Dev to Dev S01 E15 - Bill Mueller (REMASTERED)

speaker-1: Hello everyone, welcome back to another revisit. I'm gonna call them remaster at this point because I think the work I did on the previous episode I think warrants a remaster tag of season one, episode 15 with Bill Mueller. I love this conversation. Another really honest, open conversation about the realities of being in game dev. Bill has a really interesting career going from outside of game dev with TV and radio experience, then going into game dev, being inspired by Bioshock basically, to switch careers. Having the back end of his family to do that. And he opens up and he's really honest about that journey and what that was like. A couple of things worth highlighting. Bill talks about his obsession with the behind the scenes experience after seeing the production of a Disney on ice event that he got to see how it was being put together due to the seats that they had. And that sort of inspired this idea of figuring out what the behind the scenes was like, and that led to his radio and TV career that I thought was fascinating. He also talks really honestly about. Hitting the ceiling in in radio and live TV. Although he enjoyed the buzz and the excitement of doing live TV, he felt like he'd gone as far as he could go with audio. And that combined with Bioshock is what triggered his huge career pivot and the huge risk that he took, which is fascinating and impressive. And finally, I think the gut punch of this episode is the insight into the layoff. 38 Studio is a very famous story in the industry of the collapse of that studio. Bill goes into detail on what it was like, how he found out. What his life situation was at the time, how it impacted them and his his wife. So I loved getting that insight. So horrible that anyone had to go through that, but I really appreciate Bill sharing it. And I think it's a honest and sobering insight into what can happen, what the realities of of doing a job that you love that can at some point just stop and you have to figure out what to do. Obviously, very pertinent in current times, but I think Bill's experience is one worth listening to. So I hope you enjoyed this revisit. Again, if you've already heard it, I think it's worth a re listen. If you haven't, if you Missed out season one and haven't subscribed to the Patreon where you can access all of season one. Hopefully this inspires you to do so. I'd really appreciate that. As ever, DevToDev is is on the socials and online at dev2devpodcast.com. Appreciate anything you can do to like and share it. Discovery is my biggest challenge, so I really appreciate anyone that can help with that. Tell someone that you know that you think will enjoy it. Share the links and posts when you can. I really appreciate those that already do that. Please continue to do that. Thank you. And hopefully That we can grow this little community. I know I said last week that this was going to be another themes episode. Apologies, schedules and family, and holiday have kind of scuppered that. So I was able to land a revisit in time. I will aim to have a themed episode, maybe a little later next week, but out next week. I'm really excited about it. It's focused on the cost of being in game dev. There's really some great excerpts that I think are worth digging into. So yeah, look out for that next week. But in the meantime, let's sit back and listen into this revisit or remaster. The resumption of an episode from season one of Dev to Dev with Bill Mueller. Thank you for being here. Yeah, I'm excited to 'cause like you say, your history is is diverse. It it's not just game dev, you've got some other areas that I'm excited to learn about and see how they correlate with with being a developer. So ⁓ I always like to kick this off with my favorite first question. ⁓ what first inspired you about video games?
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a great question. ⁓ I am on the older side of things. ⁓ and so when I first started it was the Commodore sixty-four. ⁓ my my parents brought that home and hooked it up into the living room. ⁓ you know, and and they bought it as more of like here's the computer, right? Like here's this new fangle technology that's coming out and we're all gonna start using it. ⁓ and then it came with games like Zaxon, which is this over the top like fighter ⁓ kind of thing, ⁓ Jupiter Landing. And Tooth Invaders, ⁓ which was a stupid game where you brush this person's teeth and to try to clean all the germs off. ⁓ I was probably like five years old, ⁓ maybe five or six years old. And just the the allure of sitting down on my couch, grabbing a a joystick, and being able to control something on the television for the first time, like that was mind-blowing to everybody in the family. And that that really sunk my teeth. Like, I don't just I'm not just sitting there. watching a cartoon, ⁓ actually participating and controlling a character and that was just wow, mind blowing to me. ⁓ and so from there it you know, once the Nintendo came out, ⁓ and all my friends started playing that, my cousin, ⁓ Rich had his Nintendo in his basement and we'd go over there for like Christmases or any holidays or whatever, family get togethers. And that was the thing I'd do. I'd go downstairs, he had the full setup with the robot and the the light gun and you know and ⁓ tons of games. That's all I wanted to do was sit in the basement and and play Nintendo. And that was even just like From the Commodore to Nintendo was a huge leap of like, wow, here we go. And ⁓ I just begged my parents, begged my parents, begged my parents for Nintendo. And eventually one Christmas came, ⁓ and there was a Nintendo underneath the tree. Well I was like that kid, like, ⁓ my God, you know. And all my aunts and uncles and my grandparents, ⁓ they bought me Nintendo games. And it was funny 'cause I think that that was the the time I was at that age too where I'm like, Wait a minute, how did they know Santa was gonna bring me a Nintendo? so ⁓ and yeah, ⁓ you know, and again it was it was old enough at the time where, you know, like people don't remember this, but like having multiple TVs in the house wasn't common, right? I mean, you had the one TV had your living room and that's all we had. And it was a pain to hook the Nintendo up. You'd you'd hook it up into the back of the TV, which meant like unhooking an antenna or whatever you had, right? So it was always a pain, you know, meant that like my dad couldn't watch TV if I wanted to play games. ⁓ and my parents ⁓ were cool enough, ⁓ and I always respected them for this, where they said, you know, you're young, but We have an extra, believe it or not, black and white television from when we were younger. It's still in the it's in the basement. We could put it in your bedroom and you could put the Nintendo onto that and you can play in your bedroom. Now there's rules, you know, you're young, we don't want you doing it at night. You gotta make sure you get ready for school and that kind of thing, but you know, it's in your room. And of course, you know, I played it at night anyways. and it was great 'cause like in the morning it made me get dressed a lot quicker. I'd eat my breakfast really fast, so I can get like that ten or twenty minutes to play a little bit more Nintendo. ⁓ and but again for me it was always that like What I'm this is incredible. I'm controlling something on the TV. It was the technology that always in inspired me and like how that sort of worked. and eventually, like when you get to the n Nintendo and you're playing games like Kung Fu or like Mario, you're also now I'm being challenged, and I can see how I can progress through something. And at a young age, and I can see how that sort of developed into like my musical career as well. But like, you know, I'm struggling through this one area, let me keep practicing that. And ⁓ I did better and I got through it and I learned how to do that. And like that was something that I brought into like like I like music, for example, where I'm struggling playing this piece here. I can take these c couple of four measures, slow it down, keep playing it, keep playing it. I got it, connect it to the other measures and move on to the next. So like I always sort of live life in that sort of like mentality of like, you know, get through this section, learn how to do it, get better and move on. I I've always sort of brought that into other parts of of my career as well. So that was the the start for me, right? Like that was sort of what really hooked me into into games.
speaker-1: Right, so very much that Nintendo generation, you know. I like I like that it started with a computer for homework. Like how many of us had that? ⁓ no, I'm gonna do my homework on it, I promise. ⁓ yeah, and then no no no qualms around the Nintendo, right? That's not for homework, that's just for games. ⁓ Okay, so so Commodore sixty four and ⁓ Nintendo and then yeah, that sort of that level of interaction on the T V was what drew you as well as the challenge. So where where was this? Where did you grow up?
speaker-0: ⁓ East Boston, Massachusetts.
speaker-1: Okay. Okay. And any siblings that were gamers or any other people in the family? No.
speaker-0: I was the only one in my family. Huh, I know my sister would play from time to time. You know, I do have a sister, ⁓ but sh I wouldn't call her like she wasn't head deep into it like I was. Like I wanted to play all the time. And you know, my dad thought it was cool. Again it was that like you know, playing duck hunt, you know, in the living room was fun. But like we weren't huge they weren't huge into it as much as I was, you know. ⁓ but I had a lot of friends that that did, so that that was that was helpful.
speaker-1: Right, yeah, yeah. So so d you were the one that sort of caught the bug the most in the house and then and you had a a a circle of friends that were gamers. You said you mentioned a cousin as well that were gamers.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ especially especially as I got a little older too, you know, that was what we did, ⁓ you know, ⁓ in h high school and middle school was that we'd go to a friend's house and, you know, they had the Genesis or whatever and that you know, they come to my house and they play whatever somebody had an SNES, so we'd do that. You know, that's all we did as kids most of the time. Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: Yeah. Same here. Just playing video games, loving video games. ⁓ and and so so you went to to school and and and college and, you know, kept gaming. And then then you went to the University of Massachusetts?
speaker-0: Yeah, so UMass Lowell. Yep, UMass Lowell ⁓ my thing. So I mean to back it up a little bit, ⁓ what r you know, well I had mentioned like it was exciting for me to see the sort of the technology of like how something worked right for games and that was always ex fun. And around that same time too, my parents brought me to ⁓ was it Disney on ice ⁓ at the Boston Garden in in way back in the day. And ⁓ I can vividly remember I don't remember what was on the ice at all because I was young, but I vividly remember seeing somebody standing behind this console and you could see like they were controlling lights and they were controlling the audio and I was like, whoa, what is that? And I wasn't even interested in what was going on on the ice. It was like there was this behind the scenes happening that was controlling all this stuff. And I, you know, we were just sitting at this angle where I could see people like directing the the the ice people on the okay, go, go, go, go. And I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, there's an entire world of like stuff that gets created behind the scenes and not just what's happening on the ice. And I can remember going back and watching T V Believe it was like Bozo the Clown or something. And they would every once in a while they spin the camera and show the audience and you'd get a quick view of what was happening behind the scenes again. You see people like producers and directors, and I'm like, wow, that is so cool. That sort of moment like really got me interested in like how stuff was created. And I think a lot of kids, you know, when I got into playing music, were like, I want to be you know, a rock star. And I was always the I wanna be someone like, how does this get made? Like, what's the recording process? You know, how does television work? And like, you know, how does audio for that kind of stuff work? And I was always really, really interested in that and ⁓ you know, and through high school got into music really deep and was like, I want music to be part of my career. I want but like I wasn't sure how to even step into that. ⁓ I ended up going to college for my first year to be a music educator. ⁓ and for for the for the thinking of like, you know, I love music, sure, I'll teach kids. And after like a f my first month there, I was like If you're gonna be a teacher, it should be because you want to be a teacher, not because you're like, I just want a paycheck and I I get to do music, right? Like it could really screw a kid up if I do this wrong. ⁓ and so luckily UMass Lowell had a program in called Sound Recording Technology. And I was able to sort of take a look at that and go, okay, well, here's something like here's that behind the scenes thing that I've always wanted. Let me learn a little bit more about this. And I just, I mean, holy crap, I just fell in love with that. Like from day one, learning just like how ⁓ audio works and how soundboards work and how recording works and all that sort of sort of process. I just dove head like I just could not believe it. It was like the fact that I was at UMS Lowell was it was just amazing because I n I don't think I would have found that if I went to any other school 'cause there's not a lot of schools that do sound recording like UMS Lowell does. So ⁓ yeah, ⁓ that's kind of how I sort of fell into the audio world of things. ⁓ and and and, you know, from there, ⁓ But yeah, ⁓ so that that's kinda how we first started.
speaker-1: That's interesting. And and so th the sort of fascination with the behind the scenes and then the fascination with audio, h did you correlate that that with video games? Did you, you know, kind of wonder how video game audio was made too?
speaker-0: Eventually I did. It took me a while. ⁓ I yeah, and I think that's sort of it's funny because I listened to this, you know, you ⁓ talk to other people on this podcast. I think a lot of people have that sort of saying like I loved playing games. I never thought that I could ever make it. I never understood like yeah, there's a process there. ⁓ and I I I think a lot of that you know, the time that we grew up there wasn't a lot of information about how games were getting created. They just sort of did. ⁓ but like, you know, I understood what a camera was, I understood what a microphone was on television, I understood how radio worked. So it was a lot easier for me to be, ⁓ yeah, that's what I'll do. ⁓ but as much as I love games, it was never like, ⁓ yeah, I wanna do it. Not till much later. ⁓ but yeah, ⁓ yeah. For me it was just about the audio end of things. So
speaker-1: Yeah, I that makes sense, like being able to, like you say, correlate the how in TV and, you know, Disney on ice versus the very opaque how of video games that were just this magic thing that that appeared on your TV and came from somewhere, right? Yeah, I that that makes a of sense. ⁓ okay, so so University of Yeah, Maslow kind of got you you know the the hook into making video sound recording ⁓ making audio series, sound recording, etcetera. ⁓ where did that where did that go from there?
speaker-0: Yeah, so ⁓ one of the things to graduate you need to have a ⁓ an internship. ⁓ and they had a rule where you weren't allowed to intern at the same sort of studio or same place as another student was ⁓ interning at. And in New England there wasn't a ton of, believe it or not, you know, recording studios that were were available. So I was like, okay, I could move out to California maybe and try to get an internship, but I don't wanna you know, they they were unpaid at the time. So ⁓ I found a radio station that was looking for an intern to do some sort of production for them. ⁓ it was a s ⁓ not a small station, it was actually a pretty big station in Boston, ⁓ WFNX. And I applied for that internship. ⁓ again, it was one of those like it's audio related. I didn't really know that I wanted to do broadcasting. I just wanted to do audio. And ⁓ you know applied, met with them and they were like, wow yeah, you know Pro Tools, all this kind of stuff. Come on in. And it ended up being an amazing experience because I was the intern for the morning show. And like most morning shows at that time You know, they were crazy, they were a lot of fun. ⁓ you know, it was like the Howard Stern era of like, you know, shock to jock kind of thing. And so I was intern bill and I became a personality. So I was doing a lot of the production, ⁓ you know, making the ads and doing a lot of the bits and stuff, but also going on air and they would make fun of me or the doing something stupid and th that kind of thing, right? Like ⁓ so it was kinda cool. I got to be on the air, I got to experience what that was like and sort of that sort of also hooked into me as well. ⁓ but I got to, you know, do a lot of production sort of sh flexed my muscles of like I knew pro tools. A lot of the DJs didn't really know it as well. So I'd come in, I'd be ⁓ yeah, this is how you do this, this is how you mix this, and ⁓ this how you ⁓ EQ that and make this sound better. And like, ⁓ great. So I started doing a lot for other shows ⁓ as well. ⁓ yeah, and that was sort of my first like step into doing audio f professionally, ⁓ was was within radio. So ⁓ I did radio for many years. I did that show for about I want to say about a year, a year and a half. ⁓ and then eventually stopped being an intern, they started paying me, you know, ⁓ a little bit more money. ⁓ but eventually got a a job as a ⁓ production director for a smaller station ⁓ in Massachusetts ⁓ where I was doing again all the advertising, all the promos, you know, mixing into all kind of stuff. And I was again, it was a small station, so you got to wear a lot of different hats where I was also learning like how radio actually works. So, you know, how the the signal gets broadcast in the air and all that kind of fun stuff. So I was I was doing that. But I think radio I sort of hit a ceiling. I was like twenty two at the time and I was boom production director. And there was no real growth ⁓ for me other than like maybe going on air and stuff. But I just I I wanna say I got bored, but I love a challenge too. And every day I'd come in and here's like an ad for this ⁓ you know, car dealership and okay, the next day here's another car dealership and you know, the sort of the same sort of thing and I I was looking for a challenge. ⁓ and that's when I moved to television 'cause that was a different sort of beast for me. And that worked out cool because the shows that I worked on, one of them was an entertainment show that had bands that would come in and perform live. So they were looking for someone who had that sort of audio experience of working with bands, which I got through college. ⁓ and I did live sound ⁓ for years as well ⁓ while that was going on. So yeah, I did the radio thing, live sound, moved over to television. ⁓ did that for about three or four years. I was nominated a couple of times for Emmy Awards for my work there. ⁓ did that ⁓ which is pretty cool. But yeah, and then ⁓ you know, again I sort of hit that ceiling of like I'm doing the t television shows. When you do live T V, you get this script of like this is how the show's gonna run and you know, you do it five days a week and it's the same sort of block. And again, it's not to say that it's not it's you know, not boring, but I w at a at a certain point after doing that for four years, that sort I just lost that challenge. I wasn't, you know, challenging myself every day to to to grow as an audio professional. and this is sort of where the gaming thing sort of sort of suck it it its hook into me. And I was the Xbox 360 had come out, ⁓ PlayStation 3 was out, and my friends who were all working at the station, especially my friend Tim, ⁓ we're all huge gamers and we'd play together in Gears of War and all this kind of stuff. And so I went out and I bought a 360, and I was looking for some game to play, and there was this game on the shelf that had this robot looking dude with like a drill in his arm and I was like, what is this Bioshock? This kind of looks interesting. And I brought it home. And holy crap, dude. Like that was the first time I experienced in a game where like I got chills playing. Where the audio showed me that it could be part of the narrative, that it could be part of the storytelling. And I was just floored. You know, and and if you've ever played Bioshock and like no sort of spoilers or anything like that, but the audio just it creates the world for the it helps to create the world for the player. It's not just something that's there. And that was the first time I really truly experienced that and I was like, that's what I want to do, you know. And I started looking more into like how Gabe development works. At the time you had the harmonics, you know, so rock band ⁓ was a thing and that was in Boston. So I started like sort of learning a little bit about like that company. And I started learning like, you know, there's not just the audio aspect of things, it's not just the creative, but also like how they, you know, when a big daddy is really far down the hall and it's walking towards you, how that sounds far away. And so there's a sort of this analytical side of it as well as how you're creating how you're setting that up. And I'm like, that's the challenge I want. I want something that's creative. And I wanna figure out how to make that sound realistic and how how that works in the world and how the the sound propagates through this fake environment that doesn't actually exist but like then sounds real. Like that's a challenge to me. ⁓ and that's what really like Bioshock was the game for me that said, This is what I want to do. And I spent years like trying to figure out how to get my foot into the door, you know. And I mean luck have it, Bioshock was actually made by Irrational Games, which was in Boston. ⁓ and ⁓ so I just you know, I was always that kind of person that I learned through my audio work that you have to get yourself out there and start like just emailing people and just, you know, talking. ⁓ they had a thing in the area called, ⁓ shoot. ⁓ I forget the name of it, but was a group that met once a month in Boston at a bar and it was all the game dev studios. And anybody could show up. And so I started just going to those and introducing myself to like the audio directors and that kind of thing. And I met one of the audio guys at Irrational and, you I was like, Hey, can I buy you a beer? You know, I told them what the game did for me and We started talking and he started giving me tips on how I can get sort of into the into the industry. I need to make a reel. I was like, Cool. I went home that night. I think I downloaded the Assassin's Creed trailer and I stripped out all the audio and I was like, Okay, I to do something with this, you know? So went around the house, started recording different things in my house to like make things for like armor and footsteps and started like, Okay, cool, I can do this. ⁓ yeah, cool. So I made a cool trailer. And he was great. I was able to send him the video and he'd send me some feedback and that kind of thing. ⁓ and eventually ⁓ he said, look, you know, if you really want to get in this industry, you gotta like you gotta get your foot in the door somehow, you know, whether it's doing it doesn't have to be audio. Like a lot of people get in doing QA ⁓ you know, that sort of route and then sort of work your way up. And again, I got super lucky. ⁓ Turbine, which worked on Dungeons and Dragons online and ⁓ Lord of the Rings online, they were looking for an associate ⁓ live producer who specifically had experience working with multimedia. So working with the audio department and that kind of thing. And I applied ⁓ they like, ⁓ great, yeah, you've done TV, you've radio, you've done all this multimedia experience. ⁓ and I got the gig there. So that was my first like step in wasn't even audio, it was as a producer and that's sort of how I I got my foot into the door. ⁓ yeah, ⁓ so that's sort of kind of how it all started from there.
speaker-1: That's amazing. I mean the there's so much there that it sounds like the technology of audio really hooked you, right? Like you you talked about Pro Tools and you know the and then that I think that correlates really well with the sort of behind the scenes nature, right? How does this stuff go together? ⁓ I want to learn how to do it, ⁓ now I'm the person making that. That sounds like that's set you up really well and obviously, you know, game audio is very technical as well. I'm I'm fascinated about the sort of shift alive. What w Y you mentioned kind of, you know, the radio stuff, you were it sounds like you were doing a lot of pre recorded, right? You were doing commercials and things that would be pre recorded. And then the T V was live. ⁓ so th I presume that was quite a that put you under pressure, right?
speaker-0: Tons of pressure. And I loved it. I then and I didn't know how much I was gonna love it. And I done live sound in, you know, for like concerts and stuff in in the past. ⁓ but that's a little bit different when you're doing live TV. ⁓ I love the pressure of if I screw up, you know, everybody's gonna hear this and you you made a huge mistake and everyone's gonna know. ⁓ but there was also this sort of freedom of I screwed up, it happened, and we have to move on. Like there's no fixing that. There was all so there's also this sort of bit of a freedom ⁓ to that as well that I I I I appreciated as well. So ⁓ whenever I did a show, if the audio or the rather the director didn't say anything to me, that meant I did a good job. If the director said, Hey, great job, even if he said you did a great job, that meant to me I did something where he noticed the audio at some point, you know, so I always knew I did something sort of wrong ⁓ somewhere. ⁓ but yeah, ⁓ that that that sort of live transition, I I loved that. That that that was a lot of fun. it was a challenge. ⁓ but like I said, you get sort of complacent and y it it becomes sort of just like, Okay, it's just a another day of me doing audio and I wasn't growing as as an audio professional, you know. which is kinda which is what I wanted to keep doing, was pushing myself. So Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, almost like the pressure became not rote, but like you kind of got used to the pressure and you needed something new to stretch you in different ways. That makes sense. And and perennial the perennial audio curse, right, is if no one mentions what you did
speaker-0: Then I did good. Exactly.
speaker-1: Yes. I I know so often when I talk about game feel, I'm like, Hey, you know, it's like a great soundtrack. If you don't see it, it means it was amazing. I'm like, ⁓ I feel so sorry for all the all the audio people, put so much work into it. But you know.
speaker-0: It's true though, you know, we get it, so it's okay.
speaker-1: And and then that pivot. So that pivot into I mean, not many people what what what were you, kind of late late twenties, early thirties when you made that pivot?
speaker-0: Yeah, it was probably my yeah, ⁓ yeah, mid twenties, late twenties, yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, Bioshock was yeah, around sort of what, two thousand six, is that right, two thousand seven?
speaker-0: Yeah, two thousand yeah, around that time.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's that's a huge pivot 'cause it sounded like you were building a career in audio. You know, you you'd already moved through different parts of audio, you you'd search for different challenges. It wasn't like you were bored of audio, it was like I want a different industry, I want to shift to a different that's a huge risk and a huge
speaker-0: It was a huge risk. and you know, ⁓ you know, bless my wife ⁓ and my family for for backing me for making that decision. And it wasn't easy, you know, ⁓ well at all. ⁓ 'cause I I I came into it I had no real producing experience, nor did I have any gaming experience in the industry whatsoever. I showed up and they were like, Okay, we got a scrum right now and I'm like, What the heck's a scrum? What's a Jira? What's Perforce? I don't know what you need me to do. You know, like and and I did a lot of like the Lok managing of files ⁓ for ⁓ Dungeons and Dragons online and it was like, okay, we need you to go to ⁓ Perforce, you're gonna diff here. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like I knew none of that stuff. It was trial by fire. I was stressed. ⁓ it was a huge and I was like, ⁓ my gosh, did I make the wrong decision? But I did it because I I I I I wanted to to to get my foot in the door. You know, and it ⁓ did allow me to start learning. Like eventually I learned what Perforce did and what diffing meant and what Jira and you know. And it was a good actually experience for me 'cause I I I I learned a lot of like what producers do and how to manage your tasks and, you know, that kind of thing. but I I always viewed it as it was just my step I was just gonna come in and then hopefully break into doing audio again. I learned pretty quickly that that wasn't gonna happen at Turbine because like You know, you don't just come in as a producer and then say, Hey, audio team, can you bring me in? I I and you know, I I didn't know that. I kinda I felt like a jerk almost kinda making that sort of thing, right? Where you know, they didn't want me to do that and I didn't know that's not how it worked. I just would have thought an associate producer was someone that was a low level, but it's not, it's a career path, you know. and I don't know. I I I kinda felt bad for that. ⁓ but ⁓ you know, eventually there was a also a startup, ⁓ seven four five studios. They they were working on a ⁓ a music performance game. And they were looking for a sound person. And I think that at this point, now that I had the experience of working in the industry, I could at least talk like in an interview talk the lingo with them. And when they said anything about like, Yeah, so you've worked per you've used Perforce before, I'm like, Yep, I have. You know, I know what that is. ⁓ and it was a music performance. It was like, you know, someone trying to rip off rock band or something, right? so I had that experience as well as like mixing ⁓ bands and and that kind of thing. So that that is where I started my audio career after Turbin. So ⁓ I did turbine for about nine months, was like this isn't for me, but at least it gave me that you know, that that foot into the door ⁓ as it were to to move on to doing actual audio. So ⁓ seven four five was my first like I am an audio person ⁓ in the industry.
speaker-1: Got it, yeah, and I would imagine that that producer role gave you a good exposure to the sort of the gears of Game Dev, right? The different s different departments working the cor you know, the overlap, the co the communication, how the game gets put together, how the behind the scenes works, I would imagine gave you good insight though.
speaker-0: Tons, tons and tons. I mean just you and I'm again I was lucky. I I I feel like, you know, that I had that opportunity to learn game dev in that sense as a 'cause I think a lot of times, you know, when you get into QA you're you're you're you know, you this is what you're doing, you know. ⁓ but I like you said I got to experience everything from like ⁓ you know how a build process works, how how stuff goes live, how how the look process works, how they create tasks for animators and audio people, like all of that I I got to experience ⁓ at turbine, so that was a blessing in disguise. You at at first I thought, ⁓ this is not for me, but here I am many years later and I'm still pulling from that experience that I had, so it was good.
speaker-1: Yeah, I think I think internal QA and you know production are really good kind of intermediary roles that help you learn the you know, the process of making games. Whereas if you go into a single discipline, you learn that discipline very well. But you know, and you you obviously you interface with other people, of course you do, but production, QA, they can be very internal QA, they can be very in the middle, which is a great f gro grounding to get. ⁓ okay, so so seven four five, that that was ⁓ you know, audio development actual, you know And how was that transition and how did you find how much did that pull from your previous ⁓ experiences as well?
speaker-0: A ton. I mean because i we were a music performance game, you know, we would get master stems from various bands, which was so cool, you know, to be like, ⁓ here's, you know, ⁓ you know, Eric Clapton was one of the ones that we worked with and I got the to get the original masters from Eric Clapton and mix it for the game, which was just wow, what am I doing? This is amazing. ⁓ and I had that experience of doing music ⁓ for a long time and so like that that really was a good first step for me because I I I was still learning how to do sound design. bit different than you know mixing music, but like this gave me that opportunity to really flex my muscle in mixing the music and then start learning how to do the sound design for the various ⁓ other aspects of the game like the menus and and things of that nature. ⁓ unfortunately the game ⁓ we we it was a a flop, you know. ⁓ and and whatever. I mean it was the best one of the best studios that I've worked with in terms of like the people that I worked with to this day I'm still friends with all of them. It was a great company. We worked our asses off There were decisions that were made that were just not on us. ⁓ it just, you know, that kind of stuff happens. ⁓ I think the game came out in 2010 and it was voted like one of the worst games of the year for a couple of things. But like I it didn't bother me. You know, like we did what we could do, you know, with what we had and I learned and that was another sort of learning sort of process of like, you know, you can only do what you can do and what you can control and just deal with what it's in your little sphere. You know, ⁓ I'm vocal. I mean you work with me, ⁓ you know how like I will speak up when I don't like something, and I was very vocal there about sort of some of the processes and I can say what I can say, but at the end of the day someone else makes the decision and yeah, I learned that that's sort of just how you have to kind of deal with it. So ⁓ seven for five ⁓ was a great learning experience. and then from there I went to thirty eight studios. ⁓ and this was again like this is more of a sound designer I'm making monsters, ⁓ making fireball effects and and that kind of thing and not just dealing with music mixing. So this was a huge different step for me as well, but a great ⁓ learning experience there. So ⁓ yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, and talk to me about that process of going from, you know, kind of mixing and like you said, the kind of music and audio work you'd done previously into the actual sound design. You talked about that, you know, being inspired by that with Bioshock, but how was that transition?
speaker-0: ⁓ was a lot different, but I then I think like I'm pretty good at like and I'm doing this little triangle thing and I'll explain this in a second. But I'm pretty good at like, you know, taking what I know from one area and how I can adapt that into others. And when you're mixing music, you're thinking of things in terms of like, you know, doing this a a balance of frequencies, right? Like when I'm building ⁓ whether it's like a rock song or it's an orchestra that I'm recording, like you're building from the bottom up and like how the these instruments f ⁓ work with these instruments and these frequencies work with these frequencies and you build something that sounds good to the ears. And so when I started to do sound design, I started thinking a lot a long term of like that, sort of that balance of like how frequencies work. And, you know, I had a good idea of like, okay, I want a monster to growl or I want this fireball to do this thing. In my head I have an idea of what that sounds like. How do I get that from my head into something that's tangible and something that's people can hear. And I could break apart the sound in my head and start being like, okay, I'm hearing this low end frequency here. I need this sort of element. I'm hearing these crackly sort of sounds here. Let's find an element that is that let's bring them together. Let's mix it. And it's kind of like building a song in that sense, but for like a specific just one quick sound, you know. ⁓ and so I think like again that experience really helped me get into doing sound. ⁓ and I I I absolutely love it. And to this day it's like what I love doing every single day is sort of creating that sort of stuff. So yeah, it was a it was I get it was a challenge and that's what I was there for. Like every day I was being challenged to do something different and be creative and figure out how you know we use Unreal. We use Unreal at 38. ⁓ you know it was my first time using WISE ⁓ at 38 studios as I'm learning all this new software. I was very again like analytical of like it's not just creating cool sounds but like how I get this now to sound cool in the world. And I'm ⁓ my God, every day was just this huge challenge and this awesome experience and I just love, love, love. I I've have never done anything like this in my life. And to this day, we are sixteen years later. And I still get that feeling every day when I come into work of like this is amazing. So yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, fa fascinating that you haven't sort of hit that ceiling of of needing a new challenge that you that you hit in the other places. ⁓ and and and so I that that that sort of framing around frequencies is really interesting. Where do you think that sort of skill comes from? Where do you think you learned that?
speaker-0: ⁓ that was college. I'll I'll give ⁓ props to ⁓ one of my professors in college, Dan Lutz, ⁓ who is ⁓ an incredible ⁓ professor who helped me also and I can explain a little bit later, but like also helped me push myself further and allow myself to to learn that I could actually do this kind of stuff. ⁓ but like in in in college when we were playing music, 'cause that was the kind of thing at UMass Lowell was you sure you were a sound recording major, but you also had to do music as well. ⁓ so you had to perform and stuff. And he always talked about like when we were in in band, like how you build the triangle was something he would do, right? It was like how you build the sound ⁓ from a live experience from performers. You know, you have your low brass instruments and then you have your higher stuff and like the if the trumpets are playing super super super loud and the flutes are playing super super super loud and the the the low brass are not, it's going to sound like ass. And so He was always, you know, if the band sounded weird you do this little triangle thing and I took that and brought that into like my music mixing of like, okay, if that's how a live band sounds good, then how do I c bring that into music? So that was something that I learned, ⁓ just from doing live music, ⁓ for many, many years. ⁓ so yeah, big props ⁓ to Dan there. So yeah, that's where that started though.
speaker-1: And you and that's something you've sort of carried with you and and transitioned into different industries and and had success with it?
speaker-0: All the time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ and and and so so yeah, sort of building those sounds and and and the technology of all that as well, that sounds like that's continues to be something that's really driven you.
speaker-0: The technology changes constantly. ⁓ and it's, you know, really cool to sort of ⁓ you know, see how it's changing and then how you want to change it yourself. I think like that's also been interesting, you know, not to get deep into it, but like you saw what we were doing on our project, right? And we wanted to create this this realistic environment with the audio and you know, sitting down with programmers and and engineers to go, how do we do something like that? You know, where we're creating this realistic The audio is reacting correctly to the world and no matter what a designer does, we know that the audio is always gonna act correctly to the world. And that's sort of where the the future I think of audio is moving towards. And yeah, it it's great to sort of constantly see like how that is changing and and and being a part of that, right? And having ideas and how we push things a lot further, you know. ⁓ I do a lot of like just like you know, sitting around the house and hearing sounds or like walking around the world and hearing sounds and hearing how things react, you know, when you're in a bedroom as opposed to a bathroom or a kitchen or if you're outside and listening to how all the you know stuff reacts to that and like how you bring that into the game world ⁓ is something that I'm I'm a huge proponent of. So yeah, ⁓ definitely the technology part of it.
speaker-1: that technology has kind of grown, I mean, from you know, from Lord of the Rings Online to you know to what you were doing at thirty eight studio ⁓ to you know to to and then then you went freelance for a little bit. You've been you've been you've been a freelance for you kind of consider yourself
speaker-0: ⁓ I mean I I I wouldn't consider myself freelance anymore. thirty eight studios, ⁓ I don't know if a of people know the history there, had a an epic ⁓ collapse ⁓ at at the time. the ⁓ we literally I found out I had a friend call me on a weekend ⁓ and says, Hey man, I'm really sorry about your job and I was like, ⁓ what are you talking about? He's like, Yeah, I just heard on the radio that Thirty Eight Studio shut down. And I was like, ⁓ I don't know what you're talking about, man. I was just there Friday, everything's good. ⁓ I'm not sure what you're talking about. What happened was so Kirk Schilling was the owner of Thirty Eight Studios. Kirk Schilling was a Boston Red Sox pitcher. ⁓ famously won us the World Series, was big in in New England. ⁓ and so sports radio would follow Thirty Eight Studios a little bit, you know. ⁓ and they heard some rumblings that there was going to be something that was bad was gonna happen on Monday, and they released ⁓ you know, ⁓ hey, we think we think Kirch Sherling Studio is about to close down on Monday and I like, I don't think I know what the hell they're talking about. ⁓ Monday morning, ⁓ so I used I lived in New Hampshire at the time and I used to have to drive down to Rhode Island, which was a little over a hundred miles each way, so two hundred miles a day, so I use a lot of gas. And I went to go fill up my car and my debit card was denied. And I was like, What? I just got paid today. How is that how is that possible? I w opened up my thing and there's no money in there in my account. And ⁓ I was like, that's weird, we got paid today and then I started thinking, Wait, my friend told me you heard on the radio, we might be good and closed. No, I don't know about that. So I drove into the studio, and I I spoke to Brian, ⁓ one of my other sound designers, ⁓ who I work with at Zoss as well. And I was like, ⁓ did you get paid today? He's like, Yeah, pretty sure and he looked at his thing and he's like, No, wait, no, we didn't and I was like, That's weird and then we got the email that was like, Hey everybody, come ⁓ come come downstairs. ⁓ we're not paying you. We ran out of money. and ⁓ yeah. ⁓ about a couple days after that, ⁓ we found out my wife and I were pregnant ⁓ and we're expecting our first child. ⁓ and then a few days after that, 38 literally shut down. You know, just we got the you're done ⁓ kind of thing. We lost health insurance. It was a mess. ⁓ we could do an entire podcast if you ever want to on that. ⁓ they they they stopped paying our health premiums. ⁓ and so we only got a couple of like I think it was like five days' notice that our health was gonna get turned off. ⁓ and so when you just found out you were pregnant and we needed to see doctors. ⁓ the people had it a lot worse than me. The people had surgeries lined up that they had to f quickly get in before the insurance got ⁓ cancelled. ⁓ it was a mess. ⁓ so yeah, found out we're had we're pregnant, ⁓ got lost my job, and then I spent the that period of time as a freelancer trying to pick up gigs as I could, right? ⁓ I did a lot of stuff actually for UMass Lowell because I ⁓ pretty good friends with Dan Lutz, ⁓ who was the band director there. You know, where he offered me an opportunity to come in and record his ⁓ performances, You know, made some extra money doing that, did some small games on the side, like little mobile apps ⁓ that I I got connections through and stuff like that. I'd interviewed at companies like Riot and ⁓ and stuff that but we were West Coast and at the time when you're pregnant, you know, thinking of moving my family f you know, thousands of miles away, ⁓ was difficult and not something I really wanted to do. ⁓ and then yeah, so we were getting closer and closer to ⁓ my child being born and it was like, okay, I don't know if I'm gonna make this work with the actual being in in in the industry. Maybe it's time to start looking at other places. ⁓ this is again where like that sort of luck and and I say luck, but also you make your own luck. I definitely believe that. ⁓ so I worked with Brian Brockett at 30 Studios. Brian Brockett got a job at Xenemax Online. and they needed another sound designer. He hit up the audio director, Brad Derrick, and was Hey, I worked at this kid, Bill. You should talk to him. ⁓ and so I I Brad sends me an email, he's like, Hey, you still looking for a gig? I Yes, please. Ended up interviewing with them. ⁓ my wife went into labor about a week after the interview was done. And while she was we were in the hospital, ⁓ she was in labor, ⁓ we were in like a little lull and I looked at my phone and there was an email that says, you know, hey, we want to offer you the job. So I literally went from, you know, finding out we're pregnant, losing a job, going nine months of like, what are we gonna do? to suddenly like literally like three hours before my son is born, now you gotta do your job. And I just remember being like, Do I get health insurance? And they were like, Yeah, day one. And I was like, I accept this job. Let's go. You know. ⁓ but even that was stressful in and of itself because now I'm going, like I'm a new dad, we just had a baby, and now I have to move from my New England down to to Maryland for for Z for Xenomax. ⁓ and I think this is a part of the industry that doesn't get talked about a lot. Like it is fun and I love what I do. But man, you know, like it is not I had to move my family, you know, away from their family. You know, my kid was six weeks old, you know, and we're new parents trying to figure out like what to do and we had to get up and move and and find a place to live. Like I that first six weeks now I don't even remember what was going on. I'm trying to be a dad, trying to learn ⁓ you know, trying to pack a house, trying to find a place to live. ⁓ in a place that I've never even been at before, going to a studio where I knew nobody and my wife is now moving with me and she knows nobody and she doesn't have a job and ⁓ you know it was it was a stressful, stressful time. But like, man, I I I love it here. ⁓ Xenomax welcomed me with open arms. The audio team, ⁓ everybody, Brian, Brad, Matt and and and and Josh at the time, everybody was so welcoming and they they they let us in and ⁓ I I've loved it here. I've been here for almost thirteen years now. ⁓ a couple of years after we moved, my wife they were looking for a fine my wife does finance and Xenomax was looking for somebody in the finance department and I Hey, you should apply to that and so she applied and she got hired. So my whole family is a Xenomax you know, sort of thing. She works more for the corporate end of things and and ⁓ I work at Zoss. But yeah, that you know, th there was ⁓ definitely a period of there where we weren't I wasn't sure if I was gonna do this ⁓ ever again, you know, and I'm glad it sort of worked out. ⁓ again, you make your own luck, but You know, if it wasn't for Brian being getting the job here and then recommending me, ⁓ you know, I who knows what would have happened. So ⁓ yeah, ⁓ that's kind of how I got to Zoss.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean two wonderfully human stories there, right? The ⁓ the losing a job, which sounded like, you know, in many ways a dream job, right? The the thirty eight studios that, you know, doing proper sound design, like really getting to do the audio part, that part of sound design that you really wanted to do, and then that's just ripped away from you.
speaker-0: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that was yeah, that was tough too, right? And you know, that's where you know, I I I I I was confident in my skills, ⁓ but also I didn't have a ton of released games where I could say, Here's me as a full time sound designer, you know, where it's all I did. I never had that opportunity. And because it was a game that wasn't released, like it was hard for me to even show people what I did, you know, ⁓ because it was all NDA'd. ⁓ so I was in this weird sort of boat. ⁓ and then again that's why I was lucky where Brian He knew what I could do, you know, ⁓ 'cause we worked together. ⁓ so that that helped out too. And ⁓ you know, and that's sort of how this industry works, you know, and that's how entertainment works. I i any sort of audio, whether I was working in radio, television, like, you know, you need to get yourself out there, you need to meet people. ⁓ it's not just about ⁓ where you went to school or or any of that kind of thing. It's it's you know, working with people and keeping good contacts with people and and connections and that's sort of how you you sort of work through the ranks and and move through stuff, you know.
speaker-1: Yeah, that was something I wanted to ask you, you know, as someone that's only really ever worked in video games like me, ⁓ it can be it's easy to be a little myopic about like, you know, in video games this these things happen and those things happen. But like you say, entertainment and and media, there is some overlap. Like what what parallels and what differences do you see between, you know, the kind of audio world that you started in and the video game world that you're in now?
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, that's interesting.
speaker-1: the the systems, the the structure, the you know, the experience of of working in it.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think like again, I work in broadcasting mostly. ⁓ and like I said, it's definitely I wanna say it's it's who you know. ⁓ but there is d I think the overlap there is is there's connections that you you have to make, right? Like I knew ⁓ you know, I worked in radio. I knew somebody who knew someone at this other station who got me an interview there. ⁓ and that I was able to work my way through there. And then when I wanted to work through television, it was the connections I made through it was actually a salesperson ⁓ who did sales for radio who was like, Hey, I I had There's this television station that I do sales for as well, looking for an audio person. Did you wanna talk to them? So like there's that connection there. ⁓ and I think in games it's sort of the same thing. You're meeting a lot of different people, you need to be you need to be nice and you need to know how to interact with a lot of different types of people. And I think ⁓ you know, my college career sort of helped me. They they they they really pushed that in when I was at UMass Lowell was like getting yourself out there and, you know, learning how to to connect. I think that part's the same. ⁓ I think just in in general, there is a and I don't wanna make this sound weird. But like when you're doing radio and you're doing television as an audio person, there's a a a ceiling that everybody is okay with hitting in terms of how things sound. ⁓ no one's looking to push the boundaries of live audio for like a news or like an entertainment show or like a sport show. and so like there yeah, there's a level of like we're okay with this, you know, and therefore you get this technology, you get this budget, you get this sort of stuff. ⁓ and I never I n I I always wanted like how do I make this sound better? You know, how I want to make this sound better. And they're like, Well, we don't care. This sounds good enough. And I think like that again, I'm not trying to dunk on it, but like that from an audio perspective, I think that's where broadcasting is, is like they're okay with not spending a lot of money on the audio end of things and and just it's sounding okay. when you get to levels of like you watch like an NFL broadcast or something, like obviously that is whew, like that sounds amazing. But there's billions of dollars behind that and you know, getting to that opportunity would be tough. ⁓ so I think th i in in in gaming there's is this always this push to push audio to be the best as as you can. ⁓ and and that to me is where again where I love this, right? Like I come I can come in here and I can like actually work to make things better and make you know push the technology as far as I can ⁓ with people. So ⁓ that that was the biggest difference ⁓ to me.
speaker-1: Yeah, and I I think a lot of what you talked about being inspired by Bioshock, right? That idea of not just the sound itself, but how it gets to you, how it you know, how it translates the world. A lot of the stuff I remember you talking about, you know, working on, you know, and the the is cutting edge in technology now is very much about that, right? It's about how the audio performs in the world, not just how the audio individually audio element sounds.
speaker-0: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think we've reached a point where, you know, I mean I'm I'm sound design, like the actual assets themselves that you're creating, like, yeah, there are games that sound good, there are games that sound bad, but like you can for the most part make good sounding assets. How you make those good sounding assets sound good in the game is another aspect of it. It's just a completely different beast. And I that's what I love about this is it's not just being creative and creating a cool sound, a cool explosion or a good gunfight. How it reacts in the world is the next step and that is that is to me is is the most exciting part of it. You know. I love that end of it.
speaker-1: Yeah, and like you say, that's always pushing the new technology, you know, from you know, put pushing to be as sound as good as possible. ⁓ I I would imagine also, you know, the sort of live live T V, live broadcast stuff you mentioned, there's a sort of well oiled machine element to it, right? That that I'm sure there's a lot of which probably parallels well with how, you know, video games we have to be, you know, good communication, good good coordination, good appreciation of each other's skill sets, you know, to to execute.
speaker-0: Especially in live television. I mean, like you have a director, right? Especially, you know, okay, we're going five, four, three, two, one and you go, like now you you have to listen, you gotta pay attention to what's going on. Director's telling everybody what's to do. ⁓ we're all working together as a team. I might notice something that maybe a camera is a little bit off 'cause I can have all these views of of what's going on and I can say, Hey, hey, hey, hey, this is happening. Like we're all working together to make this awesome element at the end of the day, which is this cool looking and sounding show. and I think gaming is a lot of that. as well, like working in the game, right? Like I'm working with designers, I'm working with animators, I'm working with world build and that's the thing I love about audio. And I think a lot of people forget is we touch every part of the game, right? Like animations, world building because we need to do the ambiences, UI because they need their sounds, ⁓ combat and ⁓ you know, VFX because they need their sound. Every single part of the game has some sort of sound element to it. So we get to work with all these different departments and and and that in and of itself is a challenge. But I love that sort of, you know, f working through and working with a V FXRS or working with somebody like you and figuring out like how are we gonna make the combat feel feel good and how does sound work with that, you know? ⁓ and that was always a fun ⁓ it's always been a fun challenge, ⁓ to to do that as well.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean audio's such a key part of a lot of what I've done, right? Is a lot of what I've made would suck if it didn't have good audio because it would be a key element missing on feel, right? It's yeah, it's a it's a massive part of it. And and I I and how much and this might be a stretch, but how much does, you know, shipping a a a a patch or a product, right? You know, shipping a game match the sort of pressure and stress that you would feel of, you know, a live broadcast?
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, I don't think it I don't think it matches that stress. You know, I think that live broadcast is is its own thing, you know. ⁓ and I think like I said before, there's also a sense of freedom when you've done it and you've made a mistake or whatever, like that second has passed and now you need to just move on to the next thing. you can't dwell on it. When you release a game and you find a bug or you find something that it's there and every time you play that thing, that bug is there. ⁓ it's ⁓ actually more frustrating in that end. ⁓ that freedom is gone there. ⁓ I mean you're trying to hit deadlines, of course that's always a thing in in the gaming industry, right? And there's that stress there. ⁓ but it's a lot different than like live television, I I I I feel. ⁓ but yeah, I mean something like, you know, I I work on you know, I've been at Zoss now for thirteen years. ⁓ Elder Scrolls Online is a game, you I I was there from the beginning. ⁓ that's a pretty well oiled machine at this point. but it you know, i i it it you're still like You're trying to hit those deadlines, ⁓ you're trying to fix the bugs. ⁓ and as a live game, you know, you do have that opportunity to fix things as well. Like, okay, this did go well live. Wrong. Let's go in and let's fix it. You know, so yeah, it's it's a little bit different, ⁓ ment mentality ⁓ you know. ⁓ but like, yeah, there's millions of people hearing my stuff. That that will always be something that always blows my mind, you know, there's all the all the people that that are hearing in and that, you know. made me nervous at first, ⁓ but now it's it's ⁓ a pretty exciting feeling these days. But yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, I would imagine if you've gone through that live TV show stress, most other things feel chill in relation, I would think. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine. I don't think I would have the constitution for that. I think I'd be too anxious. ⁓ okay, so so yeah, so fa you know, fascinating career, fascinating sort of shift in in pivots and and but still this sort of through line of technology and you know, this combination of creativity and technology that feels like that. that speaks to you. How how do you think that r and you've sort of mentioned, you know, the w the reason you got into music was, you know, challenge and, you know, re repetition and getting mastery and getting better. How much of that, you know, your your what you do now in your role relates to you as what you do in to what to you in the real world, right? To you as a non developer? Like do you see parallels there? Are you a different person? Like how does that
speaker-0: Yeah, no, I mean I I guess I'm I'm not a different person at all. I mean I I what I do at work and what I do throughout my day, ⁓ you know, ⁓ you know, my wife could even attest to that. Like, you know, ⁓ we get tasks while we're working, you know, we live our life, ⁓ you know, with tasks, especially when you have a kid and stuff like that. Like it's like this is due at this point, this apps happen, so we have tasks ⁓ for a day, so I ⁓ we live our life that way. and I always, you know, I still sort of the same sort of quality. I ⁓ my cuss son is now thirteen, ⁓ and I talk to him a lot about like, you know, learning and you know, how it's okay to make mistakes and how you want to to improve, you just keep working at that problem until you get better and then the next problem's gonna come and then you work on that until you get that better and then the next problem's gonna come and that's okay to keep hitting these walls, you know, and I think work is like that where you're constantly hitting these walls and life is like that where you're constantly hitting these walls. And it's okay to hit those walls and it's okay, you know, to to slow down and start to figure out how to get past them. And I think like there's a good connection between life and work. ⁓ and I've always sort of ⁓ work in that way. I I like to think of myself as a problem solver. I look at things as like whether it's sound design, you know, ⁓ we need to make a fireball, ⁓ here's a problem, and then start to figure break it down into like how I different parts and how I can make a fireball. And then there's how does that fireball react in the world? How does that fireball actually get triggered in the game? There's a technology part of it. And here's the problems that you have and let's work through each problem and solve. And I think life is the same exact way. You know, I've got a kid who's, you know, trying to do whatever, right? And it's like, okay, here's a problem that we've faced in life. You know, it's you know, you lose your job, you know, like when I was at Thirty Eight Studios, right? Here we go, we lose our job. ⁓ we have a kid on the way. Here's a list of the problems. Here's stu start breaking it down and let's start fixing it. ⁓ and that's how I again I f I think that's where that behind the scenes sort of when I was little kid always interested me in is that you can face these problems. You can see things that are are issues and you can break them down into different parts and you can start like figuring out the solutions to those. ⁓ and I think that works in in in in my job and the and in the real life as well, you know.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's a great philosophy. I agree. ⁓ and so yeah, you mentioned your you you sound your wife like how does your family kind of relate to what you do?
speaker-0: Yeah. it's funny. Like ⁓ my son is a huge gamer, loves it. ⁓ plays way too much probably. ⁓ and I always find it funny because ⁓ if I was his age and my dad made video games for a living and all my friends played games, I'd be like, My dad, man, yeah, he ⁓ yeah, he works on Elder Scrolls, man, you know, he's a he never tells his friends. Like they they don't even know. They come over and I got this whole setup and they're What is this? Like, ⁓ I make video games for a living. And they're like, Well you do? ⁓ my gosh, why doesn't everybody tell me? It's just so funny to me, like If that was me, but I guess like growing up in this world to him, he doesn't think of dad as a game developer. I'm just dad. ⁓ that and ⁓ every once in a while he remembers, all right, you'll make games for a living. That's that's right. Yeah, okay. ⁓ which has ⁓ always been kinda interesting. But he's a huge gamer. ⁓ my wife she calls herself a casual gamer, ⁓ but like she plays ⁓ tons of games ⁓ as as well. ⁓ you know, more like the casual, like Dreamlight Valleys and and you know, that that kind of thing. but yeah, ⁓ we're a huge gaming family. ⁓ we we love it. We have all the consoles and PCs and stuff and it's it's been fun. It's been fun to watch my son go through the same processes that I have to figure out like yeah, he can get better at Roblox or he can get better at ⁓ Minecraft or or you now he's doing like a lot of Fortnite and stuff and like it's fun to see like the progress of him getting you know, kinda sounds awful. Watching my son get killed in a video game over and over and over again. ⁓ but then like to see how he's like learned ⁓ if I slow down and I listen, I can hear the guy coming up behind me and I can react quicker. And like now I play Fortnite with him and he's better than me. And it's it's it's awesome to see that sort of that that progress, kinda like I did as well, you know, ⁓ which is pretty cool.
speaker-1: Now you're proud to watch your son killing other people rather.
speaker-0: ⁓ yeah. ⁓
speaker-1: I struggle with that all the time with my kids. Like it's f s it feels so weird to have that linger, right? That's the terminology, right? and and and and so you're still still gaming then, you know, gaming has still remained part of your life and has has being in games changed that at all, do you think?
speaker-0: I know, right? Yeah. ⁓ no, ⁓ not really. ⁓ I think I can appreciate it a lot more these days, ⁓ like what a game and how it works and that kinda stuff. I think again I was lucky, ⁓ not lucky, but like in my career. ⁓ when I was in college and I was learning sort of the musical production end of things, ⁓ it ruined music for me for a really long time. I stopped hearing music as a a piece of music and I started hearing it more as, ⁓ there's a kick. And there's a hi-hat and there's a guitar left and there's a guitar right, and they got a little bit of flange on the vocal here. And ⁓ there's actually three different vocal parts. Okay, cool. And I was hearing it as layers all the time. ⁓ and that kind of ruined music for me. And I it took me a good like year or two to realize that it was ruining. I wasn't enjoying music anymore. I was just hearing it as different parts and breaking things down. And I was like, Man, I gotta stop doing that. I wanna get back to like actually just enjoying music. And I had to consciously like try to stop breaking it down constantly. So I learned a long, long time ago how to kind of do that. And now I'm at a pretty equilibrium now where I can listen to music and I enjoy it. But I can also hear ⁓ I love what they did with that snare. ⁓ I love how the kick ⁓ is cutting through the bass there. ⁓ and the same thing, you know, when I'm watching TV now, I can see you know, ⁓ the camera guy just wobbled a little bit or there was a there was a up kick on the ⁓ the fade. They they missed a word when they did that. And I can notice that, but it doesn't ruin it for me anymore. And I think like that, now that I you know, I'm playing games, I can notice when things are happening, but it doesn't sort of ruin the experience. I could still enjoy just playing the game, but I know now a little bit more how the sauce is made. I will say it's different when I'm playing something that I've made. Like if I'm playing Elder Scrolls Online, which I've got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours on live, it I I wear that it's hard to take that dev hat off and ⁓ and just enjoy the game for what it is. I'll be going through something and I'm like, ⁓ I remember I made a sound over here. Let me go check it out. And ⁓ damn it, it doesn't work now. You know that you know, now I got to fix it. or you know, it doesn't sound as cool as I thought it would, you know, seven years ago when I put it in the game. So ⁓ it's always hard to sort of take that dev hat off. But no, for now, I mean I love ⁓ I've been playing Arc Raiders like crazy. ⁓ and again, it's it's you know, I can play the game, but I can also step back and also appreciate the audio design and something as well. And and and like Arc Raiders sounds fantastic. Probably one of the best games of the year. That and Battlefield Six. ⁓ but I can also just play the game. So it's kinda cool to be able to again that took a lot of time for me to get used to being able
speaker-1: Yeah, you can kinda separate the an analytical side from the just sit flat out enjoy it.
speaker-0: Just enjoy it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: That's good. And and do you think being y we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but do you think being going through this career of Game Dev, do you think it's changed you as a human or you know, altered who you are as a human?
speaker-0: I I I I don't think so. ⁓ I think this was always the path that I needed to be on and and like I said, from a very, very, very early age, this was like what I wanted to do. this was this was always gonna be who I was gonna be. ⁓ you know, ⁓ and ⁓ again I'm you know blessed to have parents that recognized that when I was a young kid and you know, gave me the opportunities to to pursue things like this, you know, when I was working in in in in radio, I was making a little money, you know, and I was still living with my parents and they could have been like, get out, you know, and I had opportunities to do other jobs and I think other parents could have said, you know, that y you will make three times what you're making now. You can move out of the house, you can start a family, you can you know, do that kind of thing. And they were like, You don't want to do that. You want to work in this audio f field, you know, and they were always very, very supportive of that. This was who was always gonna be. ⁓ so I think like I don't know I don't think it changed me. I think this is yeah, how I was always gonna end up, you know.
speaker-1: Yeah, I love that. And it feels like although it maybe took you a little while to find your way to the video game version of that, it it's still clear it's sort of run through your DNA right back to, you know, the Nintendo and the and the C sixty four and Disney on ice, right? It's it's you can kind of see those those those parallels and those through lines there.
speaker-0: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ well thank you Bill. I really appreciate the time. It was a great conversation. I love a great story. I love that the you know, the twists and turns and and but how it defines you as a person. I think that's that's really what this podcast is all about.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I and yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. And I appreciate the podcast. It's great to have something that I think is delving a little bit differently into the game developers and it's kinda interesting to hear like our stories and how we got here. I think this is ⁓ thank you for highlighting that. I think this has been really interesting. So thank you.
speaker-1: Appreciate it. Thank you. Glad you enjoy it. I en I enjoy doing it. So ⁓ yeah.
speaker-0: Sweetie. Yeah. Awesome, Alice. Right. Take care.
speaker-1: Well there have it. There's that revisit of episode fifteen with Bill Mueller. I hope you really enjoy that conversation as much as I do. The insight he gives, again, some of the the stories and and the open discussion he has. I really enjoyed his reflection on how early video game days and that obsession with trying to beat a level inspired him and and helped him to learn music quicker. I thought that was a great little insight. Yeah, just really enjoyed the conversation. Hope you did too. It's been fun Revisiting these episodes, like I mentioned at the in the intro, this is basically a remaster. I create an intro and outro that the original episode didn't have. I'm relaunching the clips that are from the episode. I'm also going through the episode and updating the layout and the audio muting and some of the tricks that I've learned as I've gone further into the dev to dev journey. I'm applying those back to season one. So this really is a remaster of the episode. Magic tracks, some extra audio filtering just to try and clean it up a bit, some stuff that I do by default now. So hopefully that comes through. Hopefully it's cleaner than it was before. You may not notice, but I do. But anyway, thanks again for listening. Check out the another themed episode coming up next week. Maybe a little later in the week when I get back from my trip, but I'm coming next week. And again, thank you all for listening. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate it. And catch you on the next one.