'm friends with a few of the tutors that we had and i meet up with them at develop and gdc and all these other things again so it's it's really incredible to see them um and to also work with them in in some you know on and off so yeah like i joined uni from there did uh three years of that during that time we did uh as i said we kind of the course was really
good because it gave you a the first year gave you a base knowledge of everything game development including like everything from game design level level design, narrative, writing, but then also like 3D modeling and animation and stuff like that.
So it gave you sort of a base knowledge of each one, which I think really helped in terms of being able to understand the whole process.
It really gave me that foundation of like understanding the whole process that a team would go through during development, which I think really aided me later on.
Yeah. Yeah, from there, then we graduated and then the biggest one that we did is um excuse me uh myself and a couple of friends we entered a uh scheme run by the uk games fund it's called transfuser right um and what that was is basically it was kind of like an incubation thing where we were given 10 weeks to create a prototype um of a game sort of pitch a game make a prototype of it and then we showcase that at egx so coming out of yeah coming straight out of uni into that program showcasing at egx when i was like you know 20 20 21 something like that was like terrifying it was an amazing experience
like we we created this fantastic little game called tome travelers and it was uh like little we described it as like uh gang beast meets fantasy and it was like we had like floppy arms yeah and like they would have uh they would have floppy arms and then like would have swords and you'd have to like fight each other with it while traveling through a book um but what was amazing about that is we learned a lot about production and about scope in particular yeah so we went oh 10 weeks uh we've got we've got 10 weeks how about we do three levels of this length uh cool we can do that can't we and then
we ended up what ended up we actually had was one level that was a third of the size that we wanted yeah so we learned a lot about scope during that during that time it is it is one of the first and hardest things to do even like doing personal projects or anything right everyone's like i've got this epic thing in my mind and then yeah it's whenever anyone's like oh i'm making i'm doing a personal project oh what you're making oh it's an mmo no you're not you know we all want want to make an mmo really deep yeah yeah yeah this is the design we all do but like come on now like i'm staring at my
ideas board up here and i'm looking at it going like yeah i need to break these down a little bit more but i mean like going to egx obviously for those who may not know egx is one off if not the biggest now i think it i think it recently merged with comic -con i believe last year i think but it was but it is the biggest one uh you i definitely say in the uk in terms of game festivals it's been going on for over a decade um primarily in london birmingham i know they went to leeds one year as well um so yeah to be able to do that straight out of uni yeah obviously i'm sure you saw tons of people
coming in and out yeah we had to they They had to change the rules of Transfuse when they were showcasing because of us.
So the reason why is because when we were showcasing, they said you can bring all your own equipment.
And we brought a giant TV and giant speakers and it drowned everyone else out.
So we had a lot of people come up to us.
And then since the year after that, they standardized it and went, you have to have this kind of equipment and headphones.
I mean, hey, it's all about game.
We were selling the game.
we were getting it out there that's me that is the that is the biggest challenge i think i went to egx god it must have been 2015 and like you know you can see the difference right like some this was all just the indie section some people just had like stands next to the with like a high -res picture of the game other people had like inflatable tentacles and stuff that and it is as you say it's like you're trying to get the attention of everyone it is yeah that's what it it is to you so you did the right thing it's also very difficult when you're hung over like two of the two of the days there
it was well i mean you've got to go to the industry parties and network you know how that works that's it kids you can't network unless there's alcohol so only if you're kids we wait till we were 18 so don't want to yes yes english are well known for respecting alcohol and treating others with respect so true exactly yes i'm very good at that so what happened after that then mate so this comes out yeah so we yeah so we so um essentially what we did at egx as well was part of that was actually to pitch the game itself to the uk games fund in order to try and get funding we did that and we won we
won funding for the studio we won 10 10 000 pounds which was amazing yeah and then you soon realize that 10 000 pounds in developing a game is literally nothing so after you pay everyone a reasonable wage and you buy any licenses or equipment and things like that it's gone so we very quickly went okay if we're going to do this we need to um stay afloat somehow so after a few months of prototyping the game we all sat down and we went um all right well what can we do at this point we had a lot of of contacts in the industry even for just coming into the industry again going back to um our tutors
actually being people in the industry um so we met up with a lot of like fantastic uh people develop and then there we started basically pitching ourselves as a codev a smaller codev team um so we did we wanted to transition into work for hire just to keep things afloat while we sort of prototype the game in the background um so we got really lucky in that um i uh i did some work with uh john turl who owns flix interactive right uh he's he's fantastic and we worked with them on some of their stuff um so that was really cool uh also des gail as well we worked with him for a little bit on some of the prototype
stuff um these names might not mean anything to some people but like um some of these are like uk uh great like uk developers um so we worked with them and we managed to keep the keep the business going through this for about a year another year and we just had this realization of right like what are we actually learning by doing this like actually learning about the industry and about what we want to do because i was like thrust into sort of a seat like a director creative director position immediately and if i'm being totally honest i was not prepared for it at all so i didn't know anything
about running a team i didn't know anything about running a business like we managed to somehow avoid you know getting taxes wrong and things like that we managed to somehow pay htmrc so we're okay but like only just and um we all sort of sat down all three of us um i worked with uh a producer fantastic producer called kiva roddy who's currently uh uh chucklefish i believe okay yeah yeah and um maybe they up in scotland made a horror game no they're based in london they did um wild frost and uh yes yeah they recently released some new stuff but um i can't off the top of my head and then a fantastic
artist called will hobden who is a now a freelance artist so we basically all sat down and we went right i think we should dissolve the company and go our separate ways amicably and every single one of them went i want to say this exact same thing so it was perfectly timed we all went we want to go out we want to get a job somewhere else we want to learn and then maybe we'll come back that's it spoilers we never went back because we all had the realization of maybe it's not what we want to do maybe i always say this to people maybe in another five ten years i might make my own thing again we might come
back to it we might do other stuff but right now i'm just really enjoying what uh what i'm doing here so um so yeah from there then we all sort of went our separate ways we dissolved the studio and then i went to work i got recommended for a job at supermassive games down in gilford um so then i'm joining them because you were there for quite some time right with supermassive yeah i was there for four years yeah man so and again so super massive like you know they make very different but really cool stuff you know and i remember when uh what was the first game came out um recently was remade uh
until dog i mean what a game what again you know i honestly and like me and me and my missus a couple years ago played the quarry when that came out really enjoyed that i thought it's great so again just it's it's something different which is something i really appreciate in in the endless stream of hero shooters it's great to see yeah exactly something very different i think that's what drew me to them in the first place it was it was it was clearly that undertone of like storytelling which i loved so much and then i'm a big fan of uh cinematic stuff as well uh so it kind of like plus it was a recommendation from a friend
of mine dan saxon um and so i was like yeah go on then i'll see what see what happens and then i stayed there four years yeah and it was in that time um yeah we released some fantastic games first one i worked on was little hope which we really really really liked um uh yeah working on that was was really fun managed to get to some of the the mocap shoots for that and learn about that process and about um and then just so much that we learned like just about um game development in general and also the biggest thing was just how to work properly in the team how to have proper communication how
to keep communication open and what to do and also what not to do as well because we had a lot of things where stuff didn't work which is fine you know that happens but it's just about how you approach that and how you sort of learn from that so yeah i couldn't i couldn't ask for uh the better studio to go to and then i got to a point we were working on uh i became lead lead designer in i can't remember the year but i did it for about a year and a half right before i moved and i was working on has that been announced yeah it has been announced um directive 80 20 that's coming out okay um it's
coming out this year i believe should be hopefully um so i was working as lead designer on that for a while and that was incredible like to do that to work with directly with like actors this is what i realized working on that stuff i always tried to position myself in positions of writing and directing actors and that kind of thing because that's the stuff that really resonated with me and luckily i managed to do a lot of that we went on shoots with um some of the voice actors and then do you mocap and record that is that london or do you fly off to la for that so uh it used to be la and then
when when i was doing it they went oh we're doing it in london now and i was like oh okay yay some of the other ones they went to like Like all the other ones, they went up to Canada for it.
So I was like, oh, yeah, we might do that.
And they were like, now we're changing it this year.
We're going to do London.
And I was like, oh, okay.
There's you in your shorts and your tank top and ready to go.
Yeah, I was so ready.
There's the train, mate.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Where are we going?
It's like, we're going to Soho.
What? But L .A.? But what about L .A.?
No, but working with, like, some of the guys at, I think it was Soho Voices that helped us with that stuff.
for their great studio in london and um yeah they uh it was really fun doing that and then we did a lot of work on the mocap studio we worked at a big motion capture studio called centroid which is um it's like a massive warehouse in pinewood they had one in pinewood so studios yeah so that was amazing doing that and then helping out the performance director uh with that stuff and it's just it was totally just a moment of like like this is it this is what i want to do i absolutely love working with these actors i love seeing the words that we have written come to life and then see it be spoke
and then be like oh god that's written really badly let's rewrite that quickly because it sounds awful coming out someone's mouth instead of a traditional sponsor what i'm offering now is that of joining the mailing list social media is constantly changing all the time as we're seeing some people are leaving Twitter others are choosing to remain blue sky threads all of this so it's really hard to reach out to all of you incredible aspiring and current game devs so what I'm offering here is that of a emailing list so if you want to be kept up to date with all of the great level design news as well
as get your your free guide which is my 10 tips towards better level design then please join the mailing list you'll be making sure to get three emails a week with me sharing that of different resources ideas as well as what i've learned through my career and some q and a's so if you're constantly looking to improve level design instead trying to figure out where all this information may be then look no further than the mailing list check down in the description below to join now and get that of your 10 tips to improve your level design so you've gone the completely opposite mate because i'm i'm
about to expose myself but uh not a huge fan of actors i won't lie and it's a funny thing to say in this creative space but uh you'll have to forgive me on some of them are way up their own asses and think that they bring more to the games than what many devs do is right to be fair actually there are a few like that like we like not naming names but we have experience with people like that and it is like you say it is it can be like that sometimes we got really lucky in our one oh mate there's great people out there it's not yeah not all actors are like this yeah yeah the uh we got got some fantastic
ones um to work with and and actually what i found was that the people doing the because what um supermassive would do sometimes if we would film face and body separately yes the two different actors um which is which is an industry like like standard it happens in the industry um because performance capture which is the full face and body can be very very expensive oh dude and also then when you put the regulations on top of that the amount of time window is really you have to get that right like if you don't get if you like the shoots were we had a fantastic producer called um stew haskane who was a cinematics
producer at supermassive and he he ran a tight ship like he was the loveliest guy ever but he ran a tight shift right when he there would be times where i was would go into sort of like what i call like the the artistic director mode where it'd be like you know what's what's the character feeling at this point like what do we what do we do and stew'd be like like we're feeling time pressure is what we're feeling yeah yeah yeah yeah how about we uh carry on yeah how about we hurry up and i was like oh yeah okay it's an interesting thing for those who may not be aware um obviously there's been recent
news especially over last year about saga and a lot of actors are involved in that but basically what it means is you get x amount of hours with with these actors it's not a solid eight hour day that you would have for the work it's roughly correct me if i'm wrong tom it's roughly around four to five five hours at most depending on the lines because if people are projecting a lot or screaming then it comes down because again that is their quote -unquote instrument um so you don't get as tom's saying with with production you don't get a whole range or as long as you'd like so you have to be effective
when recording these yeah so yeah it's it's a real reality check when you when you do that but when you also it's when you see things like laid out in a spreadsheet by a producer and And they go, like, we're going to do this section of the script.
And I look at that and go, that's like, that feels like it would be done in like, you know, half an hour.
It'd be like, no, that's going to take at least two and a half hours, something like that.
How come? Because, and then they go, well, because think about it this way.
We've got to set up that entire stage, like with all of the mocap stuff that you want, like all of the staging.
We've got to run through it, rehearse it several times with them.
Like, is it a very action heavy scene?
Is it a more of an emotional scene?
like you're gonna want to get it right like emotional scenes for example you think about some of those scenes from like The Last of Us or God of War and all these like really emotional moments and you see the behind the scenes stuff on that you see the directors like going through it several times because you need to get that right and that costs time you've got to factor that into the production schedule otherwise you're just going to go over budget and like you know some of the bigger studios will have leeway because they have a lot of money we were were talking about just before we started
yeah yeah that's not us by the way um they will have like a contingency of however long which you always build in anyway but like smaller studios like ourselves we are going to be on a much tighter budget and we have to make sure we get that right so yeah during the process that i'm doing now uh we are we basically have first pass scripts at the moment and we are looking at we are going to be looking at those scripts and saying like which are the moments that we want to make sure we get right yeah what are the biggest emotional beats that we want to get right and we need to give extra time for that stuff
to cook and it is like i said i may not be the biggest fan of of actors but there is a thing when you're asking someone to go to those emotional places i do respect it um good to know you won't be biased if like uh if anything mate i take it if we end up working together i know i'm not taking you on set i honestly think you probably need it'd be better to take me on set so there's a lot going on but the that side of acting and that side of that i mean that industry and also our industry as well where there is kind of a like a cliqueiness to it where it's like if you're not in it then you're out
of it and like to me when i'm working with them on stage i will always like i want the utmost respect from them for the rest of the team that's for everyone there the lighters the runners the the people working like we are all on the same level it doesn't matter we're all here to do a job and what's great is that the actors I have worked with have been fantastic for that like they've been incredible um there was an amazing moment uh I remember with one of the actors it was called um Kel I believe his name was uh and I basically said like I said to Stu how like how much can we throw Kel around
and he was like what do you what what do you mean I was like How much is he willing to do physically for this?
I sound like I'm going like a Kubrick, like I'm trying to break this person.
I'm not. But what I was actually saying was there's this There's this big scene at the end of one of the games where they basically jump out of somewhere quite high up, and I was like, how do we actually show that?
Because mo -cap is very difficult to do that.
So I said, yeah, we want to follow health and safety properly.
We had these guys called Lucky13 who were there as well who are stunt coordinators and they are like some of the best stunt coordinators they would go through like these fight scenes and everything so i said to them um i was like how high can we go with this and he was like we can go pretty high if kell is like up for it so i was talking to him and he was like he was his eyes lit up he was like i can't wait to do this yeah and i've got it on my phone saved and it is the video obviously it's heavily nda i can't release it until the game's released and stuff like that but it's it's this amazing
footage of him jumping off this giant it was like and he he finished and i made the joke of oh should we do another one then and he was like yep let's go and i was like no no it's fine we got it we got it no no there are some amazing ones and i think uh the experience in mocap as you're saying it is a really interesting uh part like when i was contracting in ninja theory because as you said right you're normally going over to these big studios for those you may not know sony santa monica their place of work is a giant complex and they have like a they are mocap which a lot of the sony studios
will use to go through but a ninja which their hq is an old pub they actually have built a mini mocap and it's amazing like we for animations we got to just jump in the suits get in and go yeah the new tech with it the fact that you can like have a camera which shows what's actually in the unreal real scene yeah while you're going through displaying with the character there is incredible so it is a giant play gym in a sense and as you said can produce some amazing moments yeah i mean i'm glad you brought up with like you guys just jumping in the suits we've done the same thing as well like some
of these newer um xn suits i think there was one that we use they're amazing yeah they're really really good and we like it means teams who are on a budget or a smaller team can can just get one of these or even rent one of these like like sometimes they do that stuff and just make amazing animations if you want to you know a walk cycle or something like that you could you could go out into your garden and do that walk yeah and then it'd be like cool we'll get an animator to to polish that up and do it properly you've got a walk cycle there it's like you don't have to there's no way the these
days everything's a lot more accessible for people to actually get into and um and play around with oh dude yeah like we uh we did that when i was when covid i was just in my apartment they sent me an xn suit and just yeah i've got the stuff so it's amazing some of the in the they're tight though i i haven't been in one myself they're not flattering no no one comes out looking good i don't care how good no i remember seeing footage of myself in one and i was like okay i need to lose a few pounds there this is yeah it can be your best when i say well it's never your best friend but it's definitely
an eye -opener it's like uh if you're wearing gi uh not gis um fuck i've forgotten they're like rash guards for jiu -jitsu and stuff they are again not fly when you're trying that's the side that's the side that they don't tell you is like of mocap and things that you get to know someone pretty quickly when they turn oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah everyone's on the set that's what i mean everyone's on a level playing field at this point it's like i'm stood here like you're stood there and you i can see everything so okay let's just that's why i always bring an extra sock but for some reason tom always
brings an extra box where he puts his leg up and i don't get why it is yeah i want to be taller than everyone else but despite all of our uh dicking about and my hatred aside for it mate the the switch there from game yes to narrative and obviously i'm involved in level you've done other aspects of design i guess you know you mentioned that the working with the actors seeing the story seeing the words before life is what what made you switch but in terms of the difference what do you feel is the biggest difference in your day -to -day activities from game design now to narrative um yeah it has been
a very big switch and also i mean what i like about this this current role that i'm in is it changes um depending on the stage of development that we're in yeah so we just we're in full production now um we've just come out pre -production yeah and that i joined when it was like a little bit into pre -production yeah um but a lot of the role was more sort of actually building the story and so i work as a lead narrative designer but because we're a small all team i also do um work with writers and also do some of the writing myself so um we were like building the actual like what we call the spine
of the story this is usually how how we kind of work and i don't mean to interrupt you mate i guess some listeners what is the difference between that of a narrative designer or a writer that's yeah that's that's a good point um what i would say is it really it does depend on where you are like as i said i do a little bit of both but But through my eyes, a narrative designer is someone who can come up with, as I said, like, the spine of the story, but also how it connects to the game design.
This is why it really helps having an understanding of both game design, level design, and also other aspects as well, like all the way from programming to audio.
it's someone who can sit in the middle and sort of say like how do we actually connect this story to the game so that you don't get the oh well alarm here for for the the ludo narrative dissonance alarm everyone loves saying this words make you sound smart mate that's it yeah yeah but but it is true like it's it's an actual thing and people say it all the time it's like it's making sure that um what it is that we're doing in the game like what the player is doing connects to the character and the world so that you don't have moments of like like why why why would i be doing this like what am i
oh i've got to go save this person from whatever but like why am i connected to this i don't care as the player i don't care so one trick i like to do um is have the player have as much information as the character that's something that i really like to do um because at that point you're asking the same questions what i love is moments where and i've watched streamers uh with this with certain games stream a streamer or someone playing doesn't matter just come to my head because it was a streamer yeah they were playing uh i can't remember what game it was but it doesn't really matter but um they
essentially went like oh like what am i supposed to do here they said it out loud and then the character said the exact same thing and it's that moment where it's like when the player has the same information as the character they feel a lot more connected so yes going back to what they do so versus a writer obviously again it can depend on that stuff but the writer is responsible for a lot of the dialogue and some of the barks and things like that they will also be working with the narrative designer a lot of time to come up with the story and things like that but their focus is more on the actual
like technical aspect of the dialogue like i will always i love working with writers because they understand the story so well yeah that you can then translate that into um into narrative design and actually put that stuff in world like so it makes sense with the the to the player it's almost like a translation like like it's a translation of one medium to another this is why i like also working with writers who maybe aren't game writers who are like working film and tv i've worked with them before and because they have no understanding of it they'll write something that's linear and your game
might have a load of delineations across from that in terms of like you might have a cut scene and then it goes into gameplay but they will just write it as one as one flow and it's like okay well what am i doing in this gameplay moment because if i'm going having a really emotional scene and then i'm going into a gunfight and then i'm going back into an emotional scene feels really weird unless you do it right which i don't know if anyone could any narrative designer or writer could get that right but maybe we'll see but like that's the moment is like i'll look at it and i'll go this writing
is really good we just need to figure out how to translate it into narrative design that's kind of how i see it um yeah yeah no that's a good one i think it's the same as you said it's a it's taking the writing and translating it into gameplay and i think that's the best way to phrase it so having the technical abilities that you have yeah can only you know just benefit you more yeah what you're doing man yeah i mean like like i said like i i think the part the reason why i love the position that i'm in especially being a lead as well is because we get to work with like all different departments
and i love working with all different departments um and how do we translate that narrative into those other departments so like level design for example like working with level designers is fantastic working with game designers is fantastic because you can the way i like to work is um we will essentially have like a base so out so for an area for example right yeah we will say what is this area and then the narrative designers and the writers will go away and they'll come up with what this area is maybe it's a you know it's a warehouse okay cool like what is this warehouse for who owns this what what goes
in and out with here what like we have to answer all these questions before we get into meeting with level designers of course and so that they have as much context as possible to make the amazing levels that they do and what i found is is great is i like going into those meetings a little bit before we've quite finished so that they can get input on it as well yeah so i could because i could go you know oh this warehouse is uh usually used to transport food to and from but it's also being used by an undercover agents to transport drugs or something like that and then I'll say something like that and then
they'll be like yeah but that doesn't make sense because what about because we did this previously in the level it's like okay cool then we're going to change this we're going to do different things um and it's the same with any department audio animation we'll go in and they'll have a completely different lens than me on stuff and they'll be like you know this doesn't work because of x or y so how can we change that because it's very easy for me to go in and change a uh change words on a page than it is to go into to unreal and change an entire level layout for sure yeah like it's very easy for me
to go okay this is no longer a warehouse this is a you know an outpost or something like that we can still keep a lot of the the stuff that we're thinking but now we've changed it to this that's it man it's it's as you said also like you've mentioned a couple times just how important communication is because you're working with so many disciplines as well and i guess how do you have any tips on on how to keep the communications so, you know, so active and, uh, because it's always the first thing to break down regardless of team.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I like, and you know, we've had moments across my career where it's broken down and it's just about understanding like why it's broken down.
Yeah. I think a, um, I read a fantastic book called tribal leadership.
Um, oh yes. Uh, which really helped me to sort of like, um, um, talk with teams and figure out like, it has like stages of where they're at, like one through five.
Um, I won't go through it all right now, but it's a fantastic book.
You guys should, I would recommend people read it if they're interested in any kind of leadership, no matter what discipline or even industry you're in.
Um, but that really helped me in, uh, understanding like why communication breaks down sometimes.
Yeah. What I found is actually one of of the best things is no judgment don't go in there with any assumptions and also be inquisitive like if you're having a conversation with someone just be interested in what they're doing and then that'll unlock every single thing that you want and then it'll unlock like what the problem is in in in the discourse because usually it's a very simple issue like you can go like oh you know have people being like i don't want to talk to him because he's done this or that or that i don't want to like you know i don't want to interrupt it blah blah blah and then
usually it's just because of one little thing like no matter what it is it's like oh well that's actually not what that is actually it's this thing it sounds very vague but it's because i can't come up with a specific example right now but if you're going in and you're like asking questions about stuff and being inquisitive and genuinely taking interest um and also being open i think actually one of the biggest things as well as that is not being precious and this is something that a lot of people have to learn entering into the industry yes it's not to be precious with your work so the amount
of times like i said that i've gone into level design meetings and they've gone well none of this makes sense yeah and i and back in the day i would have gone red flag i like i need to defend myself oh it does make sense because of these things yeah now it's like okay cool like How do you think it doesn't make sense?
And then they say it and I go, actually yeah, you're 100 % right but it's just a small change we need to do I can still get all of the work that I wanted to put in there and also I can preserve this relationship between us because that's more important to me is the team and the relationships that you have because it makes things so much easier then when you've got a problem they can back you up on stuff as well It is a funny aspect of that the i don't want to call it politics because that kind of puts a sour tone on it but that element of as you said right like there are times where it is it is a battle
in terms of well no we think our aspect is more important because this reason vice versa but there are times where it's okay to be like oh no you need help on this and like yeah this is your moment to shine we'll step out of the way and people do appreciate that and that does go a long way further exactly for it so not every battle needs to be needs to be won in that sense and yeah as we talked about as well as like everyone you mentioned so many teams about communicating with everyone like the moments to shine to make a great game everyone has a moment they need to shine on if an example there
is a bad joke in the industry where everyone's like oh it's environment art versus level design it should never be that if it's gotten to that point something's gone gone terribly wrong we need amazing art to make you be like whoa what the fuck is this and like take your breath away as much as they need great level design to encourage people to know where they're going they don't get lost exactly as entertaining you know everyone needs that moment for it and uh i am conscious tom because i promised to give you back in two minutes so is there anything else you want to talk about you've got you
don't have to you can run a little bit over but i'm just more conscious of your time mate oh i'm i'm fine if you want to carry on i don't know if you've got a specific length you want this to be i'm i literally have nothing else on today i've i've moved everything off my calendar just for this in case we were talking for 12 hours well no no i've got plenty of time i was going to tell you more about how much i hate actors than 11 hours to do this uh well actually i might be i might need to go uh sorry mike no but i mean we'll focus on one more topic make sure anything is really on your mind that you
you want to talk about with this or something that you really want to to push on um nothing specific like it's such an interesting i think what what i've learned more than anything about like the position that i have is the reason why i love it so much is and it goes it goes back into like what we're talking about the actors and talking about level design the reason why i love it so much is because i love talking with people and just understanding stuff and that's it that's all it like that's honestly one of the best skills i've managed to to to learn in my time is actually how to like just talk
with people that's it because it's very difficult because when you enter the industry and this is genuine advice to like a lot of the students and and people looking to get into the industry and things like that you're going to feel very self -conscious because that's just how this works right you're going to feel a lot of eyes on you when you present stuff to leads and things like that right just let go of that try it's very easy to say just try and let go of all that because honestly at the end of the day that doesn't matter what it actually is about is about the connections you make in the team
because that pushes you up more than anything else because i can't tell you the amount of times that like when i worked a supermassive i had i had a bigger team with me i had a bigger team of designers with me and uh the amount of of times that i will see what the work that they're doing and i'll go you need to present this to the to the director like you you should present this not me like this is your work and if like i was in a meeting um with a director or something like that or with some of the higher ups and they would go like oh this is really good work i would always try and shout out
whose work it was like what it is because then they're gonna get you know they're gonna get the praise they need and i'm and i i'm just a conduit like for that kind of stuff in a similar way that producers often say like they're kind of like a channel for like communication i think leads should be that as well but in more of a sort of creative sense yeah there's a term called uh service leadership where everything you're doing is in service of your team it's not that's exactly what i think leads should be i think leads should be pushing from the back like like they should always be pushing pushing
their their people forward to the forefront showcasing their work because that is your work i think that's your job as a leader is to push people to as much as possible um and yeah i think that's really helped me like in in all the time that i've done that because then those guys have always had my back they've backed me up with anything and also the other thing is the industry is a small is a small place yeah it's a very very small place i cannot tell you the amount of times that I've been looking for a job and someone in there has gone oh I remember you from this oh I'll put a word in for you
and if you're a dick it goes it's the same way if you treat someone like shit yes it goes the same way that person might go to another job and then you get laid off or whatever which is very common right now and you go somewhere else you you apply for somewhere else they go oh do you know um do you know Tom Hughes at all and then they might go oh yeah he's awful to work with like don't don't even bother he's too much of a hassle and then you'll get rejected and that's it you kind of get blacklisted at that point because you were a dick yeah so I think I said just don't be a dick it's like it's
the golden rule of so yes then we if anyone's reach out to you learn more where best to get in contact with you mate best place would probably be blue sky I'm very active on there at the moment and my art is some Hughes design blue sky dot social as well yeah I'll send you everything for that and put it up here and and with that If anyone is interested in reaching out and learning more about narrative, I kind of glossed over a few things, like we can go into more in -depth stuff.
Please reach out on there.
My DMs are open. I'd love to help people out as much as possible.
Tommy's a very nice guy, unlike me, which we've all lost. He's got a warm, gooey centre.
That's what you've got, Max.
It's under a hard exterior, but I know what's in there.
We've been out a few times.
I know what's in there.
but thank you very much for coming on as i said guys if you want to reach out to tom all of his details will be underneath in the description down below if you want to reach out to me unless you're an actor don't then i'm kidding i'm kidding but if you do want to reach out to me please you can do so at email level design lobby at gmail .com please sign up to the newsletter where we get to share more news uh news about level design the industry i get to answer your your questions as well and you can reach me over on x or blue sky at max pairs so thank you very much take care and we'll catch you
all next time cheers everyone bye
