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Welcome to The Game Maker's Notebook, a podcast featuring a series of in -depth, one -on -one conversations between game makers providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment.
The Game Maker's Notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a member -driven organisation dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment.
Tonda, welcome to the Game Maker's Notebook.
Thanks for having me.
It's great chatting to you.
I think I'm in day 10 so far.
And I don't know how, but every time I dive back into the manor, into the estate um i feel like i've unlocked another hundred days worth of puzzle solving and mystery um uncovering and detective work ahead of me uh this this labyrinthian uh estate just keeps unfolding before me so congratulations on an achievement and of course on launch and the reputation i started hearing about blueprints uh i think in the lead up maybe to next fest it was was david martinez from raw fury said tweeted something or something or skied something like y 'all aren't ready for this game or something like that yeah
that caught my attention so congratulations yeah we were in the we were in the june june next fest of of last year which was which was which was a big chunk uh before before the release yeah right yeah because when when did you release when was it was um april 10th april so yeah just about a month ago wow congrats how How are you feeling?
Oh, pretty good. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm now pretty much recovered.
I think like, I definitely felt like I crossed the finish line and sort of like, and, and sort of like a glorious fashion of like just a flaming ball of exhaustion.
And so I pretty much had to like, like that was like after a release, that was when I was like, just catching up on sleep for like what felt like, like, like the entire month.
Yeah. yeah and now and now i feel like finally starting to feel normal again did you have i mean we're going to get into this but just because we're on the on the topic like towards the end there did you do you have support in closing it out or was it kind of just you in the in the trenches um with it it's the team just you is it you have a few other people yeah well so so fury studios which is sort of the uh development arm of raw fury's uh you know sister company they they They assisted all with optimization and porting.
And so a lot of the final stuff was more so a lot of them doing a lot of the work for the final stages.
And I was just I was trying to squeeze in as many bug fixes as I could.
But knowing like, OK, we're already past, you know, sort of like the release candidate and the gold master.
And so, you know, there was a lot of back and forth that's like, I'm trying to get a lot more stuff in.
But like, is there going to be enough time to even properly QA all these fixes I'm doing?
And I'm thinking, you know, you have to weigh like, well, some of this I'm fixing is pretty critical stuff.
So this might be worth, you know, risking it before the QA, even though it doesn't have as much time as the release candidates.
it so um you know i i think throughout a lot of the development it was me um but this last year has has been um a bigger a bigger team because i was collaborating with you know them doing uh the xbox and playstation ports and and um and a lot of a lot of just final people kind of like getting on hiring on in this last year to kind of help uh help wrap it up yeah Yeah, those worldwide sim ship releases.
They're quite a logistical undertaking for sure.
And look, I'm playing on Xbox and it's silky smooth.
So shout out Fury Studios.
Amazing stuff. Congrats again on getting it over the line.
All right. Well, let's take it back to where we usually do all the time on this podcast. Tonda, you have a really, from what I have read in my research of this podcast, you have a really interesting way of how you've come about to blueprints and how the game has come about and everything.
So I'm really excited to dig in to this and hear it straight from the horse's mouth, as they say.
But let's start off by going all the way back.
What is your first memory of video games in your life?
And not just the one of like the first time you spotted a video game or played a video game, but was there a particular one that kind of, you know, you would say was the inciting incident that put you on this collision course with blueprints or, you know, set your brain on fire for the possibility of them or inspired you in any way?
It's interesting because I feel like probably for every dev, there's two sort of inciting incidents.
There's that first sort of time you become a gamer in that you fall in love with games.
And you've got to say that's really got to be the actual inciting incident that puts you on a development path eventually.
eventually um because i feel like for i would guess for 99 .9 percent um you're gonna you're gonna fall in love with games as a medium first yeah and then and then eventually um there'll be maybe a second inciting incident that actually triggers you wanting to bust out the paintbrush yourself and and and try to create something um so i i think i think there's a couple there's a couple key ones i will say that um one of my first actual experiences with the game and and it's like so young that i hardly even um hardly even understood that it was necessarily a game versus a software and and this has to
be something for MS -DOS it was called beast and it's it's like an entire sort of like a C textbase where you're like control these H's that that or rather you don't control an age you're basically controlling like a like a asterisk or something and you're You're being chased by these H's that are beasts in a sort of labyrinth.
And it's very, it's, you know, it's very the graphics reminded me of, you know, ZZT, which I kind of like graduated into.
And that was when I first started getting into development.
so i actually i actually started developing really early on like even like in the windows um you know like like prior to windows 95 so like in the dos era of zzt um and and then and then going to q basic and then i sort of i sort of stopped um that was so so that was just me kind of dabbling in very young childhood i must have been 11 or 12 yeah just tinkering just just just tinkering and and and um and it was just it was just a pretty it was a pretty basic thing and then just learning learning a bit of of q basic and then later basic uh i think it was basic 83 for the ti 83 calculator in in high
school and just just literally just tinkering or tinkering around and creating creating a few a few games like that yeah hell yeah the graphics calculator was the preferred uh distribution platform of high school students for many years there for sure yeah it was it was like it was like a pretty easy way to i mean it was all it was all peer -to -peer uh you know passing of the files and i don't i think everything was entirely calculator to calculator um i don't think i ever figured out how to like connect the calculator to a computer in those times because everything was kind of like getting like
files were all on on floppies and stuff so i never figured out so all the things i created at that time i kind of lost lost to the abyss um yeah i would love to i would love to check them out one day yeah right bust them out dust them off get the get the graphics calculator booted up and so was your family household like or you know the situation that you grew up in was it a was it kind of like a uh a tech savvy household was it just you were you the like the black sheep of the family coding in a corner over here or was there like an influence from a cousin or something like that how did yes like
what was the sort of game playing environment no so i think like i remember we had a pc and i felt i felt like at that time this would have been i feel like we had a pc probably by 1990 yeah um so i was like six six years old seven years old at the time um and so this was just it was i don't think it even had windows on it at the time so this was just a pure uh ms dos uh based um thing that ran on floppy disks and and and getting games so they had to be tech savvy enough to want to to get this and i think perhaps my dad got one in some capacity for some of some of his work i know i know they had
uh they had one of those old um i want to call them digital typewriters they they you know they have like this very small display that flips up um yes yes oh my god i forgot they existed yes yeah so that that was like, that was like the word processor out.
Yeah. Word processor.
So it was like a very small window of that.
And I think that like they just got a PC maybe to just have more real estate to see the text rather than that thin strip where you could only see like three or four lines at a time.
So, so they probably got it for the work and that kind of sufficed for a while.
And I actually have a good story about how I actually got them to, to upgrade which was so um and and this is this is probably the answer this is probably the real answer to your question because amazing while beast and and some of these ms dos games uh and q basic games were kind of like kind of my first um that was like my first exposure that wasn't yeah that that that wasn't really what sort of like set the fire um and what set the fire was I had gotten an NES um and I was not allowed my grandfather gave me an NES for Christmas um and I guess maybe due to some uh media articles that had been
written or something my my parents weren't comfortable with the NES coming into the house so whether they were tech savvy or not they were definitely scared of maybe some things they had read about maybe how addictive this new new medium was or the ramifications that it might have on kids as opposed to like going outside and playing and stuff so for whatever reason their logic was and i was perhaps too young to understand it at the time but the nes had to stay at my grandfather's apartment oh wow and so you know i remember he he was in a big apartment complex you know he was you know in his 60s
um but you And the rooms changed every time you went.
It was a whole thing.
Going over to, going over there and playing the NES and exploring these worlds, that was kind of like, that was like, that just became such a joy, joyful activity.
And if, if their, if their reasoning to do it was to get, you know, to, to get more visitations for my grandfather.
I mean, maybe that was part of the logic.
But, but at some point I begged for them to return it home.
fast forward a couple years later um obviously i started hearing obviously all the word on the about the super um and so um i never got a super um and so it was a lot of hearing about friends talk about it and hearing friends talk about super mario uh and i guess super mario world and And, um, wanting to go over and check that out.
And so I had one friend who had, who had a super and super Mario world.
I believe that was the only game he had.
And so I was really excited to go over to his house for a sleepover and his name was Tyler.
And so, um, I went over to his house and we, and we played, we played the super, we looked at like, you know, some Nintendo powers of like upcoming games, like past the sort of, um, launch window and stuff.
And this was a little bit after the super had come out so he might have had another game, but we were pretty much focusing on Super Mario World because that was just kind of blowing my mind like how much?
graphical fidelity over You know the NES it had and it had like this Parallaxing of the backgrounds and all this cool stuff and so how this story goes is I was just kind of like absolutely blown away by the graphics and he said if you think this is cool do you want us to wanna see something and I was like yeah and he's like follow me and so we went up the stairs because we were kind of like down downstairs in the sort of like recreation room type type thing with the TV we went upstairs down a long hallway and we went into an office and it was like it was like a dark dimly lit office and on maybe
his father's desk cause I guess he worked at home was a personal computer and booted it up and showed me missed.
Oh, wow. And, um, and, and let's just say that's the reason I never got a super because when I went back home, I did not beg my parents, you know, I need to get the super i was like we need to get a computer with a cd -rom drive um i i think the experience of just just immediately the atmospheric presence you know the wind the water it was it was immersive in a way that i had never experienced and especially playing in that dimly dark room and just exploring exploring the island and not really understanding anything and it was like that became probably from that point which was i guess that was 1993
um probably probably for the next you know seven years that just became everything for me i think it's also hard to maybe it's worth illustrating for our listeners here as well who maybe went around you know they they were you know too young they're they're now adult professionals but they went around at that point in time when miss came out or you know online enough to be playing those sorts of games but the differential between like literally what you did in the recreational room and then going there going from like the real -time graphics of the day you say on a console or even on a pc and then
the pre pre -rendered environments or the pre -rendered graphics even i remember you know the cut scenes and like a final fantasy or something like the the gap was so vast between those two and it's like now it's to the point where we don't even have pre -rendered cut scenes pretty much in video games or pre -rendered artwork in a lot of games because they're one -to -one but i can imagine like as especially as a kid like going from the real -time graphics and then being shown this you know this pc pre -rendered graphics especially of mist too which still to this day is like has a kind of presence like you
say it was just it was obviously it was even even Even if you had been familiar with the predecessors, which I wasn't, I don't think I had ever actually seen 3D before in any capacity.
And so I hadn't played any of those sort of predecessor games that Myst just jumped the graphical fidelity by probably five years.
I mean, it was just so, so much more ahead of its time.
And that was a cool, that was a cool thing.
It was, it was cool because, because this, you know, practically I haven't looked up the date, but practically the SNES and, and mist kind of dropped together.
So this wasn't like further along in that 16 bit, I was basically going from eight bit to missed, you know, I just had one, one session with 16 bit in between there.
but yeah it was it was a it was a big jump and and you know for me it was more it was more just a sound design like i just think it was like it was it was playing something in a way that i wouldn't necessarily experience i think eventually on the super you know there were there were some of those more atmospheric immersive things like um another world or out of this world i always i always i always mess up that title but there's but the but the another world i think another a platformer another world with a platformer with the with the that had the same sort of ambience in the atmosphere and so that's
really what attracted to me and that kind of that kind of uh you know at that point over i kind of i kind of was a pc gamer for for for many many many years until until until was it the um was the kind of gameplay format as well that spoke to you as well you know as well the ambience like was the puzzle side of things and the mystery something that really yeah and and the story and and and like you know how much of that was sort of environmental storytelling um it wasn't really explained to you it wasn't an active narrative it was more of you piecing together um it was it was more of you piecing
together like how this world works yeah and and everything beside it so yeah it was it was all all that and it it's you know it sparked me trying to sort of uh chase chase that high and and you know i played you know so many miss clones in the interim between mist and riven just trying to recapture that um i'm sure a lot of them are are beloved by by the community but you know none of them none of them worked for me in the same way i had i have some pet favorites but they're all kind of quirky like uh like atlantis lost tales and and lighthouse the dark being and uh you know they're they're fun
but they aren't missed so yeah it's funny how we can experience a game especially in those young ages and then you find yourself like chasing that high quite a long time it like hits you in a particular way or something and you're just looking for something that's gonna do it i remember funnily enough you were talking about mist coming out around the same time as a console but interestingly something that came around at the same came out at the same time as was doom so doom came out in 93 and this came out in 93.
one of the best conversations i've ever been privileged enough to bear witness to was at nyu they used to i'm not sure if they do it still um but the um at n at nyu game center they used to have this series where once a month or something they would come and have people do talks you know like whoever is in town in new york you know some game developer or whatever and they had rand miller and john romero giving a talk on mist and doom and coming out in the same year and that kind of era and it was just absolutely phenomenal to see these these two developers that had released essentially like genre
defining like fps games yeah yeah it's really really that's really cool real real time pre -rendered both first person yeah one very very different you know demographics in terms of uh enjoyment yeah that's so what age are you put it put it kind of age on this time when sort of mist first grabbed you like this it was you were like 11 or something yeah i was like i was like 10 9 or 10 cool and so then what like you said you went and played a bunch of other games you're now a pc gamer but you had said that you sort of stopped developing a bit What about your teen years in video games?
Did you have an idea of what you wanted to be as a grown -up or when you grew up?
Was game development any part of that?
No. It was pure filmmaking.
That was kind of like my passionate things.
I think even though I probably started tinkering in development a little earlier because of messing around in ZZT and QBasic and then basic 83 was in high school but in that time i was making films um yeah so you know i had like a i had like a like a high eight uh or a uh or a vhsc camera camcorder you know just like one of those 90s you know camcorders um the exact time just yeah just just just making film um and that was really what i was putting most my aspirations into um and and that's kind of how i envisioned in the best case scenario what my future would hold um and not really and not really
in a you know practical sense because i don't think i've ever been practical it's like oh this will be what i could be your solo video game developer so i think i would always imagine i'm going to to be working you know at target um or you know like a department store but i'm going to be a filmmaker you know i don't think i ever um i guess i was like grounded enough in my dreams to think like i'm i'm going to have to be pursuing art in whatever capacity as as my after hours hobby yeah the barman writing his screenplay on cocktail napkins and you know yeah but but i'm so i have such a ferocity
and focus that that there's really nothing else in my life to take up the those out of work hours uh real estate in terms of time allotment so that's literally what i'm doing every hour outside of of that you know and that and that and that and that kind of so that was kind of my high school uh and that kind of went to college too where i was so obsessive with filmmaking that you know i just stopped going to class um and just you didn't study film or did you study in high school oh sorry in college uh no i didn't make it past the general the general education yeah i only made it about once i made
it one one semester and then and then you know sort of uh started prepping to to move out to hollywood to try to to try to to try to make a proper go of it hell yeah and so put it what what year was it that you sort of made the made the trip out to Hollywood it was like 2005 yeah okay and you get a picture was it did you just walk up in a car and then you know purchase a pillow bring a pillow from home and you okay I can paint you a perfect picture so yeah so when I was in college I was like you know what okay I've got I've got a new dream job my dream job is going to be to work at Blockbuster
blockbuster, um, which is, you know, a video, a video, uh, rental, uh, company, the biggest, um, if, if anyone's not familiar with blockbuster, but so I'm like, okay, I'm going to work at a video store because then I'm like around sort of what my passion is, which was movies.
Um, and you know, I'll make film after, you know, after work and like sort of surrounding my work schedule.
And so when I moved out to Hollywood, I just got a transfer from one blockbuster, uh, on the East coast to a blockbuster in, in Los Angeles.
And so, um, yeah, so that was really all I had was like, okay, you know, pack up, pack up the car.
Um, I moved out with, with an, another filmmaker uh who was my best friend who's axel javico and so we just we just basically just moved out there just to try to take a crack at things um you know and i only and i only kept working at blockbuster for about four months and then i and then i realized like if if i'm going going to actually take a shot of of breaking into uh any sort of actual work in cinema i i need to actually like make an attempt i felt like too much of my time was being spent you know sort of working the nine to five and it was kind of really stifling how much how much time i
had so i think that at that point in part just due to how how expensive it was to live in los angeles it was like this is like the amount of work i have to do um to do that is it's like i'm never going to be able to have a real shot at this dream unless i unless i just try to like go all in on it so paint us another picture especially for those of us who you know aren't american and see this on the, on the silver screen so often, right?
Like the movie, the, the transplant into LA, whether it be a, an actor or a filmmaker or trying to make a go of it.
What was it like trying to get your break?
You mentioned your, you had to throw yourself into it full time.
Were you, were you running coffees?
Were you hanging out at like the local joints where other screenwriters were or.
I love that you, you bring up this, this, this sort of thing, because I think that's a big part of it.
Cause I think like whenever I'm doing stuff, I'm very more, I'm more driven toward dramatic gestures and and theatrics and so i think a big part of it was this sort of you know creative dream of of moving out to to los angeles because when you're out here you find a lot of transplants that that kind of all had this same dream and you know it's it's sort of like it's sort of the shared commonality but it's it has a dark lining which is 99 of these end and shattered failures.
Um, but I think like, I think that the dream is what's, is what's valuable.
Yeah. I think the, the common idea and the, and the, and the courage it takes to do that, because I think for a lot of people, it's very, it's very easy to remain where you are and kind of like, you know, just resign, resign your life and your things.
And it's, it's very difficult to pack everything up, put it in a car and just drive, you know, know it takes like a ridiculous amount of time to drive across the country you know uh it's like 40 hours um it's like there's almost something that that prescribes so much more meaning to it as well it makes it so much more of an adventure too it was just like moving down to the south of the state or something yeah it's like a medieval it's like a medieval journey you know which is like gonna take to your own organ trail really yeah yeah yeah yeah and it feels like that um and and it felt like that to
me and i feel like it was the first time i'd ever sort of like like struck out on my own you know because i went to college very close you know um very close to my hometown so like this was this was kind of like my first time ever um you know taking a shot and and getting there and so um so normally there's two there's two ways you can go um one One, you can get a role, like you said, running coffees, like kind of get a production assistant role on maybe bigger projects and kind of work your way up from there.
Your other way is to start in a more creative capacity or like a higher role thing, but work on smaller projects.
Yes. And I just felt like that was going to be I had already probably made like 40 or 50 short films. So I felt pretty well versed.
I had a pretty good reel.
So I pretty much just started as a cinematographer just because using footage from my own films and then just trying to look for projects that were looking to hire directors of photography and just trying to pitch myself into the ring with no experience.
And it didn't take me long just by, you know, working very, very low paying sort of gigs for other filmmakers short films. Right.
So this is this is kind of the two strategies being one work on, you know, a big movie in a very, you know, running coffee capacity or work on a very small project in a in a in a higher role.
and in my case it was um dp so at that point then you're not escalating your position you're escalating the size of your project yeah so yeah you make short film you make short film then maybe maybe you can take a shot at like a more low budget tv pilot um and then from there you're just making connections and as long as you're continuing to do work and i guess you know um make, make, make, make sort of more connections than when, when people that you worked on in a film, when they start to blow up and they get more resources or they get, you know, funding for a project, then perhaps then they'll
think of you. And so kind of worked my way up, um, eventually started, uh, shooting music videos.
And then that was my first time directing was when I was then, um started pitching to actually direct music videos okay so i did a couple of those and then very quickly from there um you know the the scale of the music videos went up and then i started directing commercials oh right um and that's when the money is right that's like yeah that is that is exactly it's like yeah that you have to give up sort of your creative dreams uh in order to of that i mean there's still creative work to be done but a lot of it is kind of like it's kind of like soulless um yeah that's it's like do a do a do a short
film get your creative you know collaborations going on do a music video with some really inspiring artist and then do your bank of america ad and pay the bills for a month yes and a lot of that is like they're creative but the vision isn't yours it's the ad agencies right so you are you are literally an instrument to try to realize their vision um and and and and that's and that's basically it so then i started docubomb uh in 2013 um and that was just as a vehicle to handle you know commercial clients and do our own things yeah so that that is pretty much that that is pretty much my escalation i
wanted to make movies wound up in in the commercial field which is not not where i wanted to be which which led to my exit uh three years after that so yeah but uh my um my partner is actually a production designer in in film and tv and she's like so all of this is literally a you know a mirror um with like the life that i see her going through you know is that she just came off a feature as a production designer and now she's like ah you know and then she was on a tv show for a little bit but you know as a dresser because there wasn't a production design gig and And so, you know, especially in the art
department, you're moving around up and down and now she's like, oh, should I just take some time and, you know, actually like do some commercials or like do some shorter form things to just get some cash up and some stability and then try for another long form thing.
It's so incredible watching like this depth and navigation and like it's part like, like you say, philosophically, like what do I want to be?
What do I believe in as an artist?
How do I want to express myself?
off, but then balanced with like, not, and it's not just like, oh, I'll take the easy option and go this way.
It's then, can I even get the work and how do I get the commercial work?
Yeah. It's, it's, it's hard to describe people because like this, these, these, these are creative fields that are almost entirely, you know, structured around, around freelance, you know, like, like, like, like people that are, that are, you know, effectively self -employed because they're just, they're just going from one gig to another.
And I think this is why you can see, you know, like, like these in, in this search for sustainability, why like TV shows, why everyone loves TV shows in the industry, because you really, Oh, this is finally something that might be stable for a couple of years, depending on how successful and how many seasons there are.
Otherwise you're constantly, um, looking for work and that's gonna, that's gonna take at least half of your time.
Um, and even, even, even when, when for me, when I finally was like had my own production company and stuff you know so much of that is is spent just talking to potential new clients and so much meeting and and for me it's like all that logistical stuff um you know you just want to be in that creative mode of like on the set and it's all that in between stuff that is it's just hard to do and it's the tragic irony that like most creatives you know the creative geniuses naturally aren't the administrative like boffins as well right Yeah, there was.
I had inadvertently learned my way into a position I did not want to be in, which was doing administrative stuff and doing work for agencies and stuff.
Yeah, well, that sounds like a perfect segue.
I met a lot of cool people doing it.
Yeah, that's one thing I'm jealous of watching her.
Like I love the people that I work with like the League of Geeks crew or the some of the coolest best people I've ever worked with but like Tiff my partner gets to gets to change the people she works with it's like a random lottery every six to eight weeks you know sometimes have been shorter and like it's the people that come in and out of her life like creatively and the friends that she makes and professional and then of course the nemesis that come along every so often right it's really interesting it's such a it's such a tapestry of like human beings that are weaving their way through her
life. yeah it's it's it's it's it's a crazy it's it's crazy industry looking at almost any other industry is like there's very little comparisons right yeah there's yeah that's it's kind of a it's kind of a unique into it unto itself so now let's talk about you mentioned your exit from the industry you got to the commercials you're getting you know commercial work and everything and then you've spoke of an exit from film like talk to me about the things that kind of I mean we've We've probably touched on a couple of these themes in what we've just been talking about, but what were the things that kind
of pushed you in a different direction?
What was that direction?
And when did you, when did you know that it was time to make that leap and how did you?
Um, so this was in 2016 or at the very beginning of 2016, maybe the end of 2015.
um I had a moment and in this moment I can remember clear there was a moment perhaps I was thinking about these old you know TI -83 games and stuff I had done and um so on the side we haven't talked about I I kind of dabble in web development um this is this is just another hobby and so I had I had been running a site for Magic the Gathering cards and so I had been learning a lot of JavaScript and you know CSS in in order to create this site normally historically I've been raw HTML you know that was what I used in the 90s to make sites you know I make I I always use tables I still use use tables
and you know i just put html elements in these tables put images and you know you know have no margins in my table so that all the images are are seamless and that's how i do my buttons and you know if you if you look at any of my stuff i do it the same way but i had finally been learning javascript so i had just created like my first javascript game um and you know it was just one file one html file one javascript file and um it was like uh kind of had some you know dice rolling yahtzee mechanics mixed with like mining up different colored gems it was just something very it was it was something
very um simple and and cool but it It was kind of like, it was the first time I kind of put my feet back in the water since, like, you know, I was, like, 13.
Wow. And did it feel good stretching those old muscles?
Yeah, well, it was cool.
It was like, okay, like, this is just fun doing it.
And and I think like web development always felt like tangible to me where like video game production always felt like this is and this is something similar.
A lot of people have with movies, too, is like this is something that you need a lot of experience with.
You need a lot of technology, we'll say, on the post -production side.
right because before apple sort of dropped their final cut pro and things like avid was like you know like a two thousand dollar software right like this is something that is not necessarily accessible to people and i i felt the same thing with actual video production because you know reading about you know all these sort of people developing their own engines you know like like like Square Enix, you know, uh, developing like the crystal engine and stuff.
So like, I'm just, I'm just picturing like the barrier to entry is so unfathomably out of reach that like, this isn't even, this isn't even worth entertaining or even exploring.
And I think that that kind of changed, um, around that time, you know, 2013 to 2016, when I was finally seeing like the first indie games, obviously indie games have existed for a long time before that but that was like the first sort of mega success indie games and it's funny because like like like you know back in the romero days like every game was actually indie but like you know you just you just you know by the time we get to 2016 then there's a huge differential um and so talking about games you know like limbo and and and um um, you know, gone home and, and braid.
And so, um, I think that was the first time where I realized these are individuals making games, um, or smaller teams. And this is not necessarily, this might be worth checking out.
Like this might just be worth looking into.
And so I remember I had made like a, a post in a forums, which was like, Hey, I'm just, I'm kind of curious to explore game dev is there any software you would recommend me checking out and i think i remember there's something like uh there's something with air there was there was a software with air in the word um that i was kind of exploring and it might have been like apple air or or mac air on the on the mac side uh and i was kind of checking out and someone was like oh yeah check out unity you you know, like you can, you can, uh, you can, it's, it's pretty easy to get started.
Um, and just, just check it out.
So I, I had, I had had some random forum comment with someone telling me to check out this software.
And I remember thinking, and this is a very clear thought.
I remember thinking, man, I wish, I wish I had spent the last 10 years doing this where it's It's like I I feel like I feel like it's too late to get started.
It's like it's like I I had this sample, but the filmmaking was such a a wide thing.
Now, of course, I wouldn't be thinking this if I had actually wound up where I wanted to be, which was, you know, making movies and working for agencies.
But given where I am, it's like, man, I wish I wish I had done it because it feels it feels like I'm so much more past, you know, I've now I've now just hit, you know, 30, you know, I was 30 years old and I was thinking like, like if I had done this out of high school, because that's why I had started coding, you know, at age 13.
And so it's like, oh, letting this, this go, like, where would my talent have been if I hadn't let that go?
And then, and then I remember thinking there's a million reasons why not to do something.
And this is sounding very much like me telling myself, you know, you missed your opportunity, but you know, It's never, ever too late to start.
Although, ironically, in your early 30s, I find, myself included, a lot of people, when you're in your early 30s, you're like, oh, it's too late.
It's too late for me.
I've got no time left. And then, obviously, it's ridiculous.
You're a baby. I feel like that stage, that mentality is just always going to escalate, right?
Right. There's always there's always a recontextualization of your life and and how and the metrics of distance in your life are continually getting recontextualized every five years.
Yeah. And I think I figured that out because I remember thinking like, you know what, like that's just that's just that's just a that's there's really like I'll just start now.
now. Yeah, I'll just start now.
And so I wasn't thinking like, I was gonna abandon, like my production company at the time, certainly, because I felt like I had finally grown that to a successful level.
But I did want I did download unity.
And I was like, Okay, let's just check it out.
Let's see how easy this is to to make something, you know, because this had always felt like super daunting um and and super that and i would say i would say within within the first day you know i did like the one of the basic like unity tutorials which is like creating like a rigid body rolling ball that that that goes around and collects collects coins it's the very first unity tutorial at least it was 10 years ago so uh if anyone if If anyone learned Unity back then, they'll probably know what I'm talking about.
So I did that very first one, and I was like, that's cool.
And then I just immediately went off book and took that concept and downloaded a first -person controller.
And I was like, okay, if I'm doing first -person, I don't need to deal with character animation.
I don't need to deal with anything.
It's literally a package you can just download from Unity.
and and either in the asset store or just or just within whatever package management system they had eight years ago uh and and just within i would say probably 24 hours i felt like i was off to the races and i felt like this is going to be way easier than i thought it was going to be like like a tremendous amount easier than i had been imagining and i feel like the barrier to entry in terms of knowing a coding language that was actually applicable because I feel like all my languages are just web languages at this point and whatever memories I had of QBasic and BASIC -83 were long gone.
So I felt like I'm purely starting from scratch. I don't know anything and yeah, this thing's just moving super fast. um there must be a fantastic feeling yeah and and within and within three months i had a working prototype of blueprints um wow and so and and not just a prototype i would say well practically practically the full game um wow like oh yeah like a full -blown vertical slice proof i mean like Like, not even a slice, it was like, you could find, the goal was to find room 46, you could find room 46, the way you found it is very similar to the current one.
There was just less depth, but it was in less rooms, but the actual gameplay, if you go back and you play the 2016 version, it's going to be very similar to playing, like, the first 10 days.
Like, it's going to be very similar.
So at that point, I was all in like just like I was like, OK, like this, not only if this was a if my idea was like, let's check out this technology, see how accessible it was.
I feel like the results were so much better than my wildest dreams. So if I had anyone's wildest dreams, it's like, let's just play around for a bit and see what this thing's got.
Oh, I made a video game.
OK, right. Yeah. So I feel like if if if I if I had an inkling that I might want to do this, this was like this was like getting like a 20 fold confirmation of what it would have taken me to to to gone into this.
So at that point, I just decided, uh, I'm going to shut down the production company.
Um, and I believe what I did was in 2017, I did more work in commercials than I had done prior to that.
I was like, I need to try to get as much funds as I possibly can to try to pay for the production of the game.
um and so that was what i did and basically then at 2017 that was that was the only that was the only year in this process that i was working on the game part -time wow um so the first three months the first three months were full -time and then everything else after that was full -time so let's let's pause there because now we're i can't we i can feel the momentum like a slingshot being drawn back about you flying through from 2017 now to 2025 where we're at but i think it's a good time to take a break and actually pause for a moment for our listeners who actually have maybe heard about blueprints
and you know the well all of the chatter on the internet about this game and the hype behind it but maybe don't know what it is so if you could i'm sure you've done it a number of times now you're probably well practiced at it but for our listeners maybe Maybe give them the elevator pitch about what Blueprints is.
Cool. Blueprints is an architectural adventure game.
It's a mix of mystery, strategy, and puzzle genres.
I didn't really create it with any genres in mind, so it doesn't really fit neatly into any one box.
um but it is a game in which you are exploring a mansion um that changes every single day and so um you will every door you approach you will be given a choice of three different rooms and at its core that is what blueprints is and i feel like um that's usually how i like to describe it just that simply is if you can imagine if every door is possibly one of three rooms um then you just make a choice and you just progress along kind of creating a mansion as you are exploring it but it has elements of first person sort of uh adventure games like like Myst and Riven.
And it has elements of strategy games, more like strategy board games.
Most of the mechanical design is actually from the board game side of things.
But yeah, that's how I would describe it.
Yeah. It's really amazing even, you know, when we talk about the moment -to -moment gameplay of Blueprints, just the gameplay that is in regards to like a decision space.
and the depth and kind of meat of gameplay that is provided just by those three options that you get whenever you press on a door.
And I think it's worth as well stating for our listeners who haven't played the game or aren't familiar with it, those three options change with every door, you know, it's like hands of a, you know, a hand of cards, each one is sort of drawn, three different options are drawn from a pool of rooms. And it's just, I was playing last night and I was my partner, cause I was hogging the TV.
I'm like, I've got this interview, to you i'm gonna play this game she's like i want to watch whatever she wanted to watch and she was watching me she's like are you still choosing what room to pick i've been like looking at this for like 10 minutes trying to decide between the library or the conservatory and yeah it's really it's it just provides such a chunky decision space just in that one literally the one interaction in the game so yeah and and i think i think i think that at its core i mean i I knew that when I first come up with that concept, and that concept came from the word drafting,
of wanting to incorporate architectural drafting with sort of the board game, card game concept of drafting cards.
I knew that was really cool, just choosing between one of three rooms, and then everything else in the game kind of became how do we make the decision uh interesting for each door and how do we how do we continually change players evaluations of what's good because because um you know it's it's very easy to think balancing means making all these rooms you know the exact same usefulness in terms of utility or resources um because then it's like oh then you have an interesting decision when all three are the exact same power level um but like i that i think it's more interesting when when they're
not the same power level but there's there's situations in which you might be willing to draft a lavatory even though you thought there would be no there would be no world in which i would ever want to draft this room and then eventually through through strategy, you can learn there are these situations, but it's, it's cool to, it's cool to be able to have those evaluations of the rooms continually shift and change based on what, you know, based on the positioning, based on other elements of that day.
Yeah. There was a room that I remember, you know, later in the game that's, and we're going to, we're going to strive for a no spoiler podcast here, but like, you know, there's a room where you can see stats of your game, right.
And what's happened.
And there was one where it was like, you know, it says the room that you drafted the least. And it was like, maybe someday or whatever, you'll draft this room.
And I was like, yeah, I never drafted that room.
And I've seen it come up a number of times.
And then it was a few runs later that it came up and I was like, oh, that's actually exactly what I need right now.
And so it had gone from literally, I'd been through like six runs or something and every time just tossed this room to the side whenever it came up in the drafting options in the drafting pool.
And then one time I like leapt onto it basically because when it came up because of that, like you say, that subjective variation variation in the context in whatever, whichever way and whichever context you find these rooms options.
So, let's take it right back to the seed of blueprints.
Because as you say, it kind of defies, obviously there are some genres that people can sort of, you know, align it to or try and move it closer to those posts.
But it does kind of defy genre in a way.
Like it has its feet in a number of different camps um how did the how did the concept come about what was the seed of inspiration for blueprints was it something was it a film you'd been wanting to make or because it's got also quite a deep narrative and history and everything that you're unraveling as you're going through all that side came in later it did start in a very mechanical sense um and and it started i think i had had a couple pages of i have a notebook that just has an ideas and the ideas might be for a short film or they might be for a board game.
And I do, I do a lot of sort of board game designs for my friends.
You know, I haven't published anything in the tabletop space.
But I think for a long time I just consider the, the stuff being done in board games design wise to be just very much closer to my taste than what was being done in video games i feel like video games have kind of shifted to sort of like a more percentage based you know sort of and a lot of times over complex systems um that are kind of hiding a lack of gameplay by just trying to throw a lot of like uh polish and and and glamour and i think that you can really see this when when you're looking at like an older rpg um let's say a jrpg system like one of the original final fantasies you know versus
the new ones which is like you're not really doing much you're just showing like a lot of fancy animations and and these abilities seem like they're doing something but man if you ever look at a euro game and you see like these simple resources like okay now we're talking like this is something and to me it's night and day like playing these two these two types of things and that's like forever i was like there's a chunkiness right that's lost in video games that is like in regards to the design concepts there's like a there's a granularity in video games that kind of has watered them down almost
to to a to a degree that tabletop games don't have the don't have the privilege of actually utilizing or even going into and so they retain this sort of design chunkiness yeah and and i and i think i love that is like a a small enough amount of resources that you can actually tangibly wrap your head around them you know and and you can and you can kind of have ownership over over these things all at the same time so i i do think i like like you know four or five resources um that aren't even presented to the player all at once maybe maybe there's three primary resources and i think if if you look
at this in blueprints, we have gems, keys, and coins.
And these are primarily this.
Now, obviously, steps is another resource, but we even put that in a different corner so that players can kind of compartmentalize that thing in a different part of their brain.
But you can really see the resources, the primary three being gems, coins, and keys.
And I feel like that is the level of simplicity that I love.
And I am guilty in my board game taste.
If you look at board game geek i kind of tend to like games between one and two complexity ratings that's just my own taste um i like things that are very simple uh to understand but have you know sort of like a depth of strategy and and a complexity to them and then i just love sort of like the transparency of board game like if you look at a board game card like what it does just seems so much more more transparent to me coming from a tabletop space because it's up to the players to have to resolve this rather than the game system resolving it, you know, unbeknownst to you, which lets them do
all sorts of stuff.
So I do like the transparency of simple effects.
And I think if you look at the floor plans and blueprints, you can kind of see where I sort of lean toward in terms of game design because, you know, know, it'd be very easy to have a lot of rooms with very complex effects.
And I feel like we've done a pretty good job of, you know, kind of really showing some self -restraint in the design space.
Because for me, opening a door and having a room with, you know, a room with three doors that does nothing or a room with one door that gives you four coins and then maybe a one room with a simple with a simple effect and i think that that to me is a really interesting choice um and it's a choice just while we're in it let's let's take a little deep dive into this do you have a memory or a moment of something that was like a degree of complexity that maybe even you put in the game and then decided to remove or you were really keen on or or excited about but ultimately decided against it to retain this kind
of simplicity or chunkiness or to not expand the complexity of the game yeah i think it's really interesting i think um when you look at card games i think like when card games have i'm really intrigued by vanilla cards and card games and for people uh that might not know vanilla cards are maybe a cards that lack any text whatsoever um they maybe have one feature but they are like the most simple simple things possible like for Or maybe, like, in a card game with creatures, maybe the creatures have some, you know, like a power or an attack number, but they don't actually have any other abilities,
and other cards do.
And I think I'm always intrigued by what purpose they serve in the design, because it's very easy to over -design every single card in your game.
and especially talking about board games here where it's very easy to have everything have a sort of weightiness and a complex because oh each of these cards are really interesting but if you took a if you took a game and um let's use magic as an example if every card had the complexity of rare of a rare card because they they limit their complexity only toward the higher rarities and all the common cards are very simple designs um then like you have a very difficult game to learn and for me a game that i enjoy slightly less i think that's like why in magic i basically only play limited because i
like to play with these simpler card effects and simpler things and kind of working around what you're given and the fact that vanilla cards exist at all is really has always sort of appealed to me um in terms of just like why why why does that work and what purpose could that serve in terms of the overall design thing so if you look at my very first design file which was which was the first thing created for the game, which was just a list of maybe 40 to 50 rooms, um, that I kind of just designed in a vacuum without having touched the unity side of the code or anything.
This was kind of when I was more thinking this might be a board game, but there, there, there was already from that time, several rooms that had no text on them whatsoever.
And very, very few that even had more six or seven words.
So I think, I think just due to my own design style, I'm always going to be pushing that complexity down.
So I don't think I ever had to scale back complexity.
Like you were saying, if anything, it was more of like, I would come up with an idea, um, that would require a lot more text for a card, you know, or, or a room, but I feel like, Ooh, I've kind of earned it at this point because i've i've i'm so restrained that i i am free when i think of a cool idea to explore it because i'm not i'm not risking overburdening um the core system if anything like you know it's it could use some some you know extra elements yeah that's a really interesting yeah i'd never actually thought about that you know the notion that the hyper of restraint at the beginning
of development and when you're finding and establishing your design space even as you're moving midway through it towards the end that you provide yourself with so much negative space to then integrate complexity later on in the game when you have a better understanding of it and ideas are coming to you it's like you kind of you get those freebies so to speak yeah and i think i think it really i think blueprints pretty much demonstrates that pretty well because if anyone's gone deeper into the game they can understand how you know these systems add up um so yes even having uh you you have to have this simplicity
for this game to even work because could you even imagine if every if every room actually had so much text on it when you have 40 of these effects in play at once i mean it's it's impossible to even understand so um it definitely i feel like i would have done that regardless but one when playing it if anything thing i realized okay this is i've kind of stumbled on just by being so restrained up front i stumbled on the correct level um so at that point i probably i probably did realize you know it really looked like sketch work and he had these these cities you know that that would be like a small
like a like a like a village or a town and each building like the lines would be you know like like not like super you know you know not not not aggressively stylized but very imperfect uh imperfect in the way the lines were drawn and um and of course those lines were that that was done with a with a with a post -processing um things which obviously um we ended up using using actual physical meshes for all our outlines.
But they were not generated.
We did hand meshes so that we could individually move the vertex of outlines, so that the thickness could be imperfect, and then combining it with the elements of that.
So that was when I found his work.
That's when I shifted from I'm no longer looking for a 3D artist. I would love to offer him to be the art director of the game.
uh and so i offered him art director of the game and that's when that's when at about a year and a half into the production i deleted the entire project right time to start again yeah everything was done not not just all the models but all the codes too because at this point i've now feel like i've i'm a year and a half in so i kind of i now understand um sort of sort of the goals and the structures of the game.
And it's so much easier to lay the bedrock of your sort of planning and your code when you know everything you want to accomplish in the game, right?
Because when I first started, you know, everything's just being added additively.
And so that was a perfect opportunity.
So the idea was to sort of then we scrapped everything And then we wanted to just build every piece of furniture sort of by hand from scratch to kind of establish a new cohesive style to everything.
And I think that we had thought that that process would take about six months to catch back up to where we were.
But obviously in total, I think it took two years.
So it took even longer than it originally had taken to reach that point.
yeah and so where did the let's talk about the music for for a little bit here it would just be a miss of us not to in the in the ambience of the game in regards to the sound design where where did the music come along did you i imagine the music is not you as well right the music is yeah yeah how did it come about it's so funny because typically and when i make films i actually i'm the type of person who likes to get this do the score first um and so to get all the the music first and that way i can listen to the music as i'm planning my shots and stuff i don't like to send a i don't like to
send like the edit to the composer because then they just have to like forcefully like create their composition to match with all the timings i would much rather cut to the music um however in blueprints i didn't actually find um the composer until the very last two years um so it was actually 2024 maybe the beginning of 2024 or no 2023 probably um when i found uh trig and gusset and um they are kind of like a dark doom jazz duo um and they they they kind of deal in atmospheric ambient spaces uh and and just the first time i heard their music i was like oh they're a perfect fit um and they were actually
the very first people i ever reached out to in terms of uh doing the score and uh they were down and we talked and they uh and they just started uh doing it and and and eventually it was like oh this is perfect and so the music was actually one of the very last elements to come to come into play there's also an interesting thing too uh which funnily enough eric you know on the ufo 50 team talks about is um even as a composer on the games he really likes the constraint um or the restraint to actually not have music in a lot of his games and there are long there is moments in blueprints where i'm
just loving the music and i'm there and i'll realize that it's happening and that like what the reason why i'm feeling a particular way is because it's this incredible track that's playing um really you know sort of amplifying my experience and my emotions as i'm playing and then there's long stints where i don't even realize that there has been no music playing whatsoever so was that a conscious decision as well to give a bunch of space to through yeah not have the music i think i think it's really cool because i know exactly what what you're talking about because obviously like it's so funny
that that you know he's the musical side and then barbuda and divers are both like this very very very big yeah for me i think it comes down to my idea of atmosphere and for me atmosphere can can entail music um but a lot of times it's kind of established the way something the way a room sounds so the hum of a lamp or were you know the mechanics of of of uh a ceiling fan right and and i think it's kind of like being in a space and kind of like hearing the wind the like the the wind underneath the door causing like a draft you know and i think that these sounds of a house are kind of like they're
cool they they kind of build up a character uh and they're kind of unsettling and kind of add to the overall all ambience and atmosphere of a space so i would not want a game to be entirely music driven at all times because i think that the restraint for me um has more to do with wanting to have a little bit of that sound design and maybe that comes from film but it it's it's kind of letting that have its own play.
Now, as a bonus, you know, the music gets to be even more powerful and these moments get to be even more impactful because you withheld the music.
But I wouldn't say that was the overall intention.
That's just a happy bonus that then happens that when the music does come It gets to be, you know, thrice as strong in terms of these moments because of, because we don't use it constantly.
Yeah. Yeah. I have a dear friend, Emily Ridgeway, who's an audio director among other things at Valve.
She was the audio director on Bioshock.
And I remember her talking to me once about this moment that she had playing World of Warcraft years ago as an audio designer to, you know, playing it and thinking about it in that way.
and she was like every time i was getting ganked by some other player and i was on the edge of my seat my heart was in my throat and the music was like really right there it wasn't because the combat track kicked in or anything it was just because those moments happened to serendipitously come together and it really influenced the way that she approached audio direction moving forward from that moment because she had less of a heavy hand or wanting to order things and just letting the interactivity and the the infinite possibilities that happen within in context and everything, give you those
moments where the composition and the gameplay and the contextual situation just beautifully dovetail into each other and aren't forced and manicured every particular type of way.
And I think relying on serendipity, that's like a perfect way to describe Blueprints, because the entire game is relying on serendipity to create these moments from day -to -day and it yeah it it never ceases to amaze me because I think like we touched on creating stories within days and and these and these strategies that emerge in these moments that emerge it's what makes watching the game you know even as a viewer seeing me watching a play tester or now now I'm able to watch you know streamers play and it's at what it's what makes all these these moments really special is the serendipity um and that these
moments that will never be recreated again that only exist within this person's day what a beautiful place to wrap up the episode um tonda thank you so much i actually feel like there was a ton of serendipity in this conversation as well in regards to our tabletop influences um our love of ufo 50 the things the the way in which I've experienced Blueprints mirroring so much of what you've seen.
Congratulations on your success, critically, culturally, commercially.
It's a very special thing.
And also for what, since you were saying, 2016, 2017, this journey that you've been on, you know, finally making it to at least one of the finish lines, you know?
So congratulations.
Yeah, yeah. I'm, it's been, it's been, it's been a long journey.
So, yeah, I'm happy to finally have that.
What's next? Do you have any sort of plans to, you know, this isn't the Hot Scoops podcast, so you're not beholden to drop any bombs on us.
but like do you have any hopes for the game in regards to updates or is that this finished masterpiece that you're happy with and you're focusing on other things i will admit i in the last year i was i had a couple of things i had to get i had to finish in the game and um i did not i did not quite get everything into the game that i had hoped um i i i i i likely could have but i i chose to try to polish and work on the stability of everything over getting in the last few elements funny enough one of the last few elements is like a retro arcade game like yeah a bit uh era drigid blocks that was something
that was probably like 70 complete but i was like i if i focus on this like i'm just not going to be able to bug fix at all so i i had to make the a hard decision to not complete because it was really hard for me because i think as an artist i wanted to release a game that was fully done um and not and and and wouldn't have to add anything after but um i am committed obviously the game is the game itself is committed to to getting some of these elements in so there will be one big update that kind of finishes my vision uh and And gives the complete and gives the complete game, which has, you know,
they'll probably be an opportunity to tweak some balancing and a few things.
But I'm not looking to continually add to the game.
So there will not be any major DLC or anything like that.
There will be a substantial update at some point in the future as soon as as soon as I fix all the bugs that need to get fixed before I can continue to work on content.
But it will not be a substantial amount of content.
It will just be a final update that will kind of wrap things up.
Well, I'm very excited to play Dirigi Box in coming months when I draft up the commissary.
All right. Don't hype it up too much. I was like, I don't want this.
Wait, you want another episode of the Dirigi Box episode?
Well, it's like after I played UFO 50, I was like, oh, no. No, like someone just absolutely murdered this concept.
50 times. All right.
Well, thank you, Tonda.
Have a wonderful evening.
All right. You too.
Thanks so much. Cheers.
