To our game dev listeners, are you wondering how to expand your game around the globe?
Well, wonder no longer.
Xsolla Payments is a solution built for global game commerce and monetization.
It boosts player engagement with localized checkout experiences using your players' preferred payment methods.
The simple user interface makes it easy for gamers everywhere to pay for your games and in-game content exactly how they want.
Even better, they can save their favorite payment methods for quick purchases to help them get back in the game faster.
And you'll love Ixola Payments because of its customizable checkout and integration options with everything from sidebars and iframes to fonts and images, making the buying process feel like an extension of your gaming experience.
Ready to go global?
Visit xsollapro slash A-I-A-S-P.
Or click the link in our podcast description to learn more.
Hi, I'm Alexa Ray Correa and this is the GameMakers Notebook podcast coming to you from Dice Europe in Edinburgh.
My guest today is a very good friend of mine.
I refer to her as the most interesting woman, Liz Moberly.
She got her start in audio, is a very, very, very seasoned, very talented RPG writer, worked on Hogwarts Legacy, worked at Obsidian for a while, and is also a design director.
She is super cool.
I was really excited to do this interview with her.
It's just the two of us chatting.
We talk craft.
We talk state of the industry and a little bit about her most recent talk on institutional knowledge and why it's important.
Please enjoy.
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.
Hi, Liz.
Hello, Alexa.
Here we are podcasting.
In Scotland.
In Scotland.
We're in Scotland right now.
Today's show is audio only coming to you from Dice Europe in beautiful Edinburgh.
Edinburgh, that's how you pronounce it, right?
It's Edinburgh.
I mean, you're asking an American, but yeah, that seems close.
But you lived here.
You lived out here.
I didn't live in Scotland.
But you lived in the UK.
I did.
But I mean, I'm sure they would make the distinction.
But apologies in advance if I mangle it with my bad American ish.
We are both writers.
That's right.
And we make video games.
That's what they say.
That is that is what they say.
How I do.
I want to ask about your because when I do this show, the first question I always ask everyone is how did you get here?
Oh.
How did you get here?
Liz, by the way, sidebar, I refer to her as the most interesting woman.
And at the end of this podcast, you will understand exactly why.
So, you know, it's interesting when people ask, hey, how did you get into games?
You know, everyone has their own unique story.
But I actually had a break into games twice because I took a long exit from games in the middle of my career.
The first part of my career, I was in audio.
I was involved in dubbing for animation.
That's so cool.
Yeah, and it was also hard.
I was actually 17 when I got my first gig.
I was a week out of high school.
And it was an internship, unpaid.
Looking back now, I think that's too young to start in games or in that industry, right?
But I didn't know better.
I was just excited, right?
And also I needed...
A job because you know my parents, being maybe not incorrect but definitely firm, were saying hey, you're out of high school.
And even though I had worked through high school.
Um, they were like, you need to work more to support yourself now that you're graduated.
Right.
And so um, as the, as the story goes my, my best friend growing up uh, She had this little, I think it was like a 1983 Honda.
It was red and we called it Haku.
You mean like from Spirited Away?
Oh, that's cute.
And so we being really... uneducated about how things work.
We had really loved anime and cartoons in high school, just like little weebs, even though we didn't use that word yet.
And she was like Liz, I love.
I found the address for where they record all our favorite voice actors.
Oh, no.
I'm not going to say which studio this is or the actors involved.
And so what happened was is we drove up an hour to Burbank because we grew up in Southern California.
We drove up an hour to Burbank.
And just imagine you have two teenage girls approach an unlisted address of a recording studio and they just knock on the door and they're like hi is so-and-so here.
And they're like, this guy answered the door and he looked at us like, what is happening right now?
And he goes, Hello.
We're like, hi, so-and-so here.
Like, you know, these actors that we were really, really into.
And he's like, oh, dear.
No.
Because in our juvenile minds, we were like, surely this is a nine to five job.
And they are just at the recording studio.
It's so dumb looking back now.
Right.
But I wish they wish it was right.
But that's what I thought.
And in it and what I did next, I recommend to truly no one.
Do not do this.
Do not do this.
But I was young and didn't know better.
Basically, I. He's like, no.
And I was he's like, thank you.
Bye.
And like clearly trying to end this interaction.
And I don't know what possessed me, but I still stuck my foot out and put my hand out and I jammed the door back open in the door.
Literally, literally did.
And I rammed it open.
I'm like, wait.
And he looked at me terrified.
He was really tall and he went, uh, and I was like, can I have a job?
Because in my mind I was like I need a job and I'm going to ask everybody I know right for a job.
And it wasn't even discerning.
It was like it could have been anywhere.
And he looks at me like, whoa.
And he goes like. how old are you?
And I was like, I'm 17, but I'm 18 in a couple of months.
He's like, actually, yes.
And that's because it's not as creepy as it sounds.
He was really trying to get teenage insight Into what they liked in animation and in anime and all of these things.
And so he's like, I I cannot employ you like readily, but we can do an internship.
And if it if it goes well, then we can talk about what happens next.
And that just sort of that wasn't games, but it started me being connected to the world of what this is.
Right.
And so over time, I eventually got involved in audio and then transitioned over to games.
And spent a good time doing that.
But you know, I think that that element of kind of having done this very haphazardly is that in my mind I didn't see the opportunity for what it was.
And in my mind, I was like, I had always wanted to be a writer.
So I thought this is the job that I have after high school.
Right.
And I was in it longer than I thought I would be.
And eventually, like it sounds so quaint now, but it really was my dream to go to college.
And so eventually, after crunching a lot for a few years and.
Being a little worn out and having some experiences, I was like, I think I can go to college now.
So I thought I left games for good.
And I was like, OK, I'm going to college now and I'm going to become a writer.
And I'm going to I want to also, you know, be a professor.
I want to teach.
And so I thought, oh, yeah, games is like way behind me.
But, you know, obviously I'm on this podcast.
So, yeah.
Hey, here we are.
You can never leave games.
You can never leave games behind once the bug has bitten you.
I think what it gave me a taste for was that it did show me what collaborating with other people looks like.
And hey, it's really, really hard.
We talk about that all the time, I think in the industry, how hard making games can be and the collaborative aspect of it.
When it goes really well, when you are really on the same wavelength as the people you're making a project with, it's pretty addictive.
There's nothing better, right?
And so I actually did, you know, do the whole college thing.
I did the whole teaching thing and eventually found my way back.
I had basically it was when I moved to Utah many years later and they got me good.
And right back into games.
But this time I knew I didn't want to go back to audio.
I was like, OK.
And that was a more formal path that, I think, reflects more of how people are entering games now, which is, you know, I was actually teaching at a university and I had a remitted amount of tuition.
And so I took advantage of the opportunity to do a graduate degree in games, which is kind of crazy when you think hey, this is a person who is already a developer at one time in her life, who's also A professor in her own right.
Going back to graduate school in games.
But I I really in my head was like, I want to see what this is.
I really did, because I mean, so many people now have done this path like half of us like.
We're very scrappy, no education whatsoever to get into games.
We you know, but now we have a whole generation of people who do have an education in games and are entering through that pathway.
So I did that and there was a studio in Salt Lake City, WB Avalanche.
Um and uh, I knew I wanted to be a writer and the games program there didn't have like a writing track, but I knew what I wanted.
So, And I hadn't decided whether I was going to fully return to games at that time.
I was like, I loved teaching.
I loved it.
There were reasons why I left it that made the decision really hard.
But I had one foot in one door and one foot in the other.
And ultimately, I asked one of my professors who –, Sarah Gates, shout out to her – and I said hey, Sarah –.
I know you're not a writer, but do you know someone who is a game writer?
I just need to know what has changed since I did this, because I'm sure it's changed a lot which it had.
And I need to know. the basics, which sounds really dumb.
I need to know what do I list on a resume now?
Like, do I like what do you want in a writing portfolio?
Because, you know, when I was first in games, a lot of writers weren't actually writers.
They were like game designers or producers or whoever.
The game designer that wrote the text.
Correct.
Yeah.
So you know there were some writers, but like a form more.
It had become more formalized during my time away.
So my who would soon become my lead Adrian Ropp, He had basically, he had some, he had had a medical, he had broken his arm and so he was at home and he was like getting, I think, a little stir crazy.
So.
She connected me with him.
She's like, just chat with him.
He actually has the time.
He's normally like far too busy to actually chat.
So this is a really good opportunity.
And so we just had a really long conversation about games writing about, And we just really, really hit it off.
And a few months later, when an internship opened at Avalanche, I was like here we are again, back in internship land.
And I applied for it.
So I was in grad school teaching full time and then starting up at WB Avalanche, which is time-wise, the dumbest thing I think I've ever done.
But it ended up being very good for me.
And so, all of a sudden, I was back in a studio and um, I didn't actually.
I applied for the internship, but they didn't actually.
They're like no, that's very silly.
Um, we'll, we'll, we'll put you on staff.
Yeah.
Um, and so all of a sudden I was, back in a department.
I was back on a team.
I was back on a game, but in a new discipline.
Um, and that was, um, Like I learned a lot out of that experience anyway.
So this has been the longest answer to the question ever.
Like, how did you get into games?
But the answer is I did it twice in completely different ways.
But you know, as usual, the way that you do.
It doesn't mean necessarily that it's easy to replicate.
So and I think that's one of the most frustrating things for people to hear when they are trying to get into game development, because it can feel so inaccessible.
And so you try to replicate someone else's path and it can be really hard to do that.
You mentioned all of the kids.
That now have access to all of these college programs.
NYU Game Center, USC I think FSU has some game programs.
And they are like spending their dollars, taking their time.
They've decided I'm going to be a game developer.
I'm going to be a game writer spending all this money. going through these programs.
And over the last couple of years they have essentially like there's really no career placement support for any of them.
And they're also graduating into an industry.
Right now.
That is a little bit difficult to break into you and i have spoken at length in many forums about how, um and it's come up here at dice europe as well um, and some conversations i've been having about how right now people are not hiring juniors.
We have a junior hiring problem.
Oh, 100.
And yeah, companies are studios, whoever, not a lot are willing to take the risk on new talent.
In the discussion I had with the two Expedition 33 developers, Francois was saying that For Expedition 33 they did.
They took a risk on new talent, on people that they found on Reddit who had beautiful portfolios or really could program really well or had a hunger for it.
And taking that risk really did pay off.
And Game is one of the best of the year.
When and I'm sure you feel this way, too, when the kids, kids affectionate, the juniors, the entry level that are trying to find work in this industry ask us, well, how did you get in?
Like you and I are not formally trained, really.
Like you came in you know you came in through audio took your break.
Did your graduate also wrote?
I had three other careers, three other lives before I got here.
I was like you.
I wanted to be a writer.
I don't know.
We've talked about this.
I wanted to be a writer.
And I also wanted to teach.
I was like, I want to teach college kids.
And so I went to Boston University for English classes, knowing i was probably going to get a master's after that um yeah, with a concentration, and i also um, had a minor in japanese language and literature.
So weird yeah, crossover because you know i was a big jrpg fan and i was a huge weave and you know, my whole life revolved around final fantasy And I went through college and I graduated from college, went to Boston University, got a job in the English department of Boston University as an admin.
So I was one of like three ladies that Opened the department in the morning.
I was in charge of like admitting for students that came in and the grad students.
I helped manage them.
And then at night I was taking master's classes because BU, I don't know if they do it anymore.
If you were a employee of the university, you could take one class for free.
Every semester.
And if you wanted to take a second class, it was 90% off.
Third class, 80% off.
That's fantastic.
So on and so forth.
Amazing, amazing program.
So incredible.
I'm kind of sad I didn't take more advantage of it.
But I took two English classes at a time for the two years that I was working in that department.
The head of the English department was both signing my paychecks and grading my papers, which was like super super, de-duper awkward.
And I had a, I also did part-time work.
I did some freelance game reviews.
And article writing for like some small websites.
One called G4.
So tiny.
Rest in peace.
So little.
I wrote for a website called Dual Shockers.
That was, again, a thousand years ago.
That was an experience.
Derogatory.
Anyway.
I was doing that and then the Polygon had just formed and they had openings.
Like a long story short, they had openings and were like, anyone apply.
We're looking for junior writers.
And miraculously, of the hundreds of people that applied for this job, they picked four people, and I was one of them.
Yeah.
So I was part of Polygon's launch team.
I got poached by GameSpot in 2014.
And I had a chance encounter with Hajime Tabata, director of Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core, Final Fantasy Type-0.
There's a pattern here.
And I got to know him really well because I kept interviewing him for press chit.
And he looked at me one one time or saying goodbye.
And he's like, you should not be writing about games.
You should be making games.
You have a really good eye for this.
And I was still writing at this time.
I had written loads of fan fiction.
It's gone from the Internet.
Don't try to look for it.
And I had just been writing for myself, writing scripts.
I had. novel, whatever.
And I was like, you know what?
Sure.
And I don't really know how I did it, but I flipped my entire career over within the year.
And within a year, I was Working for Crunchyroll as a brand manager, which was my I pay the bills job.
And I would clock out, go home.
And I was writing for indies in the evening.
And my first published game was Bugsnax.
Yeah, it happens really fast.
It happens really fast when those changes happen, but you do have to learn how to roll with them, right?
Oh, yeah.
And during my time as a professor, you get all this information and faculty trainings and all sorts of things trying to tell you what the youth are going to be like.
Yeah.
Although I feel like that's It's not meant to be condescending, because actually a lot of people who are in college now are adults returning to college.
It's actually universities, especially in the United States, are changing a lot.
Like I still teach usually about once or twice a year, like a semester or something.
So busy.
Yeah, but it's because I like it.
I do it to myself.
But I've noticed that you know I have high school students and they allow them now to take actual college classes for credit while they're still in high school.
So you know, Their classmates may not know, but there's a 15-year-old who's taking Shakespeare or taking an upper-level class alongside a 40- or 50-year-old who is returning to school, Or you know, along with you know the standard age 18 to 23 year old, undergraduate.
Right.
So upper education now, at least on the university level, is it's becoming much more diverse, age wise.
And I think that's actually a good thing for people to be able to learn from one another in that way.
But it happens really quickly.
But anyway, the whole point of that was is you know they say that on average.
They would tell us all the time that On average now younger generations will switch a full career like three to four times in their lifetime.
And honestly, I was like, yeah, well, you know, it seems like I'm actually on track.
But I think.
That is reflective of the world that we live in right now.
It's actually very rare for even us to meet someone who's been at a company longer than a decade, even in our own industry.
Oh, yeah.
Like you know, the days of our parents and our grandparents who spent their full career in one place that can feel like such a rare thing to see now.
And I don't think that's what our generation or younger expect at all.
No, and a lot of people in our bracket, and when I say our bracket, I mean, like the lead director, like we are at, you know, we are at the top of our, somewhere in the top of our field, right?
Sure.
We were brought up, or at least the way that career it's like.
Oh, switch jobs every two years and that's how you get the salary bump.
That's how you get the title increase, blah, blah, blah.
In games we're switching every two years because shit's getting canceled or something doesn't work out or layoffs happen.
It's just kind of like the nature of games.
Like, yeah.
Yeah, I also think it's because I mean there's been a lot of talk right in the last couple of years.
You know, when I first started in games all those years ago, production cycles like the full cycle sometimes was a year and sometimes shorter.
And three years felt like a really long time.
Now it's not uncommon to see productions that are five, six, maybe longer years, right?
And so not only I think that there's also this component to where it feels like people are moving on really quickly.
But the truth is, is that these projects have extended For a really, really long time.
And I think that there's a combination of things.
You know, I had done a lot of research on burnout with my friend Tim Stobo, who's also a developer.
You are the game dev authority on burnout.
It's you.
I feel like I need to share that with a lot of people.
But you've been the loudest.
I've been very loud about it.
But I feel like anyone who's gone through burnout becomes their own authority on burnout.
But I think that generally speaking, you know, we have. talked to so many developers.
I mean, we heard from just countless developers over the time that we were looking into this topic.
And oftentimes, there's a combination of problems.
If they say on, like so many of them talked about how they had been on a project for six years and they were creatively and toasted, physically worn out.
Right.
Thinking about the same thing over and over.
They were just chomping at the bit to move on.
But it felt like moving on never came because it just kept going and going and going.
And.
That's not the only like that's that's not even the main contributor of burnout.
But it was one of those things that came up over and over.
Right.
Like people were in an industry of creatives.
And so.
The ability to express creativity, to make things to feel like you're growing in.
That creativity, I think, is really, really key towards sustaining yourself in this industry for the most part.
It's not the only thing, but it is a factor.
Yeah.
Some of my amazing former colleagues from Cliffhanger are some of the smartest engineers I've ever met.
And they came from Monolith.
They worked on the Nemesis system.
Um, we were talking after the unfortunate closure in spring and they expressed to me you know I'm, you know like I'm, I'm so sorry, you know.
This is really sad.
And they were like, you know what, we just, we just want to ship something.
And I think that That sentiment is true for people that sit on projects for six seven, eight years and leave before ship go somewhere else.
We just want to ship something.
And it's kind of hard, especially as a writer, where I think when we go looking for work, people look at our portfolio differently.
They look at our, like people look at shipped titles.
Yes.
And it's like, if you only have you know two ship titles in seven years, it's.
It's like Oh, you only shipped two titles in seven years.
Yeah.
But what you don't know is that one of these dev cycles was like five years of your life.
And that's a long time.
It's one.
It's a long time to be in one thing, but also I think uniquely as a writer maybe I think artists might feel a little bit this way too is you're not really building your portfolio of published work if you're sitting on something for five years and that can get frustrating and I wish more people understood that.
Yeah, I mean, there's Right.
It's kind of, you know, double edged sword.
Yeah.
I mean, well, every most developers, you know, the rush of announcing a game, you get so excited.
You're also nervous.
You know, you're announcing a game and.
One, you're really happy to see how it's being received, right?
There's excitement.
But half of the excitement is just the relief of being able to talk about it at all.
Oh, I know.
Acknowledge what you're doing.
Be able to say what's happening and what you've been spending your life on, right?
That's a huge part for people.
But...
I do hope that that sort of point of view that some people have about looking at projects and saying okay, we're going to look at this candidate and we don't see what they've been doing over the last few years.
I'm hoping, like this is not something the layoff situation that we've been dealing with for the last couple of years the, just like you know, the terrible cancellation of so many games, the closure of so many really important and storied studios, big and small.
Um, I'm hoping now that we can acknowledge hey, this person may not have shipped a game because, for forces outside of their control, they were not able to put that there.
And so I'm hoping that that that grace gets extended, because there are so many developers um Many way more talented than me who are like hey, I feel like I was left holding a bag.
And how do I represent this into the future?
But because it's been like a collective industry experience, I think.
Perhaps it will.
I'm hoping that that will change.
Yeah, I cautiously hopeful.
I wish, I wish that when for selfish reasons, I wish that when a project got canceled, you could put that stuff in your portfolio, that you could talk about it.
Cause like again.
Like not to bring up my most recent trauma, but with the cancellation of the, the Marvel project and I love some of the writing I did on that project and it will never see the light of day.
And I can't even submit that as a portfolio sample if I'm applying somewhere else or if I want someone else to consider me, which blows.
And I know, I know we know more than a few writers who unfortunately, have been kicked from canceled project to canceled project to canceled project, who are like what the hell am I supposed to show people that I can do my work?
So that's my hope for the future.
Um, Let's talk about something not so depressing.
Sorry, folks.
Liz, the thing I love about you is you so desperately want, like you, show up for your community, your game dev community, your writing community and you are actively trying to make it better.
Your research on burnout, like.
You do a lot of mentoring.
You know you participate in a moderated this beautiful discussion about institutionalized knowledge here at Dice Europe, which is so cool.
And necessary.
I think that it really.
I think something that a lot of developers I wish a lot more developers would do, especially at levels above us, is take the time to do that, to get into the trench with the community mentor, give advice, do stuff.
Well, I mean, I can understand why, because at the end of the day, you know, it's a huge investment of time and energy.
And I mean, if burnout taught me anything, it's that you have to learn how to say no to things.
This is true.
Yeah, Alexa, I gotta learn how to say no to things.
No, don't get me.
Generally speaking, I think that having I don't think that work-life balance is actually the right term for it.
I think just trying to be like, hey, I'm going to step back from my life.
What are the actual priorities I have?
What are the things that are important to me?
Yes, work is a part of that, because it can facilitate or destroy all these other things that are important to me.
And so some people have kids, that that's understandably their priority, or there's other things that they care about.
We have a lot of a generation of developers and I experienced this who are, You know they can't participate because you know we're starting to have parents who are aging and we have to take care of them.
I took care of my grandmother as a caretaker for the years during COVID.
And that was amazing.
I mean, it took every ounce of my energy to do that.
So, you know, I do give people a pass when jumping in the ring.
I don't, you know.
For me, I think that I do deeply care about my community and I thank you for the compliments.
But honestly I get, what happens is is usually I go through something or experience something or I see something and I'll be like and I'll come up with a question.
I'm like, why is it like that?
And The academic side in me that didn't exist during my first round in games can't help itself and is like you know what.
There's got to be some research about that.
There's I bet someone's looked at that.
Right.
In the English department, you know, we would get I had training every week, every week.
And then, when I was in graduate school, I was required to take all these pedagogy classes which you know.
For those who don't know this highfalutin term, pedagogy is basically like how to teach, like best practices with teaching, essentially.
And so...
And my assumption is that it was the same, but there was actually all these new ways to do things.
When I came back to games, I was like, wow, they're still doing it this way.
And I don't blame them because like, you know, I.
I am so grateful for scholarship.
I loved my time teaching, but we're very, very bad about taking everything that we have learned or that we're conversing about, and taking it to our wider communities and saying if there's anything here relevant for you like, it needs to be applicable.
Um, and so I was seeing, like how feedback was being done in studios and I was like yeah, I recognize this and this is.
It's not that it's not working, but I think it could be better.
Right.
So what can we do there?
So, you know, Here I am again, dipping back into research about feedback and collaboration with you.
And so that's how it starts.
But it's usually very personal, like burnout, I think, for anyone who has experienced it or has had to try to help developers in their studio or friends who've dealt with burnout.
It's it can be such an insidious thing in a person's life.
It can be really destructive.
And I had experienced burnout twice in very different ways.
One had been crunched induced many years ago.
And then the C word.
But the second one I was so confused by because I was like, I have not worked an hour over 40.
Why do I feel so destroyed?
Like I didn't understand what had happened to me at all.
It was so confusing.
I was like, I haven't worked overtime and I take my PTO and like what's going on here.
Right.
Like and so I was like, you know what?
Like, Liz, you know better.
Like go where the information is.
And so that's how that journey started.
And once I get a bug in my ear with a question, I can't let it go.
I watched you go.
Yeah.
So right now I'm on an institutional memory kick.
I love that, though.
That's such a let's let's talk about that because this, you know, Dice Europe is not recorded.
If you want to chat about it briefly.
Oh, sure.
Why?
I'm just just I'm just going to give you the floor.
OK.
Well, everyone, institutional memory is dot dot dot.
No.
So institutional memory.
Most people know the term institutional knowledge if they've been in a corporate environment at some point.
And the more academic term is institutional memory.
And essentially, it's the collection of information experiences values expertise, history that comprises a group.
But the caveat is that it's not documented or written down.
It lives in the people, lives in their memory.
So you know when you go for drinks with your buddies after a long day at work and You know the person who's been at the studio for 10 years is John.
On about all their war stories and the history of the studio.
And this is why this director makes that weird decision.
You don't understand.
Yeah, it's whatever.
That's institutional.
Memory at work.
It's stuff.
It's stuff that would never in a million years end up on a confluence page, end up on a wiki, end up on the mural board in documentation.
And I think when, when you were after your talk, I forgot who I was talking to, but they were like.
You know, that's the kind of stuff that, like you, kind of have to document.
And I'm like, but there's just some stuff that is not like, it doesn't belong in the GDD.
It doesn't really belong anywhere.
And it can only really be orally passed.
That's the thing.
They find that this is so great because I'm talking to another writer and also a very good friend.
So I think that one of the key things that they have found in the last few years about institutional memory is the importance of storytelling as being one of the most important vehicles for passing down institutional memory to people who have not been at that company, in that group, for a long time.
And I find it so interesting that they came to this conclusion, because a lot of this research has been done, actually precipitated by governments, governments being really anxious about the fact that the older generation not just the politicians but civil servants are retiring or leaving and that the people below them don't know how to run government.
They haven't learned these lessons.
And I know that's...
Everyone I can imagine right now is like, oh, my word.
But, you know, that's the sort of thing where they care about that.
They care about passing on their institutional memory to the next generation.
But the question is like how do we do that when an organization either as old as ours or as big as ours?
It's not always a big institution, but it can be.
How do we pass on the stuff that's important that's really hard to document?
I think that those are the sorts of things that are kind of at the forefront because, you know, we have a generation of developers who are actually starting to retire for the first time ever.
Yeah, retire.
Yeah.
You know, those sorts of things.
We are at that point. you know, when I started in games, I felt like everyone was in their twenties.
Um, you know, and that's not the case anymore.
We have several generations in a studio.
And so, um, that, that has created its own problems, right.
Um, which are separate from this.
But uh, The fact of the matter is is that the depth of knowledge that older developers have?
How can that get passed down to people who join a project or studio don't haven't spent time with that design philosophy or those tools, or just how people interact with each other at the studio, kind of like the unwritten social mores?
You know those sorts of things.
But also, how can you make sure that the institutional memory you're passing down is the right memory to pass down?
Because, as you know, anyone in this field of study will tell you that, as important as the proper memory is, you also have to choose what to forget.
Institutional forgetting is what they called it.
Yeah, you do have to allow... Memory is not static.
Memory is always fluctuating.
So like, for example, if you know, I remember this instance when I was a little girl and I loved.
Like just egg and cheddar omelets.
Like I could eat one every day.
Classic.
Classic.
Protein.
And so my mom would, understanding that I loved it, would make one every single day.
Right?
Aww.
Um.
But no matter how much you love a thing, eventually you will get sick of it if you've had it too much.
Right.
Yeah.
And so I.
Um one day my mom had gone to Costco and you remember those Welch's fruit snacks like the cherry ones.
Yes.
Okay.
God.
Yeah.
Good.
Right.
So.
I loved those.
Those were like list catnip.
And I wanted one of those packets so bad.
And my mom's like, you have to finish your omelet if you want this Welch's pack of fruit snacks.
And so me, by the way, I'm like six or seven at this point.
And so Me, thinking I was just like brilliant, put my omelet in the trash and covered it with a napkin.
Very badly.
No, no.
So it's like my first, like it's my first memory of a lie, right?
And so my mom, of course, found it because I was like, Mom, I finished it and I ate my fruit snacks.
Right.
And girl, then like within five minutes, my mom discovered the fruit snack.
Oh, my God.
And the omelet situation happened.
Um, and essentially poor now, why do I share that memory?
Because the way that I look at this now as to how I looked at it then has changed.
If you had asked me a month after the omelet incident incident, I would talk about how I'd been grounded, for the first time ever, traumatically for two weeks and couldn't spend time with my friends or play outside.
You wasted an omelet.
Because I wasted it.
Well, because I lied to my mother.
How many eggs were in that omelet?
It was probably one.
I was little.
But you know, like that's, that was my memory as a kid of like oh, I got punished for this thing that I did.
And I learned not to lie because it will make my mom mad.
Now you know, as an adult, we can all look at that situation and laughing about it.
Right.
It's hilarious that I thought I was so crafty, so, so, so there.
And, um, But I also see now what my mom was trying to do, right?
She was trying to teach me how to be honest and how to be To say hey, if you want the thing you enjoy, you also have to take responsibility for the thing that you have in front of you, right?
And so...
You know, memory changes the context of memory changes.
And I bet some of the details of that experience are like that.
I may have changed them over time, because time can alter your perception of things or the events as they happen.
This is why eyewitnesses and court cases are extremely unreliable.
Yeah.
So, you know, memory is not static.
And what that means is an institution's institutional memory is only as successful as they can allow one for that memory to adapt and change with the necessities that the studio requires or that the team requires and that they do not.
They choose to forget the things that are not servicing them.
Um, because you know you can use institutional memory for bad right.
Like you can say, this is why we do things.
And it's reinforcing a practice that is actually hurting people.
Right.
But it is also one of the key ways in which the strongest organizations and, in my opinion, Game studios do their best work.
So when it's done the right way, I think it's very powerful.
But it has to be done very intentionally.
But yeah, there's.
There's always, like you know, a side of something where it can be used incorrectly.
So that's that's how I think about it.
Yeah.
Sticking.
So, regarding institutional knowledge, where does it come in when you're thinking about all of these new studios where it's like I don't know, maybe like a very small number, like four or five, whatever small core team leaves A triple A studio, forms their own studio, starts hiring a bunch of people from all over?
Like, is there still institutionalized institutionalized institute?
Goddamn.
We should be institutional knowledge.
Like, does it exist?
Does that core team have a responsibility to push that I'm going to say institutionalized again institutional knowledge to the team?
Or is there a responsibility there to kind of assimilate these new cultures?
I asked this question because I dealt with this directly when I went to Cliffhanger.
Rest in peace, great people.
But a lot of them came from Monolith.
There was quite a large number.
And then a lot of people from, you know, I had come fresh off the Call of Duty boat.
I had people from Rocksteady that had rolled off Gotham Knights.
One of our progression designer was a rewards designer on WOW.
We had people kind of came from Arcane, people from all over the world, all these different studios, different genres.
And there was definitely a tension between the guard from the old studio and their pipeline of doing things and the way that all of us had been used to.
And I think about that when I, when I was listening to your talk yesterday what do you think the like, what do you think the role is there or does it not have a role in something in a new studio?
So I want to be clear here.
There's.
There is some research and work that's been done looking at how long it takes teams that are newly formed or have been together a long time how basically, how long it takes to ramp up or be successful, and stuff.
But it's not in the context of games.
I mean, I do think games is so unique in that it relies on so many interdisciplinary factors when oftentimes companies are that have been looked at or governments are looking at a single game. type of product or a single type of result.
So there's some difference.
And also there's a lot of unknowns here.
So some of this is going to be my subjectively informed opinion.
Great.
And some of it not, but all of the caveats aside.
So I will say that from what we saw studying burnout, we noticed that there was a high Okay.
Oh, gosh.
I think there's a difference between teams that have formed, between people who have worked together before and actually do know how each other work.
And so maybe there's a group of them and they form this studio versus.
All these people.
They may have been friends but they actually haven't worked on project together or their approaches.
We are going to get the best of the best to do this thing, right?
And I understand why they try these approaches, because I mean, you would think hey, if we're going to get best in class or I'm going to get people who I've always wanted to work with and I finally get this opportunity to do that, I get the allure of that.
I do.
And so...
If you're in a situation where you have that going on, the problem is you're trying to do two things at once.
You're trying to, one, figure out how to make a game, which is always hard in any situation.
Any game that ships is a miracle.
And especially if you're building it from the ground up.
Because you know what people forget is like hey, you just left a studio that might have a couple decades worth of tools and infrastructure and pipelines.
And now you got to build that all again from scratch.
Right.
And so there's the project level of it.
And then there's just how do we work together?
And you're figuring all of that out too.
And that is a deep, deep challenge.
And a lot of people don't overcome that challenge.
And I don't think that's because they necessarily did anything wrong or there was something there.
But you know, The teams that seem to be the most successful in the long run, they start very small.
The people who were in that core team had worked together prior.
At least there's some connection each person has to someone else.
And they start small.
They scope small.
They don't try to be like we're going to get the best of the best and we're going to make the biggest game ever.
Right.
That can be really tough.
Um, so they start small and this is the key here.
We've noticed that the ones where the institutional memory is strong, their team stays together, for the most part long-term, and they keep building on the type of games that they want to make.
They don't, Bop around genre to genre a bunch.
They might they're going to change.
They're going to innovate.
They're going to make alterations.
But they they're they're constantly saying, OK, we just made this game.
How can we take this stuff that we learned and make it even better and then make it even better?
And then four games in, all of a sudden they've hit the jackpot.
So those are the sorts of things where it's about seeing long term growth and believing that that long term growth comes through the knowledge and the steady relationships that come from teams who've worked together for a long time.
I do want to leave one caveat and then I'll let you break in here.
Um, is that you were talking about juniors earlier?
Yes.
So I think you said that people see it as a big risk to hire juniors.
Um, and I understand, because if you only like, let's say, you got a hiring freeze at your company And you only got one slot and you're like I really need someone who can haul ass.
Right.
Like I need a senior in here.
I need an adult.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, unfortunately, and that's the feeling.
And I, you know, I've been in that place.
Right.
Where you're like, I don't have. the ability to mentor, and I need someone who can really lift.
I would say though, that I actually think it's a huge, massive risk for your studio long-term if you don't hire juniors.
And the reason being is that there's two reasons for it.
First of all, not only do they bring perspective and, um you know, a fresh set of eyes uh yeah, you're going to have to mentor but also they're going to come up with new ways to approach problems.
You may have never thought of all of that stuff we've talked about, but what we are also seeing in studios um, that was mentioned um, In all the burnout conversations and that we're seeing an institutional memory, is that these studios have been along around a really long time.
That seemed to be combusting from the inside.
Everyone's like, what is going on?
Why is this happening to everyone?
Right.
Is that because of all that churn on the bottom end?
How do you raise up leaders within your organization who have been there long-term, who who started maybe in QA or is like a junior producer, a junior designer, a junior engineer, and they have seen that journey and they've been able to like really understand the ins and outs over the course of several years.
You could really be cutting your studio off at the knees if you do not allow for that growth to happen.
It is so much more of a wild card to hire in a Like a game director, a creative director, a really key lead role from outside the studio has no context of the studio.
It's not that it can't be done.
It has been done very effectively.
It happens all the time.
But you need that junior...
That junior talent and you should invest in them because you are investing in the long term growth of your, of your team.
Yeah, because they know dev forgets the first major project they were on.
They just don't.
It's so formative and it shapes them.
And so you have the opportunity to really inform the way that they see how games are made.
And if you invest in them and allow them to succeed in your company, they're going to be in it for the long haul.
They'll be the ones who stay.
So I think that people typically leave when they don't see a future or when they don't feel invested in.
So I do think it's a mistake when we don't hire juniors just because I feel like then you don't have One the institutional memory but you also do not have like the developed leadership in your company to take over.
So you know it becomes harder to find those leads or those directors when people retire that you really, really have confidence in to do that work.
So, yeah.
I remember I remember this exactly what you're saying being the hardest part of my journey into dev.
You know i i you know joke with some of my older veteran colleagues that like, when we talk about the industry and we talk about this, we talk about hiring juniors and whatnot it's oh you know.
They're like.
Oh you know, I walked into a building in the 90s and said I can use a computer.
And now they've had a very long, lucrative game dev career.
Yes.
No tea, no shade.
Like, good for you.
Amazing.
I was...
Still crawling in the 90s.
So but for me, it was extremely difficult.
I remember very specifically applying to I had you know, I had an indie bug snacks under my belt at that at that point.
I was a story editor.
And then I was working on an indie game that eventually shipped as Tech Forgotten Gods.
Shout out Studio Lanzo in Chihuahua, Mexico.
And I just I wanted I at the time.
The only way forward I could see is like I need an in-house AAA job.
Otherwise, no one's going to take my resume seriously.
Like this is what I have to do.
And I remember applying, going through these interview loops and at the end being like sorry, we loved your writing.
You're clearly very talented, but we need someone who is shipped.
We need someone...
With AAA experience, we need someone who has actual dev experience.
And I remember just being, I remember getting one really brutal rejection, took the writing test.
Writing tests, another big asterisk issue.
Just tests generally.
Tests in general.
Although I do find I don't know if you have found this when you get to a certain level in writing, people don't give you tests anymore.
I actually, you know, I have a spicy take and I actually...
Spicy takeoff.
I understand why people disagree with me, by the way.
I see the perspective that people share here.
I actually feel that the people you need to test the most are your seniors, your leads, your principals.
That's not a spicy take at all.
You know, it is.
I definitely have people who disagree with me on that one.
Well, here's the thing.
If you're going to lead and manage or you're hiring someone to lead and manage, and you and I have talked about this craft skill and managerial skill are completely separate.
You could be a phenomenal writer.
And be a shit manager or you could be an excellent manager and maybe not a strong person.
Yeah.
So, I mean, and some studios split those roles intentionally.
Some of them do.
And but some don't.
Yeah.
It's very easy to look at a resume and be like hey, look at all this stuff they did and think well, they must be good.
And that's not to say that they are bad, but you actually don't know for sure if their writing is the fit that you need for your project.
It's less about whether they're capable and more about like is this actually the sort of work that is best for this team and for this project for juniors associates?
I don't expect that high level of execution at that point.
I know they're going to be mentored.
So to me, it's more a question of like, do you have the mindset?
Do you have The ability to are you teachable?
Are you eager to work with other people or, you know, so to me, it's like, hey, I I can.
I can see how.
People are like, well, they're young and they're unproven, so we need to test them.
But there's very rarely.
Is there anything that the test is going to show me that the, The portfolios don't?
That the portfolio didn't.
Yeah.
I vastly prefer...
I vastly prefer evaluating younger writers on, or junior writers on their portfolio anyway, because I, if you show me range, it shows me that you can adapt to any tone and it doesn't really matter what the tone or what kind of game we're writing is.
If I can see that you are adaptable.
Okay, cool.
I don't care if you know, you're, is not in the tone of Call of Duty, for example.
My first in-house AAA job was on a Call of Duty because Stephen Rhodes shout out, saw my writing, talked to me, loved my work and was like yeah, I think you can absolutely write a World War II story.
And spoiler alert, I had never played a Call of Duty in my life up to that point.
I don't know if I ever said this publicly, but now it's out there.
And it was because I was adaptable.
And that's why I think writing tests can sometimes be either false positives or just a bad representation.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think, when it comes to the test, and I do want to clarify for, like seniors and leads, you know, I've been in a situation where someone was hired into one of these high rolls who had done a lot of good work on a lot of good projects, but it actually been a long time since they were doing substantive amount of writing or narrative design.
And um, you know you just One.
You know that their work is going to be held up as the example for other developers below them, but also you just want to make sure that Where they are now is exactly what you need.
And so I do hold them to a higher standard than I hold juniors and associates.
And so and I think that the impact that they have on a studio is so much larger.
And so the I think that that is.
But I do understand the arguments, for like I understand why seniors would come to the door and be like hey, haven't I done enough at this point?
Like I have given 10, 15, 20 years of work.
Like how much more do I need to prove to you?
I think it would also be way more palatable, not just for writers, but just for any discipline in our industry where tests are really common.
If they were not an imposition on time or energy.
I think that this would be less of a conversation if that were true.
Of course, I feel like this tests as discourse comes up.
At least once a year?
More than once.
The use of writing tests in the discourse has been coming up more and more often over the last couple years, especially since some of these are like.
I'll never forget.
I got a nine-page test for an unnamed developer.
And they were like, please try to complete this within four hours.
And I was just like, what?
Like I am going to.
It's going to take more than four hours, but also that's four fucking excuse me for a fucking hours of my life that I'm not getting paid to create this stuff.
And also, if you do the test, most places can use stuff from your test because it is theirs after you hand it in.
Yeah.
So it's like you know, if I have to, for example, like I don't know name a bunch of objects, you hand that in.
They could be like yep, we're using this, and like putting it in the game.
Not saying everyone does that, but that's like, I don't know.
It's such a, It's such a weird thing.
It is.
I mean, and I think what's really at the heart of it, is that people are like we know that any person you add to a team is going to change how that team feels, how it runs.
And it is... it feels like a risk every single time and you want to make the right bet.
You want to make the right choice, because for every person you say yes to, there are several more that you said no to right.
More than several, right?
And, like you know, it is hard to say no, especially when you have a lot of people who could do the job right.
So you do want to be fair and you do want to be thorough.
And that level of assessment.
I don't think that The answer is no tests no, no assessment, no gauge.
Hey, do I, do I feel like our work would work well together?
And then do I feel like us as people would work well together?
Those are two separate things.
Right.
So um yeah, I think that, generally speaking uh Yeah, I think that we've all seen it to where a team that didn't get along, you can feel it, and it impacts so much of what happens on a project.
I mean, I've seen very successful projects ship where the teams were incredibly fraught, but you feel like you're just eking out every single moment when that's happening.
And on the contrast, when you're on a project where everyone knows how to work together, they enjoy working together, and they could keep going.
I was really struck by the Silksong developers and their interview recently about how They took seven years because they were just having a ball.
Like you know, they're having a good time dream.
And meanwhile, while all of us are being like, when are you going to finish this?
Because we want to play it.
And so.
And it was really refreshing to me to see some people who were having a really good time making games in the midst of this very difficult time where it feels very hard to see what's happening in the industry and feel like a lot of joy.
Even as important as it is, it can feel really hard sometimes.
You can also tell.
You can tell when you're playing a game.
No matter how big the team was, you can tell if they enjoyed making it like.
You can tell, the same way that you know when you look at a painting or read a book.
You kind of get a sense of the author's emotions or where they were pulling from when they were writing.
And I absolutely can tell, like I play, I've played silk song.
I'm like they had.
They did have fun making this playing, not to mention expedition 33 for a gajillionth time, but it's, They had fun making that game.
I think of I just finished Donkey Kong Bonanza, which is it's it's very long.
It's a very meaty game, very dense.
But you can tell that the developers had so much fun finding this and tweaking it and putting these mechanics in like it truly feels like a product of, like I almost said, gleeful children.
But aren't we all somewhere in there with games?
But there's these people that were so excited to make this thing and tweak it and make it enjoyable.
And it resulted in a very enjoyable experience for me and for dozens of other people.
You can tell.
It was Shigeru Miyamoto, right, that said a bad game is bad forever?
Yeah.
Was it him?
Perhaps.
I remember the quote, but not the author.
We are doing the best with what we have and we're all in this together.
But you can tell when you get something.
You can almost feel the pain that they went through.
And that makes me sad.
And I know, you know, the capital D discourse... is always like, oh, it's because studio leadership did a table flip or shareholder value or everything just wasn't working and you had to just toss it out and start over or you had one bad apple somewhere or institutionalized knowledge was lost, there was too much churn, there was layoffs, all of those things. um but you can you can you can tell and i think that it's i mean it's it's okay to have fun right Yes.
But we have to address these issues.
I think we need to be more proactive with that.
Well yeah, it's learning how to have disagreement or differing opinions and in a way that doesn't bring out anxiety, tension or dislike uh, i dare i say hatred right, or animosity, because i mean, if you are going to collaborate with people, there are going to be moments where you don't agree.
All the time.
And it's learning how to navigate that.
And if you can learn how to be with a team where you can all...
You know that when you disagree, you know from that moment you're going to.
You believe in them so much that you know you're going to find a solution with these people.
You're like.
You know it's OK that we're going to disagree, because these are the people I want to be in the ring with.
And so then it feels just so much more tangible to be able to get there.
And it's a very different thing when you're like, oh no, I disagree with this person and will I lose my job if I tell them that I think this is a bad idea, right?
Those are completely different feelings, right?
And so how do you collaborate In that second scenario with when you there's any sort of fear about bringing these things up, versus like, OK yeah, we got a problem and that is something we got to solve and we definitely need to address it?
It's not great, but you know what?
If I had to have a problem with anybody, these are the people I would want to like figure that out with right.
It's called cross-disciplinary collaboration, which was uh, the subject of our oh my god, what year is it their 2024 gdc talk?
You know, it's a good question.
It is uh, so recent, so long ago.
Um, i think it was 2023 and 2024, i think, Yeah.
So what what year is it?
It's 2025.
OK.
Yeah, it was it was 2024.
That's another, I think, skill that you and I in our talk and we've talked, you and I have talked about this a lot, about how, with writing it's probably it's a little more difficult difficult a skill to kind of learn, because writers, if you're, if you are a screenwriter, listening to this, I'm looking to get into game writing.
There's I get I, you and I get a lot of questions from people wanting to come in from that side of the industry or coming from I don't know, like literature whatnot comics, and i think the thing, the biggest misconception is that you know, you write the game script, you hand it in and then they go off and they make the game.
The first, the first challenge there is you know it's being made live.
Well, everything else is being made live, but two, you're not writing in a vacuum.
You're almost never writing in a vacuum.
No um, I think that for at least in the case of screenwriting, like I've learned things from people who have come over from academia into games, people who've come from screenwriting, people who are novelists.
Like when I was at Obsidian there was a lot of former novelists on staff and, and you know, like I learned a lot from them and I do think it enriches their craft and I think we need all of that.
I think that that's the hard thing.
The animosity between screenwriters and The narrative side of the games industry is.
I think that, you know, there's a feeling of like hey, we worked so hard to be taken seriously by this industry.
Even in here, we took.
It took a lot to get to where we are in games, to where story is important and given the gravity that it deserves.
And then feeling like we were boxed out of certain places that didn't take us seriously, because they saw us more as toys and they saw us as you know.
Something worthy of either, dare I say, art or at least a product worth investing in.
So I think what happens is you know you.
We see the sacrifice that so many of our peers have made in order to get us to this point and that we have personally experienced.
And then it's hard to see someone just waltz in from another industry and people give them the latitude or gravity that we felt like we had to fight for.
We had to pay in blood for.
That said, I think that.
I've worked with many screenwriters on projects who ended up being fantastic to work with.
Shout out to my friend Tom Dibble.
I think that, Generally speaking, what matters is that, when that I think we should welcome writers from anywhere but anyone, including if I went to another medium, if I decided hey, I want to break into something out of games, I need to understand that I need to start at the bottom.
I need to learn from people.
Because I don't know what I don't know.
And I think that that is really the reasonable ask is that when they come in, you know, they they.
Mm-hmm.
I think that, generally speaking, we need to give a little bit more grace to people from other mediums coming in and be supportive.
I want to see writers and narrative designers of all industries lift each other up, especially in this time when we have much bigger challenges in my opinion.
Yeah, we have bigger fish to fry right now.
Right.
Like, I mean, other people to fight.
Like there are real threats to like our discipline that exist right now.
And I think that All of these things are solvable problems.
And I think that they take a backseat to the larger issues that are facing our discipline and then the games industry at large.
So, you know, if people want to join us in the ring, you're welcome.
We just ask that you take the time to learn from people who've had to go through a lot of effort to get where they are.
Yeah.
You have to learn our rules.
We're not, we're not gonna.
Well, and we have to be open to the things they can teach us, because they can.
They have so much to teach us and um, we really need to be open to that.
Um, It's not it's no one likes the person who's like, well, this is the way we've always done it.
So we always have to do it this way.
Right.
Staying still is like moving backward.
Yeah, you're right.
We could yap.
Forever.
Literally forever.
But we can't.
I mean, we could, but we can't.
So the most interesting woman storied.
Game designer, narrative designer.
No, no, I know.
I will continue.
What is your biggest piece of advice for?
I mean, we talked about juniors earlier and we talked about and we just talked about people wanting to come into the medium.
What is your biggest piece of advice?
From your journey that you would like to impart.
For like people trying to come into games?
For anybody in games.
For anybody.
Oh my gosh.
Or juniors.
What is your big like list takeaway?
Oh.
I wish I had something profound to say.
It's going to be profound anyway.
No.
I'm trying to think here.
The biggest regret that I have from my time in games is not understanding my own boundaries, because I was able to cross them for so many years.
And what I mean by that is when I experienced burnout this last time it I mean it nearly leveled my life.
It did level my life.
And it's taken years of recovery, both mentally, emotionally, and physically.
But it also had a huge impact on my career.
And I had run so hard and I'm not even talking about crunch.
I'm talking about like My academic work and I had it had paid off for me.
I had been rewarded for all the work I had done.
And because I kept being rewarded for pushing really hard, I kept going until, all of a sudden, I found myself completely unable to do anything whatsoever.
And I had turned into a person I didn't recognize.
And I don't just mean like physically being tired.
I meant like my personality was someone I didn't know.
And I was like, how did this happen?
And I didn't even know how to crawl out of that hole.
Right.
And.
I was very fortunate to have a bunch of people around me who were very patient and loving.
And for the first time in my life, I was forced.
It wasn't a choice.
I was forced to have to say no to things and I was forced to have to be like what actually matters and who do you want to be, both as a developer and as a person?
And is this aligning with with any of those goals?
It it sounds like such a basic thing, but you know, when you're in the the flurry of a project that you care about and when you're trying to one, survive just life generally.
You know, make money, keep doing the things you want to do, help your family, be there for your friends all of those things you can get lost in the middle of it.
And if you don't, Really take a step back.
What happens is, at some point you are going to pay that cost, and you may not think so, but it is going to come for you.
And so.
You really have to.
I just urge people to put thought into how can I make sure that I as a person am sustainable and can show up for myself long term.
And there is no studio.
There is no game or project available or creative endeavor that is worth the price of your health and peace of mind.
So I think that most people would agree with these things.
I think most of them people would be like yep, I felt that, but I feel like we're really bad at following advice that we know would help us.
So, you know, I just, yeah, you don't have to do it the hard way.
There's nothing noble in the sacrifice there.
There's nothing noble in it.
If anything, I was just like, okay, like, I mean, yeah.
There was a lot of time on the couch spent with my cat.
Marigold.
Cute little burnout cat.
My burnout cat.
I love Marigold.
Beautifully said.
Thank you so much for allowing me to bully you into doing this.
You're welcome.
This is great.
Yeah.
For those at home, this is not my typical lane, but I adore Alexa so much that I was like okay, I will do it.
And it's been a pleasure.
It's actually been really enjoyable.
Always love talking to you.
You too.
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.
