DCP+SideQuest Interview Thomas Mahler CEO of Moon Studio - No Rest For The Wicked - Ori

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Hello, and welcome to a special episode of DCP plus
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side Quest. This week we're featuring Thomas Maller from Moon's Studios,
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the CEO of Moon Sewers Studios, not just Fret and
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the creative directors. Well right as.
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Well, that's correct too, Yeah, yeah.
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So Moon Studios, creator of no Rest for the Wicked
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and the Ori games.
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That's very much correct.
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All right, that's all. I got to see hng out
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in the bathroom for the next hour. Let me know
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when you're done.
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Ie the limit of my knowledge.
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Thank you so much for joining us today. It's going
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to be very cool to talk about everything that you're doing.
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Is a lot going on with Wicked. There's a lot
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been going on and more to come. So I'm really
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excited to hear more about just the studio and the
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process of making the game and kind of what your
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plans are for the future.
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Well, let's do it.
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Take it away a fran fran, I'm the most toxative.
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Don't don't put that on me. That's a great intro
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question here.
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I do think one of the big questions I actually
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did have on my mind is that Moon Studios is
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a well known studio that is working in now the
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early access format or I don't believe was in early access,
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and you've also now gone fully independent, I believe, And
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so maybe if you could just talk a little bit
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about like those choices and access. Uh yeah, how well,
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how is early access in terms of like a risk
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and why not just wait.
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To release it?
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And in the scope of like larger development being with
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big you know, publishers and going independent? So how do
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you feel about being you know, a known studio I
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mean access and how it's going?
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Let me dive into it.
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So, I mean, basically, it's not like we had much choice,
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so because what we set out to do was we
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always made packaged products, right, So ORI was very much
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just on release, it is what it is. And then
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for Will of the Whips it was the same, right.
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But internally we always had the struggle of when you
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get to, oh, we are year away from release, right,
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and then you take inventory, right and you're like, oh
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my god, there's these features that we will never get
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done in just a couple of months now, right, so
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we have to cut stuff right.
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And that that was true for Blind Force. That was
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also true for.
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A Will of the Wisps, right, and it always hurts, right,
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Like you have some really cool feature in the game
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that somebody spent half a year on, right, and we're like,
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nobody will ever see that, bye bye.
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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And then the other thing that always happened to us
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is that when the game's released, and thankfully we always
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had a good reception to our games, but still when
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we watched streams, we always saw these little things, right,
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things that like here's a small bug or here's some
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feature that you know, like we couldn't get in anymore.
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Every single time we were like, God, damn it, you know,
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like we had this almost done, I bugged this six
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months ago or something right, and we just couldn't get
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it done. So we very much approached Wicked with like
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the mindset of, hey, it's an ERPG, right. Earpg is
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generally don't just come out and that's what they are,
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and they don't you know, like evolve anymore, right, And
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we very much love the idea of like because we're
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all very much perfectionist at Moon. I think there's really
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like there's this drive a Moon that we want to
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put something on the market that is just as close
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to perfect as we can make it. And the way
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to achieve that, or the only way to achieve that
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with an ERPG is that, well, you need to get
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it out there because it's so systemic and there's so
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much frankly also mass behind it and so on, right,
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that you can't test at scale with like if you're
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an eighty ninety person team, even if you're Blizzard and
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you have three hundred and four hundred people working on
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the game, it's a completely different thing. Once a million
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or two million people so play the game. So that's
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why with ARPGs you always have seen, oh the game
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is out there, and then oh my god, it's still
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it's patches, it's.
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Still needs updates. Da da da dah.
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Right, So we approach take two back then with that, right,
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and with the whole idea of like, hey, we're not
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going to do a public beta or something here, why
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why don't we just go early access? Right, like many
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studios are doing it now, Darian has just done it.
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It seems pretty successful. Let's just do that, right, But
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it was it was scarier shit, right because it was
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the first time.
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We did it.
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And I mean generally we don't have any safety net
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or anything right now, right, like there's no other game
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in the background that fundsos or something. So every now
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and then you basically bet the entire company on certain things, right,
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But we felt pretty confident that this thing that we're making,
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the rest of the Wicked should become a pretty huge hit. Like,
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if we're doing this right, it should, you know, it
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should really perform well, right because and maybe I'm stupid,
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but but one of the reasons why I thought that
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was I remember playing a Link to the Past and
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the Supernintendo, and I remember how long and how often
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it was in the charts, right, And I think there
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is something about just top down games and action adventures
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and that kind of thing, right, which just it appeals
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to a whole lot of people. So for example, with Ari,
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I heard from a lot of people that, oh, really
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cool game, looks nice, but I'm not into two the platforms, right,
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And when we did the interviews and we showed Wicked
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for the first time to people, I never got that reception.
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Like it was always, oh my god, that's like Selda
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or oh my god, that's like the Eye Blow. I
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really want to work on this. So I think just
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generally there's a pretty broad appeal. And yeah, I mean
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we also just mix a whole bunch of stuff right.
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The elevator pitch that I gave to Take two back
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then and so on was always like, hey, we want
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to make a game where it's a top down APG
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will take, you know, like we look at like souls
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like combat, and we want to evolve that even further.
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And we think we have something really good going because
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you don't have the right analog stick where you don't
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you know, have to screw around of the camera so
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we can do all these special special attects and all
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of this stuff. And then the other idea was, well,
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we want the exploration right because we made Metrotuenias for
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ten years and a lot of what's what makes a
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good Metrotuenia is just really good level design and we
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just love that crafting every single inch of the world right.
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In many ways, I wanted to question that unwritten rule
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that existed for a long time in EAPG is right
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that everything has to be procedurally generated. But whenever I
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played the aapchis that never really mettered that much to me.
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You know.
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I always felt like, hey, if you play the diablow
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and you play whatever loot Glen or some other area, right,
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and you know you're trying the computer off. You play
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it again, it's like, yeah, the map has changed a
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little bit, right, But it's not like these random generators
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create amazing level design after amazing level design or something.
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Right.
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So our goal was true basically approached it from the
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other side, right that it's like, no, no, no, we'll craft
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like real handcraft this crazy through.
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The open world.
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But then what's inside it, how the enemies are there, right,
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what quests you encounter and all of that stuff. We
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want to random as that, right, so that hey, you
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could go back to that old fortress that you played
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through the first time and something fucking crazy happened, and
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now that's an ambush or something that kind of thing, right,
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So that was always the ultimate goal. Then we wanted
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their retention elements from the elblow, and then I generally
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because we wanted to finally make games that people play
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for a long time, right, because with Aria was always
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a little bit depressed when we've worked for four years
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in a game and then the game comes out and
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then all the hardcore people played through it in like
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fifteen hours and then they never touch it again, right,
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and you're like let's go another four years, you know,
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fifteen hours. So and yeah, the other thing was just
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inspired by I had an idea of what ARPG should
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become back when I first played Theablo two with my
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best friend, and I just wanted to basically have a
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world that I could live in, right And by the way,
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I think that's something that even Blizzard North back then
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still wanted to do with the battle Net town I
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think Sacrament and what it is now and what it
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will be now with multiplayer is probably pretty close to
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the vision of what Blizzard North wanted to still put
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into the Yablo two with the battle Net towns, because
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it's basically a town that you share with others and
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and you meet and talk to one another and then
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you know, decide to go on journeys and that kind
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of thing. So that was that was basically the elevator,
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which is pretty fucking long elevator pitch, but.
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I explained I was going to say, it's always hard
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for me to kind of describe the game because I'm like, yeah,
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they say it's an RPG, but you're not going to
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see that it's an RPG, And so you start like
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getting crazy builds together, you're going to very much feel
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like it's more of like a Soul's like because the
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combat is weighting and it's intentional. But then also the
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level design feels like something that you'd find in like
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a premier kind of Souls game, right, Like you've got
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all of the shortcuts where they're supposed to be, You've
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got your rest spots where you can go back to
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town where they should be.
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So it feels like that.
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But then I'm like, but then you can make a
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build that can you can press a button a couple
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of times and delete a boss instantly, So it's not
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it's not totally thats like experience you do have that
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I find that.
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I find that I find the discussion endlessly fascinating anyway,
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right because if you look at it, it seems like
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it looks like you guys are probably younger than me.
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But when I played the well I don't know, okay, okay, man,
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then you guys will remember that, right.
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So when when Theablo one first came out, right, it
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wasn't like it was a completely different game than the
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that you played today, Right, It wasn't spammy at all.
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It was the opposite, right, Like it was basically I
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wouldn't say a top down dark souls, right, but it
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was extremely restrained in terms of like how it played.
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And I would argue even Diablo too, right, like from
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level you know, one to forty fifty or sixty or something, right,
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it plays a certain way. And the funny thing is
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I recently watched all these interviews from David Previc, right,
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like the actual creator of Diablo, actually stating that he
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didn't like what happened to the EOPG, right, because basically
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what Blizzard did was that they took the endgame experience
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right where the mass like that the scaling was already
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fucking crazy, right, and like you literally blast the entire
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screen and all of that, right, And this kind of
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like made that the norm with Diablo three, right, and
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it's now now we have games where it's like, okay,
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I reached level sixty in like three four hours or something, right,
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and that was a very different that's just a very
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different experience than what APES used to be.
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Right.
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So when we first marketed No Rest of the Wicked,
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I went out and said it's an er p G, right,
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But what I didn't quite get was that, for some
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reason EPG suddenly meant no, it's a Diablo like and
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meaning it at least like Peue or Diablo three. Yeah,
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and there's a huge community that just gave us all
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kinds of ship, right because I was basically saying, we
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want to make the best EPG, right, and they felt
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at tack to whatever. You know, but that that's that's
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the thing with you know, Like I think ERPG is
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a pretty pretty big term that covers a lot of things.
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I would argue that Dark Souls is an er p G, right,
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there an action game that has LPG elements in it.
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But yeah, it's strange, Like.
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Yeah, I even had an interview with Cisa and where
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he made the argument that that ERPG is and action
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arpge are not the same thing, right.
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Yeah, totally SEPG they mean like di arblow. If you
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say it's an action role playing game, they're like, oh,
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it's like like or like yeah, Stellar Blade, you know, Wukong,
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any of these kind of games would be.
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Like even though it means the same thing.
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It's the same thing. Yeah, but it's it's not.
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It's weird.
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Yeah, it seems like a lot of the inspiration, like
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the rest of the week, it came from yourself and
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love aarpgs, Like, how is that pitch like Moon? Was
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everyone like, what you want to go from Ari to
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like a dark, top down dark soles.
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No, just that I made the pitch to Moon, and
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however won the team over that that Wicked should become
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the next project that we're doing. Is that I always
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saw Ari as our Mario, right, because it's up to
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the side scrolling game with like lots of platforming, right,
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So I made the analogy that this is like our
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Mario game, right, And then the pitch was, guys, what if.
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You make Selda? You know? And that's kind of like
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how it started.
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Then I sat down meet a prototype and we like
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that prototype, and it always had like huge potential because
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I put all this crazy shit in, right, Like, the
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prototype had even stuff that you don't even see Wicked yet, right,
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Like I even had things like, oh, here's a little
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tower defence thing, right, which was super fun, and.
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And that's what we're working towards.
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Right, Like, there was always this idea of like, for
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some reason, if I put this little character into a
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top down world, suddenly I can put all these mechanics in, right,
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and and that I really loves a challenge, right that
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we can have, Oh, the combat needs to be really good,
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but then you know, like that you can do tons
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of other things right that you can do Oh and
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when you're in town, how about craft farming mechanics and
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so on, Right that you could literally have a farm
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like in Stardoo Valley, right and almost play it like
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a cozy game and so on, Right, and yeah, there's
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just so much potential. We could do that tower defense thing, right,
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we could do a like we'd be already introduced in
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the Crucible, that roguelight mode and even like we almost
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got the other version out that the other stats you've done.
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Watts will love that, which is basically a Survivor style
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challenge right where it's like hey, literally like there's tons
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and tons of enemies coming in and you level up
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very quickly, and then you pick a boon like very
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very quickly, and then you build your character that way
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and so on.
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Right, there's other things that we're.
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Doing there, like hey, literally when you start your character
296
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gets we set back to level one and you just
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have the ARPG experience of leveling a character from one
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to ninety nine, but in like an hour, right in
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that kind of timeframe, so there's lots of crazy shit
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that we want to do where we want to innovate
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and challenge the industry right and where we can think
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we can do things there that hasn't really been done yet,
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and that's just super exciting.
304
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So what of my you go you go? Are you sure?
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Oh yes, I was gonna say, like you said, you're
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talking about innovation. One of the things that obviously, I
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think the other sort of agree that stands out about
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No Rest is the aesthetic that you chose, Like where
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what was the inception point? Where did that come from?
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Because even just like the character models has such a
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unique look that it that it's visually striking, it stands out,
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it's distinct, it doesn't look like anything else that's out
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there right now, when I make my character and I've
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got like it's kind of like LOWD of the ground
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tick Dies, where did that aesthetic come from? What was
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the the inception point there?
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Well, in terms of that art direction, that's that comes
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from Michael, our art director, who's just I mean I
319
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worked at Plasit right, but that guy is the best
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artist I've I've ever worked with. Like he's just an
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insane person, Like he's literally just a machine. You can
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ask him something, right like, hey, I need an NPC
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that has this and this job has this character should
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look like this, and like literally three four hours later
325
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you can back to you with like, Okay, Thomas, I
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created twelve concepts.
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Do you like? He said? Literally everything is like a masterpiece? Right,
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They're like, yeah, he's nuts.
329
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And that's that was his style, right, Like he always
330
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had these characters that have like you know that look
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a little bit different, and I I personally, I always
332
00:16:17.759 --> 00:16:19.799
liked it, right, It gives it a very different touch.
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But there are some people out there who just generally
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if you don't do photohialism, bad right, And I don't care,
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you know, Like I really like when you fully deck
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out a character and so on what that looks like
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and the the style behind it. The other reason why
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we're picking the art style that we do is because
339
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well we don't have the same amount of resources that
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other studios do, right, And I applied a pretty simple trick, right,
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like I always looked at when I was still at Blizzard, Right,
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I remember a charter too came out and I was
343
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just blown away, right like that it just looked like
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like not a million dollars. It looked like one hundred
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million dollars, right, It looked amazing. But if you look
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at and try to today, it's fucking ugly, right, simply
347
00:17:03.919 --> 00:17:07.000
because tech has gotten much better, right, And like now
348
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we have we look at unreal engine five humans versus that,
349
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and it's just okay, this doesn't hold up. It looks
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very dated, right, And well, the thing that I always loved, right,
351
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and this was also the thing for for Or. We
352
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always went with a painted style because if you look
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at those old two D games, they still look pretty great, right,
354
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They didn't age that badly.
355
00:17:30.960 --> 00:17:34.079
Right. And then if you go to the museum and
356
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you look at a.
357
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Fucking Caravaggio painting or something right, or even some you know,
358
00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:42.000
Michelangelo stuff and so on, right, like it doesn't age
359
00:17:42.720 --> 00:17:45.480
like it's just it looks as good today as it
360
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looked five hundred years ago, right, So there is something
361
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in our brains about like, hey, these paintings still hold up, right,
362
00:17:53.480 --> 00:17:56.640
And so we're trying to apply similar styles, and we
363
00:17:56.720 --> 00:17:59.400
try to have a very distinct style, right, Like Kravaji
364
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you had that light dark thing, and that's also what
365
00:18:02.079 --> 00:18:04.680
I've always tried to copy. To a certain degree, right,
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Like you always see the contrast in any Moon Studio
367
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game to go from very light and vibrant to very
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dark like immediately right, And that gives you that that
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thing of like, hey, if I give you a postage
370
00:18:16.759 --> 00:18:19.799
them size screenshot of No West for the wicket, you
371
00:18:19.799 --> 00:18:22.200
will still see say that. You know, you'll still be
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able to say that that's our game, simply because it
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has that style.
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I love it personally. I think it looks great.
375
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I was constantly stopping, especially in the breach where you've
376
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got like the waterfalls and the rivers, and stopping every
377
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second to be like, oh, we're gonna take a picture
378
00:18:37.279 --> 00:18:38.720
that looks really good.
379
00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:43.319
Once Multiply comes along, right, because these vista shots, like
380
00:18:43.400 --> 00:18:46.279
that's already pretty impressive. It's so much cooler if you
381
00:18:46.319 --> 00:18:49.000
then have Oh but my buddy is down there behind
382
00:18:49.039 --> 00:18:51.240
there on the on the windmill, right, and you literally
383
00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:54.599
see him climbing up like five hundred miles in the distance.
384
00:18:55.279 --> 00:18:55.480
Right.
385
00:18:56.119 --> 00:18:58.480
I think you come out with a strong first impression
386
00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:01.839
on the on the ship itself, you know, the opening
387
00:19:01.880 --> 00:19:05.960
sequence I think is a strong opening impression about what
388
00:19:06.039 --> 00:19:08.160
to expect about the aesthetic of the game. And I
389
00:19:08.200 --> 00:19:10.000
think that I think it sticks to the landing.
390
00:19:11.640 --> 00:19:12.160
I like you.
391
00:19:14.960 --> 00:19:15.759
Maybe real fast.
392
00:19:15.880 --> 00:19:18.119
Uh, you know the game release and early access at
393
00:19:18.160 --> 00:19:21.240
forty dollars, you're talking about, Well, you've already added content,
394
00:19:21.400 --> 00:19:22.480
there's more to come.
395
00:19:22.559 --> 00:19:23.400
How much of that is.
396
00:19:23.519 --> 00:19:26.920
Balancing, fixing bugs, listening to the community, and how much
397
00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:29.640
is there's more content coming? And in other words, it
398
00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:32.720
will this remain a forty dollars experience in full release?
399
00:19:32.759 --> 00:19:33.720
And how much are you adding?
400
00:19:34.640 --> 00:19:37.000
No, We've been always very open about this, right Like,
401
00:19:37.079 --> 00:19:39.319
we have a price right now which is forty bucks
402
00:19:39.319 --> 00:19:41.079
in early access.
403
00:19:41.119 --> 00:19:41.519
And.
404
00:19:43.480 --> 00:19:46.440
We thought that, hey, that's a reduced price from your
405
00:19:46.440 --> 00:19:48.880
typical full price game, and we just want to make
406
00:19:48.920 --> 00:19:51.519
that feel like, okay, that's a steal right for the
407
00:19:51.839 --> 00:19:53.880
amount of content that the amount of hours that people
408
00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:56.839
get right now, right so, right now, based on our data,
409
00:19:56.920 --> 00:19:59.839
what we're seeing is that for complete playthroughs, people are
410
00:20:00.079 --> 00:20:02.920
they spend about fifty to seventy hours, which I think
411
00:20:03.039 --> 00:20:05.920
is fair if you pay forty bucks and you get
412
00:20:05.960 --> 00:20:08.160
fifty to seventy hours out of it, And that's if
413
00:20:08.160 --> 00:20:11.000
you don't play any odd characters, right, if you only
414
00:20:11.039 --> 00:20:14.480
basically play one class, Right, I think that's a pretty
415
00:20:14.519 --> 00:20:17.400
fair price. But obviously, yes, there's more stuff coming. Like
416
00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:19.880
we are basically using early access in the way that
417
00:20:19.960 --> 00:20:22.039
I think it should be used. Where we have it
418
00:20:22.079 --> 00:20:25.400
out there, we look at all the data, how are
419
00:20:25.400 --> 00:20:27.519
people playing the game, what do they like, what do
420
00:20:27.599 --> 00:20:30.720
they not like? And we're really trying to perfect it, right,
421
00:20:30.799 --> 00:20:32.240
Like we're really trying to kind of like find this
422
00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:37.279
perfect formula. And then the idea is well, right now,
423
00:20:37.319 --> 00:20:40.720
we released a huge amount of content. We basically doubled
424
00:20:40.759 --> 00:20:43.079
the size of the game and added tons and tons
425
00:20:43.079 --> 00:20:45.599
of stuff and new systems and so on. Right the
426
00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:47.480
next things that we're going to do is we're going
427
00:20:47.559 --> 00:20:51.319
to add even more systems and things that allow you to.
428
00:20:51.319 --> 00:20:52.160
Replay the game.
429
00:20:52.319 --> 00:20:56.440
Right So, right now, people really like the quest that
430
00:20:56.480 --> 00:20:58.200
we have there, but we don't have that many side
431
00:20:58.240 --> 00:21:01.160
quests yet, right, so that's a big thing that's going
432
00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:04.400
to come, right so that you always have multiple choices, right,
433
00:21:04.400 --> 00:21:06.519
like you always have tons of things to do, and like, hey,
434
00:21:06.559 --> 00:21:08.799
if you don't like to do this current thing, you
435
00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:11.079
should have like tons of other side quests that you
436
00:21:11.079 --> 00:21:13.680
could do and activities that you can do and so on.
437
00:21:14.200 --> 00:21:16.960
So that's one thing, but generally just making the world
438
00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:19.559
super interactive is important to us. The farming is coming
439
00:21:19.559 --> 00:21:22.279
in now. The co op is the next big thing
440
00:21:22.319 --> 00:21:26.519
that's actually launching, So we're already we're basically, you know,
441
00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:29.119
like working on that right now. That we just make
442
00:21:29.119 --> 00:21:31.559
sure they're MULTIPLA releases as fast as possible because I
443
00:21:31.599 --> 00:21:33.680
think that's going to be a pretty big game change
444
00:21:33.720 --> 00:21:39.559
for most people. And then after that, we still have
445
00:21:39.680 --> 00:21:41.599
to kind of like finish up all the combat stuff.
446
00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:46.519
Right While I'm pretty happy with combat, they're still like
447
00:21:46.599 --> 00:21:49.839
it's pretty hard to create the best combat system on
448
00:21:49.880 --> 00:21:52.960
the market, and I think there's still quite a few
449
00:21:53.000 --> 00:21:55.799
things that from software is better than us, and I
450
00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:58.720
want to fix that, right, Like, ultimately, I want people
451
00:21:58.759 --> 00:22:01.519
to objectively be able to say Wicket has the best
452
00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:03.640
comport system on the market. It's the best, you know,
453
00:22:03.799 --> 00:22:07.640
like that's just the thing. So there's still quite a
454
00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:09.480
lot of stuff that I want to do there, and
455
00:22:09.559 --> 00:22:12.200
also just introduce new web market hypes and so on.
456
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:14.359
We have a lot of crazy shit in the in
457
00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:19.240
the in in planning, and then we also want to
458
00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:22.400
expand the crucible and so on. Right Meanwhile, with that,
459
00:22:23.599 --> 00:22:26.519
obviously our guys are working on a huge like content
460
00:22:27.559 --> 00:22:31.799
update already, there's I actually posted the size of the
461
00:22:31.839 --> 00:22:35.319
world that we have on discord, right, and people can
462
00:22:35.319 --> 00:22:38.000
look at that and it's pretty big, right, So we're
463
00:22:38.039 --> 00:22:39.880
trying to just fill all that in and so on,
464
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:42.759
and once we hit that, you know, like we'll release
465
00:22:42.799 --> 00:22:45.359
our one point zero and you know that's the idea.
466
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:46.519
We basically are just.
467
00:22:46.480 --> 00:22:49.400
Following the same formula that Larian laid out right, where
468
00:22:49.440 --> 00:22:52.720
you use the early access and are okay with taking
469
00:22:52.759 --> 00:22:56.480
the hits right, like make yourself vulnerable. Oh, the game
470
00:22:56.559 --> 00:22:58.920
is not perfect, but it's out there because you need
471
00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:01.240
to have it out there. It's so complex and you
472
00:23:01.319 --> 00:23:03.960
need to look at how things work at a scale.
473
00:23:04.440 --> 00:23:06.920
So we are okay with taking some hits here and there,
474
00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:11.000
but then we use early access for that, and then
475
00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:14.119
once it comes out, we want it to be just okay,
476
00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:16.480
this is clearly a masterpiece. This is clearly game of
477
00:23:16.480 --> 00:23:19.559
the year. Everything should just hide because this is it.
478
00:23:21.279 --> 00:23:24.720
Right, you're talking about getting a bunch of data from
479
00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:29.960
early access. Is there anything that really surprised you, Whether
480
00:23:30.039 --> 00:23:32.200
that's like we should really change this, or whether that's
481
00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:34.279
like we should double down on this feature. Because everyone
482
00:23:34.359 --> 00:23:37.000
loved it, Like, is it something that stood out from
483
00:23:37.680 --> 00:23:38.519
early access?
484
00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:41.599
I mean, I don't want to be mean, but I'm
485
00:23:41.599 --> 00:23:44.160
going to say something. Do it.
486
00:23:45.160 --> 00:23:48.640
The thing I've seen on recent play tests and when
487
00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:53.640
we look at the data, right, is that I absolutely
488
00:23:53.720 --> 00:23:57.440
thought that something like our attribute system, you know, is
489
00:23:57.519 --> 00:24:02.400
just standard and has been for quite so many games, right,
490
00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:05.319
And we've seen so many players who just didn't get it,
491
00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:08.359
and then we're frustrated and blamed the game and all
492
00:24:08.400 --> 00:24:11.200
of that, right, and we just frankly the other like,
493
00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:13.559
the thing is we are in early access, not we
494
00:24:13.640 --> 00:24:15.799
don't have all the tutorials in the game yet, so
495
00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:20.000
not everything is like super deeply explained. So but we
496
00:24:20.079 --> 00:24:23.960
saw a lot of players that basically have a strength weapon, right,
497
00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:27.720
wield a two handed great sword and then wonder why
498
00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:31.200
they're not dealing that much damage. And it's because, well,
499
00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:35.039
they put all the points into dexterity and not into strength, right,
500
00:24:35.079 --> 00:24:37.200
even though the UI shows you when you put points
501
00:24:37.240 --> 00:24:40.119
into an attribute like dear, if you put it in strength,
502
00:24:40.279 --> 00:24:42.559
the damage goes up, and if you put in decks
503
00:24:42.599 --> 00:24:43.839
the damage does not go up.
504
00:24:43.880 --> 00:24:45.079
Here and.
505
00:24:46.960 --> 00:24:49.720
Yeah, and then I mean you could make the argument
506
00:24:49.759 --> 00:24:52.359
that dark Souls did it better, right, But the way
507
00:24:52.440 --> 00:24:55.480
Dark Souls did it is that the atreb one just
508
00:24:55.559 --> 00:24:58.480
met a way less, right, Like our our weighing is
509
00:24:58.599 --> 00:25:03.119
just different. And there's this other thing, right like Dark
510
00:25:03.119 --> 00:25:07.240
Souls also gives you multiple things per attribute, and we
511
00:25:07.319 --> 00:25:11.039
don't do that because it's just like it's just even
512
00:25:11.079 --> 00:25:15.680
more ammunition to have players skinned up with crazy bad builds,
513
00:25:15.799 --> 00:25:17.640
right Like, here's my mate, and I gave it a
514
00:25:17.680 --> 00:25:20.640
bunch of strength so I can have better armor, and
515
00:25:20.680 --> 00:25:22.680
then yeah, but you will never be able to play
516
00:25:22.680 --> 00:25:24.839
the end game because you put way too many points
517
00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:27.720
into strength, right, that kind of thing.
518
00:25:27.799 --> 00:25:30.279
So I am actually we work in that system.
519
00:25:30.279 --> 00:25:32.359
But the other thing that we're seeing where we really
520
00:25:32.880 --> 00:25:35.680
overestimated things is that I swear to god, I haven't
521
00:25:35.720 --> 00:25:40.319
like actually looked at the number, but the tutorial time, right, Like,
522
00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:44.200
how long do people actually have the tutorial screen up?
523
00:25:44.200 --> 00:25:46.720
If a tutorial is there, I swear to god, it
524
00:25:46.759 --> 00:25:49.359
must be like zero point two seconds or something like.
525
00:25:49.440 --> 00:25:53.480
It's just it's completely useless. It's completely useless to have
526
00:25:53.559 --> 00:25:55.880
that text there and explain something, right, because people are
527
00:25:55.920 --> 00:25:58.720
just mashing, mashing, mashing, and the thing with a developer, right,
528
00:25:58.759 --> 00:26:00.599
where you're then grown is like, oh my god, like
529
00:26:00.640 --> 00:26:03.640
that that person is now like two minutes later, he's
530
00:26:03.680 --> 00:26:08.519
frustrated and and hates the experience and and says, oh,
531
00:26:08.559 --> 00:26:11.200
but that was never explained, right, And it's like literally
532
00:26:11.240 --> 00:26:14.720
two minutes before he just skipped away, like he bashed
533
00:26:14.720 --> 00:26:17.519
away the tutorial box that explained that particular mechanic.
534
00:26:17.960 --> 00:26:23.039
This is why developers are making you hold buttons to
535
00:26:23.359 --> 00:26:26.519
take it off. Be like, I am making the conscious
536
00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:28.279
effort to not read this.
537
00:26:29.319 --> 00:26:32.559
I might have done this on stream yesterdays are really tough,
538
00:26:32.680 --> 00:26:37.160
Like you don't want to He's really bad for it. Yeah,
539
00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:39.519
and that's okay, But would you say that's the trick?
540
00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:43.559
And I think just generally people don't want to read
541
00:26:43.599 --> 00:26:44.160
in video games.
542
00:26:44.200 --> 00:26:45.920
And by the way, I'm the same, right, like I
543
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:48.640
always I always go into games with the assumption of, like,
544
00:26:49.279 --> 00:26:51.839
I don't need your stupid to toials I'm a game developer,
545
00:26:53.640 --> 00:26:55.799
so and then I run into the same issues, right,
546
00:26:55.799 --> 00:26:57.960
So I don't want to blame people, right, But it's
547
00:26:58.119 --> 00:27:01.319
just like Wicked is in extremely complex game. There's so
548
00:27:01.359 --> 00:27:03.519
many mechanics and on already in the game, right, and
549
00:27:03.559 --> 00:27:06.920
if you skip that stuff, Yeah, you might just not
550
00:27:07.079 --> 00:27:08.880
understand something and then have to read it up on
551
00:27:08.920 --> 00:27:12.039
a wiki, ask a question or something. Right, But yeah,
552
00:27:12.079 --> 00:27:13.279
those are the things that you're seeing.
553
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:17.200
I would like to defend myself because I skipped the
554
00:27:17.240 --> 00:27:21.720
tutorial box yesterday in division two and I said this.
555
00:27:21.920 --> 00:27:24.400
I was like, it doesn't make sense to me to
556
00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:26.839
have all the text I'd rather you give me the crafting,
557
00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:30.400
like make me craft something as give me the like
558
00:27:30.559 --> 00:27:33.039
starting stuff and let me do it. Because I need
559
00:27:33.079 --> 00:27:36.920
to say the UI because when I see the textbox
560
00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:39.039
out of context, like I don't know what this is
561
00:27:39.039 --> 00:27:39.599
going to look like.
562
00:27:40.200 --> 00:27:43.079
Act always the better experience, right, Like that's what I
563
00:27:43.160 --> 00:27:45.319
did in Aori, for example, But ORRI was a much
564
00:27:45.359 --> 00:27:47.400
simpler game, right, So I'll give you a good example
565
00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:50.240
in Ari. When I introduced double jump, I always had
566
00:27:50.279 --> 00:27:52.640
you like, oh, you jump into a room that you
567
00:27:52.680 --> 00:27:55.240
can't get out of anymore, right, and then I give
568
00:27:55.279 --> 00:27:58.039
you the double jump and then the only way to
569
00:27:58.119 --> 00:28:00.519
get out of that room is by doing some of
570
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:03.319
the double jump challenges, right, and now only if you
571
00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:04.920
do a double jump thing you get out of the room.
572
00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:08.480
Now that's great, that's the way to do it, right,
573
00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:12.079
But like if I would do that with Wicket. There's like, Okay,
574
00:28:12.079 --> 00:28:15.119
there's three hundred game mechanics that have to explain to you, right,
575
00:28:15.160 --> 00:28:17.400
I can't throw you into three hundred rooms and explain
576
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:24.200
every single one, you know, it's difficult.
577
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:25.039
Of a bunch of rooms where it's like tutorial rooms. Here,
578
00:28:25.039 --> 00:28:27.200
we're gonna teach you how to how to do this.
579
00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:29.400
I feel like some of the we era Zelda's fell
580
00:28:29.400 --> 00:28:32.240
into this trap where the tutorials would go on for
581
00:28:32.279 --> 00:28:35.400
six hours and like, yes, you do almost get bored
582
00:28:35.440 --> 00:28:39.200
at the game before you even started it, you know, yes, Yeah,
583
00:28:39.240 --> 00:28:39.559
Where do.
584
00:28:39.559 --> 00:28:44.079
You think the line is between just letting players figure
585
00:28:44.079 --> 00:28:46.680
it out and that being part because lot lots of
586
00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:48.960
games do that, right, Like, we're not gonna give you
587
00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:51.039
all the information. You're gonna have to work it at yourself.
588
00:28:51.079 --> 00:28:53.319
You're gonna have to watch YouTube videos, You're gonna have
589
00:28:53.359 --> 00:28:55.920
to ask questions like where do you draw that line
590
00:28:55.960 --> 00:28:59.880
between developer helping the player understand the systems and letting
591
00:28:59.880 --> 00:29:02.960
the player work it out themselves and just presenting it
592
00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:04.039
some sort of challenge.
593
00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:06.480
Yeah, By the way, that is a thing that I
594
00:29:06.480 --> 00:29:10.960
think definitely has changed with generations, right, Like, so back
595
00:29:11.000 --> 00:29:14.960
in the day. I remember buying SimCity for my MS
596
00:29:15.039 --> 00:29:18.400
DOS PC, right, and it shipped with a fucking four
597
00:29:18.480 --> 00:29:22.119
hundred page manual, right, and you read that manual, you know,
598
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:24.920
and and like, I remember being on the bus right
599
00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:27.079
home and I read that manual, and I wanted to
600
00:29:27.119 --> 00:29:29.400
know everything about it, right, and I really engaged with
601
00:29:29.440 --> 00:29:31.559
the game, even before I hadn't installed, and so on.
602
00:29:33.240 --> 00:29:35.559
And what we saw now in Wicked for example, right,
603
00:29:35.599 --> 00:29:39.960
we got so many complaints that that people like, we
604
00:29:40.039 --> 00:29:42.119
have these healing mechanics in the game, and one of
605
00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:45.519
them is consumables that you literally like, hey, I grab
606
00:29:45.559 --> 00:29:47.839
a bunch of mushrooms and then I make U mushroom soup,
607
00:29:47.880 --> 00:29:50.799
and then that's what I used to heal myself. And
608
00:29:50.839 --> 00:29:53.400
then people got very angry with us with like, Okay,
609
00:29:53.400 --> 00:29:55.440
I want to try bosses again and again and again,
610
00:29:56.160 --> 00:29:59.119
and I'm running out of consumable so every fifth or
611
00:29:59.119 --> 00:30:01.920
sixth time, I have to go out and find some consumables. Right,
612
00:30:01.960 --> 00:30:06.519
And well, even if you have different mechanics in the
613
00:30:06.559 --> 00:30:08.680
game already, even if you have something like here's a
614
00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:12.200
healed spell where you can literally where you literally have
615
00:30:12.279 --> 00:30:14.920
the same thing that how healing works in orient Will
616
00:30:14.960 --> 00:30:16.640
of the Whists or in Hollow Night or that kind
617
00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:21.599
of thing, right, But that required you to actually go
618
00:30:21.680 --> 00:30:24.480
to the enchantress in town and look at the spells
619
00:30:24.519 --> 00:30:27.799
that she has, right. And I think even that, like
620
00:30:27.880 --> 00:30:30.240
I think in the past, if Wicked would have released
621
00:30:30.279 --> 00:30:33.599
like fifteen years ago, you wouldn't have had to tutorialize that.
622
00:30:33.640 --> 00:30:35.759
People would have just done it and figured it out
623
00:30:35.799 --> 00:30:37.920
and have done that thing right. But we live in
624
00:30:37.920 --> 00:30:41.759
TikTok times right where it's just there's no way, like
625
00:30:41.799 --> 00:30:44.319
nobody figures it out right. So we're actually changing that now.
626
00:30:44.359 --> 00:30:48.240
We are we're making sure that people have both things
627
00:30:48.319 --> 00:30:51.319
right at the start, just so it's totally one clear
628
00:30:51.640 --> 00:30:52.000
and is.
629
00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:54.759
An interesting evolution, you know, I mean you're talking about that.
630
00:30:54.880 --> 00:30:57.720
My very first thought was, like Skyrim is one of
631
00:30:57.720 --> 00:31:01.400
the most successful games of all time, and if you're
632
00:31:01.400 --> 00:31:05.599
a spellcaster, you don't just get spells. You have to
633
00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:08.640
go to specific vendors in the cities and see their
634
00:31:09.200 --> 00:31:11.440
you know, their spell tome stock and buy those things.
635
00:31:11.480 --> 00:31:12.880
It's like you have to go out of your way.
636
00:31:12.759 --> 00:31:13.200
To find them.
637
00:31:13.440 --> 00:31:15.880
But we did that back then. We just we talked
638
00:31:15.880 --> 00:31:18.319
to all the NPCs, we saw what they all had
639
00:31:18.319 --> 00:31:21.839
to offer, and that was you know, it's interesting, you
640
00:31:21.839 --> 00:31:24.559
know you reference like the manual on the bus. For
641
00:31:24.680 --> 00:31:27.160
me when I was growing up, that was like if
642
00:31:27.279 --> 00:31:29.839
if mom was going to Walmart to buy something, I'd
643
00:31:29.880 --> 00:31:31.759
go to the electronics section. And what did we do?
644
00:31:31.960 --> 00:31:35.119
We went straight to the the uh like game guide
645
00:31:35.119 --> 00:31:38.599
books that were this thick, and you're you'd spend your
646
00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:40.680
whole time your mom's shop and going through the game
647
00:31:40.720 --> 00:31:43.480
guide trying to learn where all these items were. And
648
00:31:43.880 --> 00:31:45.839
I think that was a bigger part of it, was
649
00:31:45.960 --> 00:31:48.599
just figuring it out. And but you're right, you know
650
00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:50.720
a lot of gamers these days have we have a
651
00:31:50.759 --> 00:31:53.119
shorter attention spans were used to being given the things.
652
00:31:53.440 --> 00:31:56.720
It's just generally I remember playing Selda I right in school,
653
00:31:57.240 --> 00:32:00.359
and that game is like just obtuse of shit, right, Like,
654
00:32:00.400 --> 00:32:01.599
there's secrets.
655
00:32:01.119 --> 00:32:02.200
In every single screen.
656
00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:06.480
But if you give a kid today seldom one, Holy shit,
657
00:32:06.559 --> 00:32:07.559
will they be frustrated?
658
00:32:07.640 --> 00:32:07.759
Right?
659
00:32:07.799 --> 00:32:11.039
There's nothing being explained in the game. And you had
660
00:32:11.119 --> 00:32:14.720
to talk to your friends, right like, and hey, Steve,
661
00:32:14.960 --> 00:32:17.799
I think you played Selde one yesterday. Yeah, a Nintendo
662
00:32:17.839 --> 00:32:20.519
Power something, right like I can't find the fifth dungeon.
663
00:32:20.599 --> 00:32:21.480
Where is that? Right?
664
00:32:21.519 --> 00:32:23.440
And like people figured it out together. It was almost
665
00:32:23.440 --> 00:32:24.279
a community event.
666
00:32:24.400 --> 00:32:27.079
Right. These days, we don't really have that anymore.
667
00:32:27.119 --> 00:32:30.480
Right, Like even my son now he's seven years old,
668
00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:32.960
and when he plays something and gets stuck or something, right,
669
00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:36.200
he immediately asked me, hey, Papa, can you.
670
00:32:36.079 --> 00:32:38.039
Look up YouTube where that is? Right?
671
00:32:38.079 --> 00:32:42.799
Like it doesn't, it doesn't, It doesn't even appeal to
672
00:32:42.799 --> 00:32:45.079
it that. It's like, hey, no, just figure it out, right, Like,
673
00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:47.240
just run around a bunch of times, try to really
674
00:32:48.119 --> 00:32:51.960
exploit myself. And to some degree, I think that's a
675
00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:55.599
bit sad, right, because the immediate reaction is always like
676
00:32:55.799 --> 00:33:00.359
if I face any resistance, immediately go to the internet
677
00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:02.279
and fight the solution, right. And I think there's a
678
00:33:02.319 --> 00:33:04.599
little bit there was this there's a certain level of
679
00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:07.880
creativity with just no, I'm just gonna suck around and
680
00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:09.960
I'm just gonna, you know, figure it out myself.
681
00:33:10.079 --> 00:33:10.240
You know.
682
00:33:10.799 --> 00:33:11.720
Yeah, it's funny.
683
00:33:11.759 --> 00:33:14.839
I had this conversation yesterday on stream where I was like,
684
00:33:14.920 --> 00:33:18.519
I'm president. All guides are banned, you can't have no
685
00:33:18.640 --> 00:33:21.240
guides are being written, no YouTube videos.
686
00:33:21.759 --> 00:33:23.000
I am voting for the other guy.
687
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:25.960
I said the same thing.
688
00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:28.880
I was like in the day, I would go, I
689
00:33:28.920 --> 00:33:30.960
would go and talk to my friend about it. We'd
690
00:33:31.039 --> 00:33:33.640
go even on forums, right where you're talking with other
691
00:33:33.759 --> 00:33:37.119
humans to figure it out, not just being like as
692
00:33:37.160 --> 00:33:39.119
soon as you have any resistance, you go and look
693
00:33:39.119 --> 00:33:41.359
it up and there's your answer. Like people can't make
694
00:33:41.400 --> 00:33:48.359
their own builds anymorets yellow paints are better than guys.
695
00:33:50.240 --> 00:33:50.440
Right.
696
00:33:52.039 --> 00:33:54.759
I think, like you said, is it's sad because it's
697
00:33:54.759 --> 00:33:57.000
not just it's not just like the people aren't figuring
698
00:33:57.039 --> 00:33:57.279
it out.
699
00:33:57.319 --> 00:33:58.559
And I do think that's kind of sad.
700
00:33:58.599 --> 00:34:01.240
But you're also losing a part of community when it
701
00:34:01.240 --> 00:34:03.559
comes to games and you're now you can just like
702
00:34:03.640 --> 00:34:05.799
be alone and just look it up and you don't.
703
00:34:06.160 --> 00:34:07.559
I think that I was found out trocious.
704
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:10.039
I remember when Peter Moulin you talked in like in
705
00:34:10.079 --> 00:34:13.159
Fable two, right, they introduced that thing that that line
706
00:34:13.159 --> 00:34:16.719
that literally tells you exactly where to go, right, like, yeah,
707
00:34:16.960 --> 00:34:18.519
oh you want to finish the quest here, you go
708
00:34:18.719 --> 00:34:21.079
just follow that line, right, because it's like they probably
709
00:34:21.079 --> 00:34:24.119
saw and you are in user research that oh people
710
00:34:24.159 --> 00:34:27.119
get you know, like they double around and so on, right,
711
00:34:27.159 --> 00:34:30.119
and they explore too much, right, like we want them
712
00:34:30.119 --> 00:34:33.079
to actually get to the stuff. But it's like there's
713
00:34:33.119 --> 00:34:39.000
a certain there's a certain amount of people being lost, right,
714
00:34:39.039 --> 00:34:41.719
and that kind of thing that is okay even if
715
00:34:41.719 --> 00:34:46.079
they seem frustrated, Right, did you even check what they're feeling?
716
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:48.719
Is when you actually solve the issue afterwards.
717
00:34:48.800 --> 00:34:52.480
Right. I can't imagine.
718
00:34:51.880 --> 00:34:55.719
How miserable it probably would have been to put Dark
719
00:34:55.800 --> 00:34:57.760
Souls when it first came out, or Demail Salts back
720
00:34:57.800 --> 00:35:01.599
then right into play testing, into your user research session, right,
721
00:35:01.639 --> 00:35:04.480
because you would have just seen people dying to do
722
00:35:04.920 --> 00:35:07.599
bosses like five hundred times, right, and like we would
723
00:35:07.599 --> 00:35:10.760
have been told this is a shitty game. Right, But
724
00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:13.159
but that moment and we had that, by the way,
725
00:35:13.199 --> 00:35:15.360
with Ari, right, like we always had Moon made games
726
00:35:15.360 --> 00:35:18.519
that are they're difficult, right, Like I always from Microsoft
727
00:35:18.519 --> 00:35:21.679
got the feedback that hey, Auri looks so cute and great, right,
728
00:35:21.760 --> 00:35:25.119
and we want everybody to play, even the kids, right,
729
00:35:25.199 --> 00:35:28.519
like can you just reduce everything by fifty percent or something? Right,
730
00:35:28.559 --> 00:35:30.719
like can you just reduce the difficulty? And I was
731
00:35:30.760 --> 00:35:36.239
always resisting that because like we grew up with fucking
732
00:35:36.280 --> 00:35:38.880
playing ghosts and goblins, you know, and that kind.
733
00:35:38.719 --> 00:35:42.280
Of which beat my ass, Right, Yes.
734
00:35:43.320 --> 00:35:46.480
But there is a certain there's a certain like if
735
00:35:46.519 --> 00:35:50.679
you then beat something by yourself right in a game,
736
00:35:51.039 --> 00:35:53.159
Like a lot of times in real life, you don't
737
00:35:53.159 --> 00:35:55.880
get these kind of challenges, right, You get don't don't
738
00:35:55.880 --> 00:35:58.400
get a lot of these things where you can actually
739
00:35:58.400 --> 00:36:00.400
succeed at something, right. So I think for a lot
740
00:36:00.440 --> 00:36:02.440
of people, that's what they get in video games, right,
741
00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:04.679
that they are good at it or become good at it,
742
00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:07.480
and then they get the kick out of you know,
743
00:36:07.519 --> 00:36:10.800
I didn't have a good day, but I beat fucking
744
00:36:10.920 --> 00:36:14.159
market finally, and I feel like a million dollars and
745
00:36:14.199 --> 00:36:18.039
everything is good, you know. And that's that's like literally
746
00:36:18.079 --> 00:36:20.840
for Ori for example. Right, there's there's litteral YouTube videos
747
00:36:20.840 --> 00:36:23.960
out there, right where people die eighty ninety times on
748
00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:26.760
the first big dungeon on the Chinzu tree, right, But
749
00:36:26.920 --> 00:36:27.880
the moment.
750
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:30.360
They do it, they throw the controller.
751
00:36:29.920 --> 00:36:32.960
In the air, they scream, they stand up, they shout,
752
00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:35.440
They're like, oh my god, I finally did it, right,
753
00:36:35.480 --> 00:36:37.719
and it's the it's the best moment of the lives,
754
00:36:37.800 --> 00:36:40.880
right Like So, so I think that was a really
755
00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:42.760
important moment in games, no doubt.
756
00:36:42.880 --> 00:36:45.000
You talked about your inspiration, like what if we made
757
00:36:45.039 --> 00:36:46.719
our Zelda, you know what I mean.
758
00:36:46.800 --> 00:36:48.760
And I remember when.
759
00:36:48.519 --> 00:36:52.639
I was a kid freaking Akarina Time water Temple. How
760
00:36:52.719 --> 00:36:56.519
long was I stuck in there? But when you figure
761
00:36:56.599 --> 00:36:59.559
it out, you got through your like I broke through
762
00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:00.199
the damn.
763
00:37:00.159 --> 00:37:02.880
You know, And yeah, that's my escaping from the water
764
00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:05.079
in Ori was trouble for a.
765
00:37:05.039 --> 00:37:05.599
Lot of people.
766
00:37:06.039 --> 00:37:09.079
There's no place in that feeling like yeah, I'm definitely
767
00:37:09.079 --> 00:37:11.920
with you on the like everybody sort of has that
768
00:37:11.960 --> 00:37:13.880
add now of like a just look it up and
769
00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:15.239
you want to play a lot of games, and I
770
00:37:15.239 --> 00:37:17.079
think that that ecosystem is valid.
771
00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:20.639
Like I find myself being like, oh, well, if.
772
00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:21.960
I had all the time in the world and there
773
00:37:22.039 --> 00:37:24.280
wasn't a list of ten game of the years, I
774
00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:26.760
want to play. But thinking has definitely changed, Like I
775
00:37:26.760 --> 00:37:28.760
would gladly spend all this time. But I'm like there's
776
00:37:28.760 --> 00:37:31.840
a difference between playing like Ori is the example off
777
00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:34.320
and like I'm playing and it sort of delights you
778
00:37:34.360 --> 00:37:36.920
with this sudden like oh that's what it's trying to
779
00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:40.480
tell me. I mean, it's Super Matroid, the Super Jump Boots.
780
00:37:41.199 --> 00:37:44.000
That's the moment that I literally as a child, had
781
00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:46.159
a revelation of holy.
782
00:37:46.039 --> 00:37:48.480
Crap, this is so incredible.
783
00:37:48.480 --> 00:37:50.519
They just taught me something without all the text, and
784
00:37:50.880 --> 00:37:52.239
so I always love that if.
785
00:37:52.199 --> 00:37:55.440
The little animal doing it, then then if you eat it, It's.
786
00:37:55.280 --> 00:37:58.920
Like, oh I was a child and understood that it
787
00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:01.400
was trying to teach something. It effectively did it, and
788
00:38:01.400 --> 00:38:03.719
I actually had this magical. It's one of my favorite
789
00:38:03.760 --> 00:38:05.480
games of all time because I had a moment as
790
00:38:05.480 --> 00:38:11.000
a child, like and who gets excited about getting taught
791
00:38:11.039 --> 00:38:13.159
something as a child, right?
792
00:38:14.079 --> 00:38:16.159
But it's different is when we were kids, we got
793
00:38:16.199 --> 00:38:18.480
video games that Christmas in on our birthdays and that
794
00:38:18.599 --> 00:38:21.320
was it. But nowadays it's like what are you playing
795
00:38:21.400 --> 00:38:22.800
this month and next?
796
00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:23.079
Right?
797
00:38:23.840 --> 00:38:26.719
Is different and maybe real fast on that. You know,
798
00:38:26.719 --> 00:38:28.239
I know this is a big topic right now. So
799
00:38:28.400 --> 00:38:32.400
on player frustration, your innerarly access, you're asking give us
800
00:38:32.440 --> 00:38:35.119
your feedback. So they go to Steam and they go
801
00:38:35.159 --> 00:38:39.000
to the review section and suddenly they're bombing the game.
802
00:38:39.599 --> 00:38:43.320
What that's like one of the only places this happens.
803
00:38:43.639 --> 00:38:45.440
So what I would ask number one is what do
804
00:38:45.480 --> 00:38:49.119
you think steams should do to accept player feedback, especially
805
00:38:49.159 --> 00:38:51.840
in early access versus this review system.
806
00:38:53.559 --> 00:38:55.960
I don't have anything against the Steam review system. I
807
00:38:55.960 --> 00:38:58.119
think the Steam review system in itself.
808
00:38:57.800 --> 00:38:58.679
Is pretty great. Right.
809
00:38:58.760 --> 00:39:03.079
What I I've grown though, is when the system is
810
00:39:03.119 --> 00:39:05.960
being abused, right, And we just had that situation to
811
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:09.920
a certain degree. So here's what happened, right, So we
812
00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:13.079
released the breach, and I mean, what's played it right?
813
00:39:13.159 --> 00:39:16.239
Like we overtuned it right, simply because what happened was
814
00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:20.360
I was so focused on I want to get as
815
00:39:20.440 --> 00:39:23.000
much content in there as possible, because the major criticism
816
00:39:23.039 --> 00:39:26.119
that people had when we initially released was there's not
817
00:39:26.280 --> 00:39:28.719
enough content. It shows a ton of promise, but there
818
00:39:28.760 --> 00:39:30.719
should be more content, right, So I just wanted to
819
00:39:30.760 --> 00:39:33.480
get as much stuff in it as possible. And I
820
00:39:33.519 --> 00:39:36.639
felt like we had it pretty well tuned a while ago,
821
00:39:36.719 --> 00:39:38.440
right like two months ago, three months ago or so.
822
00:39:38.639 --> 00:39:40.880
And then I gave the entire team, the team the directive,
823
00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:44.119
let's make sure we fix every bark, Let's make sure
824
00:39:44.119 --> 00:39:47.599
we all played test like crazy, right, and we write
825
00:39:47.639 --> 00:39:49.760
anything up that isn't fun to us and so on, right,
826
00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:53.400
And well, our team played the game now for hundreds
827
00:39:53.400 --> 00:39:56.880
of hours, right. So their feedback was, oh, I didn't
828
00:39:56.920 --> 00:39:59.639
have fun during this challenge during this pause because it
829
00:39:59.639 --> 00:40:03.239
wasn'tallenging enough, right, and well, the Elder Ring is known
830
00:40:03.239 --> 00:40:05.880
for being super challenging, and that's doing really well. Right,
831
00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:08.599
So I think in many ways, we just overtuned the
832
00:40:08.639 --> 00:40:10.840
shit out of it, right, like not because we are
833
00:40:10.920 --> 00:40:15.039
evil or something, right, but because you know, like they
834
00:40:15.119 --> 00:40:18.920
played it, they didn't really enjoy it and simply because
835
00:40:18.920 --> 00:40:22.039
it was too easy for them, and so they overtuned it, right,
836
00:40:22.079 --> 00:40:25.280
And then we released it and people lost their minds,
837
00:40:25.360 --> 00:40:28.480
right because they just got killed left and right, and
838
00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:32.440
and with Wicked. The other thing is when you play it,
839
00:40:32.440 --> 00:40:35.039
it's a it's a different game, right, Like it's not
840
00:40:35.239 --> 00:40:37.679
like the Yablow Attaxols like a Dark Sols.
841
00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:39.840
You very much played fairly.
842
00:40:39.519 --> 00:40:42.360
Linearly, right, like first time in this area, and I'm
843
00:40:42.360 --> 00:40:44.199
completing this area, then I kill the boss. Then I
844
00:40:44.239 --> 00:40:46.679
go to the next area. Then I'm completing this area,
845
00:40:46.760 --> 00:40:48.599
I kill the boss, I go to the next area.
846
00:40:48.679 --> 00:40:51.239
Right In Wicked, it's more like, no, you live in
847
00:40:51.280 --> 00:40:55.960
that world and you come to Sacrament and then you know, like, hey,
848
00:40:55.960 --> 00:40:56.519
you can go.
849
00:40:56.480 --> 00:40:58.360
To the next area, but you can also.
850
00:40:58.199 --> 00:41:01.119
Go back and to some weekly so bounty or anything
851
00:41:01.159 --> 00:41:03.199
that you want, right, you might before you go out
852
00:41:03.280 --> 00:41:06.280
want to get more materials and like upgrade your gear
853
00:41:06.320 --> 00:41:08.280
and and those kind of things.
854
00:41:08.360 --> 00:41:11.519
Right, So I think a lot of people played Breach.
855
00:41:12.920 --> 00:41:16.639
With the mindset of, oh, this should play exactly like
856
00:41:16.679 --> 00:41:19.760
the Yablow, or it should play exactly like Souls, because
857
00:41:19.760 --> 00:41:23.559
that's what I played recently, without necessarily giving us the
858
00:41:23.639 --> 00:41:26.360
chance of like, but we're not making the arblow as Souls,
859
00:41:26.400 --> 00:41:29.639
we're making no rest for the wicket. And then quite
860
00:41:29.639 --> 00:41:31.559
a few reviews read that right that it was just
861
00:41:31.639 --> 00:41:34.119
a it was overtuned, and B it was Oh, this
862
00:41:34.159 --> 00:41:36.440
doesn't play like the Arblow, so I don't like it, right,
863
00:41:37.400 --> 00:41:39.480
So that's a bit weird. The other thing like and
864
00:41:39.639 --> 00:41:42.960
and but that feedback and that kind of stuff, Like
865
00:41:43.039 --> 00:41:45.079
I'm a okay with that, right. But the other thing
866
00:41:45.119 --> 00:41:48.719
that I that that happened to us, and this has
867
00:41:48.840 --> 00:41:51.679
been ongoing now for a while, is that I did
868
00:41:51.719 --> 00:41:58.960
see on Twitter quite a few of the bigger I
869
00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:02.400
don't know how what to called, right, but some activists
870
00:42:02.440 --> 00:42:06.639
or whatever, right, they basically literally asked their community, hey,
871
00:42:06.800 --> 00:42:09.239
give this game a negative view because Thomas Mala is
872
00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:12.280
a Nazi, right, And I'm like, this is so stupid, Like, basically,
873
00:42:12.320 --> 00:42:13.000
what happened to us.
874
00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:14.719
Is that three years ago, we had some.
875
00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:23.320
Really nutty journalist, right, and I'll use quote unquote write
876
00:42:23.320 --> 00:42:26.519
this horrendous story about us. And by the way, twelve
877
00:42:26.599 --> 00:42:29.239
years before that, you never heard anything but positive stuff
878
00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:30.400
about Moon Studios.
879
00:42:30.440 --> 00:42:32.679
Right. We were the team that made.
880
00:42:32.559 --> 00:42:35.199
The two Ori games, and suddenly there's this journalist guy
881
00:42:35.199 --> 00:42:38.960
that called us Nazis and sexists and racists and based
882
00:42:39.000 --> 00:42:42.280
on nothing, based on he you know, we had to
883
00:42:42.360 --> 00:42:44.320
lay off two people because they brought friction into the
884
00:42:44.360 --> 00:42:47.559
team and he interviewed them and hurrah, they said some
885
00:42:47.599 --> 00:42:52.440
crazy stuff about us, right, And since then, we're constantly
886
00:42:52.480 --> 00:42:56.039
getting attacked by people that say that just repeat that stuff, right,
887
00:42:56.079 --> 00:42:59.039
that read the headline and immediately throw us into the
888
00:42:59.039 --> 00:43:01.000
thing of like, well you got a bunch of Nazis,
889
00:43:01.039 --> 00:43:03.159
I'm gonna download everything that you do and so on.
890
00:43:03.559 --> 00:43:06.679
And so what I saw is, well, that was that
891
00:43:06.719 --> 00:43:07.480
actually happened.
892
00:43:07.559 --> 00:43:07.719
Right.
893
00:43:07.760 --> 00:43:10.960
So there's you know, people that call for negative reviews.
894
00:43:11.199 --> 00:43:13.039
And then I looked at the Steam reviews, at the
895
00:43:13.159 --> 00:43:16.239
Steam reviews where the person literally puts in a dot
896
00:43:16.800 --> 00:43:19.320
and gives a negative review and that's it, right, And
897
00:43:19.360 --> 00:43:20.760
it's like that'sppy.
898
00:43:21.039 --> 00:43:23.199
And the other thing was like m Steam. I didn't
899
00:43:23.199 --> 00:43:24.199
even know that that's possible.
900
00:43:24.239 --> 00:43:26.400
But on Steam you can buy a game, give a
901
00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:29.440
negative review by posting nothing, putting just a sign of
902
00:43:29.760 --> 00:43:32.039
some sign in there, and then leaving a negative view,
903
00:43:32.079 --> 00:43:33.159
and then you refund the game.
904
00:43:35.199 --> 00:43:38.360
You know, the question, if there's this permanent system we
905
00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:40.440
saw it with hell diversorry, you have a community that
906
00:43:41.079 --> 00:43:43.519
likes your game or loves your game, when you turn
907
00:43:43.559 --> 00:43:46.440
it in a different direction, even when it's in full release,
908
00:43:46.800 --> 00:43:50.000
suddenly they leave another permanent review that they hate it.
909
00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:52.599
It's very binary, actually, is what I witness.
910
00:43:52.639 --> 00:43:54.400
And so that it gives my question here of like
911
00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:57.480
with all of this ability to leave like a permanent
912
00:43:59.679 --> 00:44:02.639
era to the knee in Moon Studios, Right, do you
913
00:44:02.719 --> 00:44:05.840
think Steam is doing a good job in handling that?
914
00:44:05.960 --> 00:44:07.280
Would you want a better system?
915
00:44:08.280 --> 00:44:09.840
I think generally has.
916
00:44:09.760 --> 00:44:12.199
To adapt, right, And I think that just takes some time, right,
917
00:44:12.239 --> 00:44:15.840
because for thirty forty years or so, the system never changed, right.
918
00:44:15.880 --> 00:44:18.639
It was basically every product was a boxed product, right,
919
00:44:18.679 --> 00:44:21.519
and it was just once it comes out, a reviewer
920
00:44:21.679 --> 00:44:23.719
us a review and that's it, right, because like the
921
00:44:23.800 --> 00:44:25.880
updates that come out or the patches and so on,
922
00:44:26.039 --> 00:44:28.920
don't really drastically change the game. Right, But in the
923
00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:31.239
last ten years or so, right, we've seen lots of
924
00:44:31.280 --> 00:44:38.159
games to under insane development that come become completely different games. Yeah,
925
00:44:38.199 --> 00:44:42.840
or any of these things, right, and and and what's
926
00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:46.320
happening there is like, hey, you have a review that
927
00:44:46.840 --> 00:44:50.360
for example, the Metacritic or open Critic or whatever review
928
00:44:50.400 --> 00:44:53.079
that is up there, right, it is like that's literally
929
00:44:53.119 --> 00:44:55.400
reviewing a game that does not exist anymore, but that
930
00:44:55.440 --> 00:44:58.440
review will exist forever, right, Like that's that's on the
931
00:44:58.559 --> 00:45:01.599
seven or something, right, And it's like, okay, literally if
932
00:45:01.679 --> 00:45:04.280
you read that stuff, like all the criticism that was there,
933
00:45:04.400 --> 00:45:07.199
we already fixed, and the game that is being reviewed
934
00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:10.000
there that doesn't exist. You cannot even play that, right,
935
00:45:10.039 --> 00:45:11.920
So who is helped by having that?
936
00:45:12.079 --> 00:45:13.800
Right? Like that that thing out there.
937
00:45:14.559 --> 00:45:17.079
But I think that's just a long like that, Like
938
00:45:17.199 --> 00:45:20.079
things like that just take a long time to change, right,
939
00:45:20.199 --> 00:45:23.119
Like if if an industry was a certain way for
940
00:45:23.119 --> 00:45:27.039
forty years and then something changes, even if it's already here,
941
00:45:27.039 --> 00:45:29.840
you're ten years in with like life service games or
942
00:45:29.880 --> 00:45:31.960
like just games that aren't the life development and that
943
00:45:32.079 --> 00:45:35.719
constantly changing, so on you know, like these you know,
944
00:45:35.880 --> 00:45:39.519
like press just doesn't really have an outlet to say, Okay,
945
00:45:39.559 --> 00:45:41.880
well you know these games have changed, let's actually come
946
00:45:41.920 --> 00:45:44.159
back in like we'll re review that, right. So, I
947
00:45:44.159 --> 00:45:45.320
don't know, it's a difficult problem.
948
00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:50.119
Yeah, I've always thought about, like with early access specifically,
949
00:45:50.360 --> 00:45:52.960
maybe there could be a different way of doing it
950
00:45:52.519 --> 00:45:56.679
with Steam reviews because the game isn't fully out, so
951
00:45:56.760 --> 00:45:58.559
there's going to be patches all the time. That's the
952
00:45:58.559 --> 00:46:00.239
point of early access is that there's going to be
953
00:46:00.280 --> 00:46:02.840
constant patches, so things are going to be constantly changing.
954
00:46:03.320 --> 00:46:04.960
So it would be nice if there was a way
955
00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:08.480
to kind of separate the reviews from early access, so
956
00:46:08.480 --> 00:46:10.719
they're still a way for people to give feedback, maybe
957
00:46:10.840 --> 00:46:12.599
via that system, even though maybe it's not the best
958
00:46:12.599 --> 00:46:15.599
system to do that, but separate that from here's one
959
00:46:15.599 --> 00:46:17.440
point zero. This is a live game. This is like
960
00:46:17.599 --> 00:46:20.840
more of a finished product. Because they're going to be
961
00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:23.880
so different. Someone who played the very first iteration of
962
00:46:23.920 --> 00:46:26.559
that game and left a negative view. It could even
963
00:46:26.599 --> 00:46:28.719
be a different genre by the same time the game
964
00:46:28.719 --> 00:46:29.679
comes out, Like it could be.
965
00:46:29.679 --> 00:46:31.239
So difficult, it could be completely different.
966
00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:33.239
But I mean, on the other hand, you could make
967
00:46:33.280 --> 00:46:35.639
the argument, right that there have been lots of early
968
00:46:35.679 --> 00:46:39.199
access scams, right, and so if you pay money to
969
00:46:39.239 --> 00:46:41.639
a developer, you do want to have some outlet to
970
00:46:41.719 --> 00:46:44.039
leave some comment on, like, hey, I think this was
971
00:46:44.079 --> 00:46:47.840
a scam. You know, the developer didn't hold up their promises,
972
00:46:47.880 --> 00:46:50.000
they didn't develop the things that they said, right, So
973
00:46:51.039 --> 00:46:53.199
it's just a really complex problem to solve. But I
974
00:46:53.239 --> 00:46:57.360
do think like there should be a timeout on. Okay,
975
00:46:57.400 --> 00:47:01.440
if a review is really old, then and this nobody's
976
00:47:01.480 --> 00:47:04.079
hell helped by this anymore? Right, Like that's that meta, right,
977
00:47:04.119 --> 00:47:06.800
Like that's that's the meta, because you still have reviews
978
00:47:06.800 --> 00:47:08.639
that are like six years old on Path of Ecstas
979
00:47:08.639 --> 00:47:12.320
and it's literally like that game changes every three months.
980
00:47:12.119 --> 00:47:15.960
It's like maybe like a review completely nonsense.
981
00:47:15.559 --> 00:47:19.880
Where newer reuss would affect the like total review score
982
00:47:19.960 --> 00:47:23.880
better than older reviews, even though I think be pretty good.
983
00:47:23.920 --> 00:47:28.719
Yeah on yeah.
984
00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:30.639
Maybe, but but then you invalidate maybe just if your
985
00:47:30.679 --> 00:47:33.599
game has not completely changed, it would invalidate stuff that
986
00:47:33.840 --> 00:47:35.360
was maybe a good review, like I.
987
00:47:35.320 --> 00:47:37.760
Got useful, Like I've bought games on Steam that were
988
00:47:37.800 --> 00:47:39.639
old and they no longer run on the current version
989
00:47:39.679 --> 00:47:40.159
of Windows.
990
00:47:40.239 --> 00:47:44.039
Yeah you know, I mean so, yeah, I don't want
991
00:47:44.039 --> 00:47:44.760
to spend too much time.
992
00:47:44.800 --> 00:47:47.159
But yeah, like I I have a lot of review backgrounds,
993
00:47:47.159 --> 00:47:49.280
so quite frankly, whether it's early access or not, I
994
00:47:49.360 --> 00:47:52.519
hate to see the using like a moment to give
995
00:47:52.639 --> 00:47:55.920
feedback on a change and balance to I fully hate
996
00:47:55.920 --> 00:47:57.239
your game, you know, so like it.
997
00:47:57.599 --> 00:47:59.679
We've seen it in Hell Divers recently. We've seen it.
998
00:47:59.679 --> 00:48:03.159
It's definitely an effective tool to get the company's attention.
999
00:48:03.239 --> 00:48:06.440
So on that front, I'm like, hey, it's working, but from.
1000
00:48:06.360 --> 00:48:09.239
Its positive things, right, Like, h like I released, they
1001
00:48:09.280 --> 00:48:12.519
had that chat with that guy called Legendary Drops, right,
1002
00:48:13.079 --> 00:48:16.280
and it did help with Hell Divers too, right, But
1003
00:48:16.440 --> 00:48:18.320
Sony was doing this thing with like hey it's not
1004
00:48:18.400 --> 00:48:20.599
available in one of the countries or something, right, and
1005
00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:24.000
it forced Sony to change their thing, which ultimately was positive.
1006
00:48:24.119 --> 00:48:24.280
Right.
1007
00:48:24.599 --> 00:48:28.280
The thing that is still a little bit like I
1008
00:48:28.320 --> 00:48:30.679
would just want people to be reasonable, right because the
1009
00:48:30.719 --> 00:48:33.599
thing with us is like we are we are a
1010
00:48:33.719 --> 00:48:37.599
smaller independent developer, right and if you if you try
1011
00:48:37.599 --> 00:48:40.800
to apply the same rule set here right, like, and
1012
00:48:40.840 --> 00:48:43.039
that's that's what I kind of wanted to stay with that,
1013
00:48:43.199 --> 00:48:46.800
right Like, so for a big publisher, right, like people
1014
00:48:46.880 --> 00:48:49.960
knew if they review Bomb hell divers to Sony is
1015
00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:51.039
not going to cancel the game.
1016
00:48:51.079 --> 00:48:52.000
It's super successful.
1017
00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:53.800
It's already out there that Sony in the background and
1018
00:48:53.880 --> 00:48:56.679
so on, right, But if you do that to us,
1019
00:48:57.079 --> 00:48:58.920
we are a small indie studio and if we don't
1020
00:48:58.920 --> 00:49:02.480
see any sales, right like, at some point, will be dead, right,
1021
00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:05.159
So that's what I wanted to say. I think people
1022
00:49:05.199 --> 00:49:07.000
kind of like saw it as like I'm trying to
1023
00:49:07.039 --> 00:49:09.480
guild three people into something, right. I just try to
1024
00:49:09.480 --> 00:49:13.639
make a logical statement that because there isn't a party
1025
00:49:13.639 --> 00:49:15.639
in the background that pays all the bills, right, like
1026
00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:20.800
you if you just review bombus and if that situation
1027
00:49:20.880 --> 00:49:24.239
doesn't change at some point like that, the Steam reviews
1028
00:49:24.239 --> 00:49:27.159
have a dramatic effect on sales. And if we don't
1029
00:49:27.239 --> 00:49:30.360
ever have sales, well we build one out of like
1030
00:49:30.440 --> 00:49:31.800
we'll be out of business.
1031
00:49:31.440 --> 00:49:32.360
At some point. Yeah.
1032
00:49:32.599 --> 00:49:36.400
And I always try to drive home like how important reviewing,
1033
00:49:36.880 --> 00:49:40.000
especially indie games is and wish listing, because that's going
1034
00:49:40.079 --> 00:49:42.519
to be the thing that enables people to see the game.
1035
00:49:43.159 --> 00:49:45.599
And I just try and bring it up like whenever
1036
00:49:45.639 --> 00:49:48.280
I can, of like with every game, definitely do it
1037
00:49:48.320 --> 00:49:51.320
like leave your leave your thoughts and wishless if you're interested,
1038
00:49:51.360 --> 00:49:53.599
but especially with indie games, because it's.
1039
00:49:53.480 --> 00:49:55.039
Like night and day different.
1040
00:49:55.360 --> 00:49:58.920
Yeah, it's huge difference because people most people just go
1041
00:49:58.960 --> 00:50:02.320
on Steam and just look at you know, how much
1042
00:50:02.400 --> 00:50:05.000
is the game and what's the review scored? Right, and
1043
00:50:05.079 --> 00:50:06.559
based on that you make your decision.
1044
00:50:06.599 --> 00:50:09.000
That's it right, and it affects the algorithm.
1045
00:50:09.079 --> 00:50:10.559
And all I was going to say is you actually
1046
00:50:10.599 --> 00:50:14.039
have said you want the feedback. You it's valuable, but
1047
00:50:14.119 --> 00:50:16.159
you have a problem that you're like, please be careful
1048
00:50:16.159 --> 00:50:18.400
with the review. And that's my point Steam, And now
1049
00:50:18.440 --> 00:50:21.000
we're going down the path of like ai AAR recommendation.
1050
00:50:21.079 --> 00:50:22.960
Are you sure this is not a patch review or
1051
00:50:22.960 --> 00:50:24.800
whatever I was leading?
1052
00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:26.400
But I would love to see a Steam and other
1053
00:50:26.440 --> 00:50:29.280
companies encourage tons of feedback, but make it clear what
1054
00:50:29.360 --> 00:50:31.519
a review is and separate those things.
1055
00:50:32.599 --> 00:50:36.719
Sure, yeah, tough things.
1056
00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:39.840
Maybe maybe we're the first thing that makes them think
1057
00:50:39.840 --> 00:50:43.599
about it, right, because it brought up a situation, right,
1058
00:50:43.679 --> 00:50:45.519
I mean, and also every now and then we talked
1059
00:50:45.559 --> 00:50:47.360
to the guys at welve and we know some people
1060
00:50:47.400 --> 00:50:49.480
that work that, Like we had some people that worked
1061
00:50:49.480 --> 00:50:51.760
for us and now work at Valve. Right, they're all
1062
00:50:51.800 --> 00:50:55.119
wickedly smarte right, So I don't really want to feel like, hey,
1063
00:50:55.119 --> 00:50:58.599
I'm kidding tons of advice, right, because they're like, what's
1064
00:50:58.639 --> 00:51:01.159
the chance that if I come up with some advice
1065
00:51:01.199 --> 00:51:04.199
that they haven't discussed this for one thousand dollars already internally?
1066
00:51:04.280 --> 00:51:06.920
You know. Yeah, I think the bit of hope with
1067
00:51:06.960 --> 00:51:10.280
this kind of stuff is you've seen games, you know,
1068
00:51:10.400 --> 00:51:14.000
I mean they are Biggert studios. You like Cyberpunk and well,
1069
00:51:14.039 --> 00:51:16.920
I guess No Man's Sky, you know that started off
1070
00:51:17.079 --> 00:51:20.280
very rough, but continue to support the game, continue to
1071
00:51:20.320 --> 00:51:22.760
update and like word of mouth was enough to like
1072
00:51:22.840 --> 00:51:27.519
overpower Steam reviews, even outdated Steam reviews or negative and
1073
00:51:27.559 --> 00:51:30.559
to push them back into you know, positive, and the
1074
00:51:30.559 --> 00:51:31.519
same with like hell Doves.
1075
00:51:31.519 --> 00:51:32.440
I think it shows you.
1076
00:51:33.920 --> 00:51:36.000
Because you know people are review bombing. I think it's
1077
00:51:36.079 --> 00:51:38.119
like part of the equation too. Like I think people
1078
00:51:38.159 --> 00:51:40.360
are aware of like review bombing now, and when you
1079
00:51:40.400 --> 00:51:42.800
see something that's very mixed, you do try to gather
1080
00:51:42.880 --> 00:51:45.400
the story. And I think you know, as a studio
1081
00:51:45.920 --> 00:51:48.440
you're doing the right thing now is to make sure
1082
00:51:48.480 --> 00:51:50.960
that your side of the story is heard as well,
1083
00:51:51.000 --> 00:51:54.199
so it's not just what's written on Steam and then.
1084
00:51:54.079 --> 00:51:56.840
You also have to be careful with the throne review bombing, right,
1085
00:51:56.880 --> 00:51:59.039
because as some people lead it out as like I
1086
00:51:59.079 --> 00:52:01.360
am seeing every view that is on Steam that is.
1087
00:52:01.320 --> 00:52:02.840
Negative, it's review bombing, right.
1088
00:52:03.960 --> 00:52:06.480
What I see as review bomping is like, if there's
1089
00:52:06.639 --> 00:52:10.920
literally people just telling others give this game a negative
1090
00:52:10.960 --> 00:52:14.119
review for whatever reason that doesn't have anything to do
1091
00:52:14.199 --> 00:52:17.480
with the game, right, that to me would fall into
1092
00:52:17.519 --> 00:52:18.199
review bombing.
1093
00:52:18.320 --> 00:52:18.480
Right.
1094
00:52:18.519 --> 00:52:21.679
If people just play your game and don't like your game, well,
1095
00:52:21.679 --> 00:52:24.400
that's fair game, right, That's just that will always happen.
1096
00:52:24.519 --> 00:52:27.119
Like I it's impossible for me to make a game
1097
00:52:27.119 --> 00:52:31.119
that just pleases completely everybody, right, like they will always
1098
00:52:30.880 --> 00:52:33.280
for some other things. No, it's just you know, like
1099
00:52:33.320 --> 00:52:36.480
I make a certain thing, right, and if I make
1100
00:52:36.639 --> 00:52:40.599
chocolate chocolate pudding, right, I'll very much endear the chocolate
1101
00:52:40.599 --> 00:52:43.119
pudding lovers. But somebody who's going to ice cream, like,
1102
00:52:43.159 --> 00:52:46.440
I'm sorry, you know, but I might disappoint you, even
1103
00:52:46.480 --> 00:52:48.000
though chocolate pudding is fantastic.
1104
00:52:50.039 --> 00:52:54.000
Because we're coming up to the hour here, I wanted
1105
00:52:54.000 --> 00:52:56.639
to kind of ask about, like, when it comes to
1106
00:52:56.719 --> 00:53:00.519
one point zero one, how are you thinking in terms
1107
00:53:00.559 --> 00:53:03.920
of like the Nintendo switch, because there's a Nintendo switch too,
1108
00:53:04.000 --> 00:53:06.000
are you kind of looking into that at all?
1109
00:53:06.960 --> 00:53:08.960
We have a lot of people waiting for console, they're
1110
00:53:09.039 --> 00:53:09.519
very excited.
1111
00:53:10.199 --> 00:53:13.320
And then, because you guys are perfectionists, do you think
1112
00:53:13.320 --> 00:53:16.239
there do you have a point in mind that you
1113
00:53:16.280 --> 00:53:18.760
can see in your site where you're like, that's when we.
1114
00:53:18.679 --> 00:53:21.480
Will be happy to go into one point zero.
1115
00:53:24.599 --> 00:53:26.360
I think it depends on a bunch of things, right,
1116
00:53:26.360 --> 00:53:28.920
Like we also have to see how is Breach doing,
1117
00:53:28.960 --> 00:53:30.800
how is co op doing, and so on. We would
1118
00:53:30.880 --> 00:53:34.360
like to just really perfect it right, But we do
1119
00:53:34.440 --> 00:53:37.679
have a release date in mind that isn't as far
1120
00:53:37.760 --> 00:53:40.920
off as some people think because the thing that happened
1121
00:53:40.960 --> 00:53:43.360
with us is that you have to remember that we
1122
00:53:43.519 --> 00:53:47.599
already worked on Wicked, like it went into actual production
1123
00:53:47.679 --> 00:53:51.559
in twenty eighteen. Wow, So there's a lot of stuff
1124
00:53:51.599 --> 00:53:54.159
that we already worked on that we basically just have
1125
00:53:54.280 --> 00:53:58.440
to finish right where it's like, hey, here's like I'll
1126
00:53:58.480 --> 00:54:02.159
let you in on a little secret. The areas for
1127
00:54:02.320 --> 00:54:06.000
one point zero that we're gonna ship, they're already designed,
1128
00:54:07.800 --> 00:54:11.119
They were basically done at some point, right. The question is, well,
1129
00:54:11.159 --> 00:54:14.159
they haven't been touched in a while now, we have
1130
00:54:14.239 --> 00:54:16.119
to clean those up again and take a look, and
1131
00:54:16.360 --> 00:54:18.320
you know, like, hey, their live system has to be
1132
00:54:18.599 --> 00:54:19.679
adapted to them and so on.
1133
00:54:19.760 --> 00:54:20.559
Right, But.
1134
00:54:22.719 --> 00:54:25.159
We have a lot of stuff still that has already
1135
00:54:25.159 --> 00:54:27.599
been done that we basically just have to package.
1136
00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:29.440
Up and ship, right, and and so on.
1137
00:54:29.519 --> 00:54:34.320
So I think we're looking pretty good there regarding switch. Well,
1138
00:54:34.320 --> 00:54:37.159
we just talked to Nintendo and we are very interested.
1139
00:54:38.440 --> 00:54:40.599
The thing that.
1140
00:54:42.079 --> 00:54:44.480
Like, I'm always I always want to look at hardware
1141
00:54:44.519 --> 00:54:47.840
and like, can we do something really interesting with that hardware? Right,
1142
00:54:48.480 --> 00:54:51.840
And like we still have to wait for the deaf kids,
1143
00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:55.840
But one of the things that I discussed with them
1144
00:54:55.880 --> 00:54:57.840
that I would really like to do is to solve
1145
00:54:57.920 --> 00:54:59.239
the problem of.
1146
00:55:00.800 --> 00:55:03.000
Couch co op ultimately, right, Because.
1147
00:55:02.719 --> 00:55:05.159
The problem that you have with an AARBG and couch
1148
00:55:05.199 --> 00:55:07.840
co op is that the album three, for example, allows
1149
00:55:07.880 --> 00:55:09.000
four player couch co op.
1150
00:55:09.079 --> 00:55:09.239
Right.
1151
00:55:09.599 --> 00:55:11.679
The problem was, well, if you bring up the menu,
1152
00:55:11.800 --> 00:55:14.039
it takes over the entire screen. Right, So every time
1153
00:55:14.079 --> 00:55:17.039
somebody wants to change the inventory, three other players have
1154
00:55:17.039 --> 00:55:19.239
the wait, and it's like that's an awful experience.
1155
00:55:19.320 --> 00:55:19.480
Right.
1156
00:55:19.880 --> 00:55:21.800
The way they solve this now in the album four
1157
00:55:21.840 --> 00:55:25.800
and in half of Exile is well, we only allow
1158
00:55:25.880 --> 00:55:29.119
two players anymore, right, But now the inventory is like
1159
00:55:29.159 --> 00:55:31.320
the first player takes up half of that screen of
1160
00:55:31.360 --> 00:55:33.159
the left side and the other player takes up half
1161
00:55:33.199 --> 00:55:33.760
of the right side.
1162
00:55:33.840 --> 00:55:36.320
Right. But it's like, well, that's kind of shitty, right,
1163
00:55:36.360 --> 00:55:37.880
because if you look at families and so on.
1164
00:55:37.960 --> 00:55:40.559
I grew up with two brothers, right, so we always
1165
00:55:40.599 --> 00:55:43.639
had me, my two brothers and a friend being over.
1166
00:55:43.800 --> 00:55:46.039
And if you could have played it couldn't have played
1167
00:55:46.039 --> 00:55:47.760
a game with four players. That would have been really
1168
00:55:47.760 --> 00:55:51.000
shitty for us, right, And I want families and so
1169
00:55:51.039 --> 00:55:53.639
on to play to play that, right, So I want
1170
00:55:53.679 --> 00:55:55.440
to look into that game share thing that they have
1171
00:55:55.519 --> 00:55:58.320
and so on, and I think it would be really
1172
00:55:58.440 --> 00:56:02.760
cool if we could do something completely different there right
1173
00:56:02.760 --> 00:56:05.440
where we solve that problem of I want people to
1174
00:56:05.480 --> 00:56:06.519
play before.
1175
00:56:06.559 --> 00:56:09.199
Like I want, I would want four player support at
1176
00:56:09.239 --> 00:56:10.239
some point.
1177
00:56:10.679 --> 00:56:12.119
And by the way, I'm not saying how to co
1178
00:56:12.199 --> 00:56:14.079
op absolutely ships to one point or work that's on
1179
00:56:14.159 --> 00:56:19.400
a wish list to see, but I would want to
1180
00:56:19.400 --> 00:56:22.000
solve that problem that seems really intriguing to me. And
1181
00:56:22.119 --> 00:56:23.840
that's something that you could do want to switch to
1182
00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:26.760
because it has some crazy stuff that I don't know
1183
00:56:26.800 --> 00:56:28.440
if other developers will use it that way.
1184
00:56:29.039 --> 00:56:31.239
So instead of pulling out the menu, maybe just pull
1185
00:56:31.400 --> 00:56:34.519
up a QR code and then they can just do
1186
00:56:34.559 --> 00:56:35.360
it other phones.
1187
00:56:36.280 --> 00:56:39.199
No rest for the Wicked mobile app for your inventory.
1188
00:56:39.639 --> 00:56:42.280
Yeah, so you hit the menu and it just flashes
1189
00:56:42.320 --> 00:56:43.039
a QR code.
1190
00:56:43.159 --> 00:56:43.880
Pull up your phone.
1191
00:56:43.960 --> 00:56:47.199
You're managing your inventory here. Doesn't take over the screen easy.
1192
00:56:48.320 --> 00:56:50.440
No, I have some ideas on how this took yourself,
1193
00:56:50.559 --> 00:56:52.840
but I'm not going to share everything right now.
1194
00:56:53.440 --> 00:56:54.280
I wouldn't share it now.
1195
00:56:56.000 --> 00:56:57.360
It sounds like you want to see a switch to
1196
00:56:57.519 --> 00:57:00.519
version of the game, though, we.
1197
00:57:00.480 --> 00:57:02.920
Will release it on every platform. I can already say that,
1198
00:57:03.000 --> 00:57:07.039
right so at one point, Oh, the idea with Wicket
1199
00:57:07.119 --> 00:57:09.880
has always been that we almost want to basically build
1200
00:57:09.880 --> 00:57:12.679
a platform, right, Like I want people to be able
1201
00:57:12.679 --> 00:57:14.840
to play it on PC and then go to the
1202
00:57:14.960 --> 00:57:17.760
switch and keep continuing the exact same game that they
1203
00:57:17.880 --> 00:57:20.719
just played. I would even want them to be able
1204
00:57:20.719 --> 00:57:22.400
to whip out their phone and like just play the
1205
00:57:22.440 --> 00:57:24.719
exact same game, right, that kind of thing, so that
1206
00:57:24.800 --> 00:57:27.679
it's just if you and the rest to the Wicket player,
1207
00:57:27.719 --> 00:57:29.639
you can access your thing on everywhere.
1208
00:57:30.679 --> 00:57:37.199
I love that awesome. Well, I think we're pretty good here.
1209
00:57:37.280 --> 00:57:39.039
I know Brier's got to head out kind of soon,
1210
00:57:39.079 --> 00:57:41.079
and we don't want to keep you around forever. You've
1211
00:57:41.079 --> 00:57:43.719
got lots of work to do. Is there anything that
1212
00:57:43.760 --> 00:57:46.800
you'd want to hit on before we head out? Tell
1213
00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:48.320
people about, let people know about.
1214
00:57:51.639 --> 00:57:53.480
I mean the biggest thing is just well, give the
1215
00:57:53.519 --> 00:57:55.719
game a try, right like we I think now after
1216
00:57:55.760 --> 00:57:59.039
the hot fixes and so on, it's really fun. There's
1217
00:57:59.079 --> 00:58:01.280
a lot of really cool stuff coming. I mean every
1218
00:58:01.360 --> 00:58:04.440
day I am in our design discussions and I love it,
1219
00:58:04.480 --> 00:58:08.199
and I think we just have an amazing team, right,
1220
00:58:08.239 --> 00:58:10.360
Like every time when we talk about features and so on,
1221
00:58:10.840 --> 00:58:13.880
we can get stuff done super quick. I would want
1222
00:58:14.039 --> 00:58:16.280
to kind of like create a narrative now, right and
1223
00:58:16.360 --> 00:58:18.679
really show people how strong our team is by just
1224
00:58:19.760 --> 00:58:22.800
doing things so quickly and so and deliver so many
1225
00:58:22.800 --> 00:58:25.800
cool features that you would go, well, what is going
1226
00:58:25.840 --> 00:58:28.159
on with grinding your games and Blizzard and why you
1227
00:58:28.199 --> 00:58:30.599
know as fast as us, right, like that kind of thing.
1228
00:58:31.440 --> 00:58:33.280
So just play the game, leave us a ton of
1229
00:58:33.360 --> 00:58:36.760
feedback and you know, really perfect the crap out of it.
1230
00:58:37.639 --> 00:58:39.400
That would really help us.
1231
00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:42.360
Awesome. Yeah, go go get the game, guys. It's really good.
1232
00:58:42.440 --> 00:58:44.440
I'd also recommend giving it a try.
1233
00:58:44.920 --> 00:58:45.400
I love it.
1234
00:58:46.280 --> 00:58:48.440
I've enjoyed my time with it so far. Thanksious to
1235
00:58:48.440 --> 00:58:49.159
get back into it.
1236
00:58:50.039 --> 00:58:52.800
Yeah, well, thank you very much for joining us.
1237
00:58:53.360 --> 00:58:56.440
Yeah, absolutely, thanks for having me.
1238
00:58:58.559 --> 00:59:00.280
All right, guys, that's gonna wrap this one up. Thank
1239
00:59:00.320 --> 00:59:02.800
you very much for joining us. Have a safe weekend
1240
00:59:02.840 --> 00:59:04.800
and we'll see you next time.
1241
00:59:04.800 --> 00:59:07.400
Bye bye bye. Yeah