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Music.

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Welcome to Byte Action Podcast. For those who don't know, Byte Action Podcast

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is on the mission to bring you raw and filtered journeys of experienced and

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influential people in video games and creative tech industries.

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If you want to understand how games are made, who are the creators behind your

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everyday entertainment, and what it takes to build successful companies,

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games, and products, then you should give this a listen.

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How are you? I'm good. Not too bad, thank you. How are you? I'm well, I'm well, thank you.

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Where were you coming from? I was a journey back home. Where were you going?

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I agreed to go out with my wife this morning and I told her we had to be back

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at 12 and everything was going fine until it decided to be a catastrophically rainy day here. Okay.

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So as soon as it rains in Cornwall, all the traffic stops everywhere.

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Oh God. yeah so i was

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a little bit worried that's why i sent you a message i didn't want a chance of being

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late and you're sitting here wondering well it's fine it's fine no

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worries it was raining in barcelona as well last couple of

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days it was like just i think yesterday afternoon the sky just turned black

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and it just rained on stop until until late so but it's nice and sunny here

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today which is it feels like here actually is is just there's no end to the

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rains yeah Yeah, fair enough. Look, so let's start this. What I want to do, maybe just to start with sort

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of early days of your childhood and where you grew up.

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And is there anything there that you can think about that sort of drew you into video games?

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And where does this interest come from?

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So when I was young, because I'm old, the first contact I really had with video

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games was an Atari 2600 that my dad brought home from work, I guess.

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When he came home from work, he had this Atari 2600. At least that's how I remember

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it. I might remember it poorly because I was pretty young.

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And maybe it was a Christmas or birthday gift. But all I remember is it appeared in the house.

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And it was for myself and my sister. and i think

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pretty quickly my sister was like that's not for

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me and i didn't stop you know then when computers

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became a thing for the home we saw the deluxe 81 which you may or may not be

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familiar with not really the the the sinclair's lx81 which had a massive 1k

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and you could buy an expansion box to put it on at 16k if you really wanted

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to do that and i i harass my parents.

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Constantly like look it's a computer i can learn computers

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probably couldn't learn too much about computers for a

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zx81 but when christmas came around i

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actually didn't have a zx81 i had a zx spectrum which

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was considerably more advanced than that and the

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early days games it started off with the first

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game i had was it was a text adventure called planet

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of doom i think from micro pros maybe

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and it was a purely a text adventure i love

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those sort of things i don't remember the timeline and how

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it lined up but i was playing dungeons and dragons from

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when i was at school with those sort of super fairly first early edition dungeons

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and dragons and obviously i love the whole adventuring and and text tech computers

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allowed you to do it kind of on your own i mean to a limited degree and i love

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those text adventures you know later in later in those early days you You had things like The Hobbit,

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people who played those sort of games, if you remember,

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which was another text adventure with some pretty basic pictures.

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And those games you know they really drew me in so first of

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all console with the 2600 and then

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the spectrum was the first of a series of computers i

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had you know when i was growing up and i think my i think my parents thought

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i was going to become some expert computer programmer or something whereas actually

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what i was doing was playing every game i could get my hands on and yeah i I

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think that that's what led me into it. So from quite an early age, I loved games.

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But what I didn't know really then was that was, was really the actually amusingly,

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some of the people who would work for me worked on some of those early games,

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which is really interesting later in my career,

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but also that there was a job in games somehow young me,

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maybe I just wasn't terribly smart but I

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didn't equate the fact that these games existed with

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the fact that someone had to make them and get paid for

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them I didn't I didn't really get that and I you

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know to be entirely fair in my sort of

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teens and and growing up that way into

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my 20s I far more went towards tabletop role-playing games which you know followed

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on from Dungeons and Dragons and then all of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

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and the many different colors of books with that and I did a lot of writing

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running games at sort of events and and writing for systems magazines and that

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sort of thing which weirdly. Across those years ended up being a

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big part of my inspiration for joining in the

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industry in the end because i've written about a

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number of times on linkedin but i actually thought when

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i interviewed for blizzard in the

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first case they were gonna look at my writing and

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be like oh yeah you can write for us but actually i've

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been doing really terribly boring jobs which were

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about organizational leadership and and management and

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they saw that and obviously blizzard when

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i got to blizzard europe there were four of

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us so there were very few people there to

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build those teams and get things ready for world of

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warcraft which was still in development at that point and

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i guess that's what they sort of saw in me and thought that'd

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be valuable and it took me away from the creative side

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the sort of writing side for a really long

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time and it took me quite a while to get back into it and

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then full circle to sort of now where i've written stories

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for games where i've run the creative side

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but i've also run the operations of the studio all the way up to c-suite so

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i've been really fortunate i got to indulge the creative passion but also sort

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of do the things that i'm good at on the organizational side as well okay so

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that's that's interesting How old were you when you joined Blizzard?

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That's a really good question. I have to count. Let me think. So I would have been, I wouldn't have been young for a start because

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I'm older now, obviously, than a lot of people in the industry.

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Let me have a think. And this is why I'm not a programmer.

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So I would have been just in my very early 30s, actually, when I started Blizzard.

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Or around 30, yeah. And when I started, you know, I'd worked a lot of jobs. I hated it.

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I mean, that's the truth. I hated every job I did. I kind of was one of those

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people who spent their entire life wishing I'd win the lottery or,

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you know, some eccentric millionaire would leave me billions in their will.

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But sadly, that didn't happen. And I did win the lottery in a way. I won the lottery by finding games,

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which, you know, it's been an up and down ride for sure.

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But it's everything I could hope with about a career. It's taken me to incredible places.

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I always wanted to live in America. gave me the chance to live in america that

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was something i thought i would just never do and i

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you know when when blizzard when blizzard offered

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me the job in paris i never really thought about living in france not because

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i don't like france but just because i just never thought of it but what i had

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done is i'd always wanted to live since i went to america with my parents on

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holiday when i was 10 i'd always want to live there just while i was sort of

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formative experiences experiences, where 10-year-old me was like, I want to live here one day. And somehow that never left me.

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So when that Blizzard offer came in, I clearly remember thinking,

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France, well, that's different. I've never lived abroad.

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That's going to be scary. But you know what? It's an American company.

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If I work really hard, maybe one day, that's my bridge to America.

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And weirdly, like I say, I remember thinking that when the offer came through.

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And I was the first person promoted from outside

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of blizzard us to to sort of look after

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part of things in in irvine at the hq so

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you know i was i was in equal parts extremely fortunate and obviously i worked

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pretty hard too but you know there's a there's a guy called thor biafor i should

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really call out there and he was a dory at blizzard at the time and he not only

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is a great person but he also understood

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about really knowing what my goals were and why I was trying to do what I was doing.

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And he opened the door, like he went to bat for me.

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And I think, you know, realistically, Thor is the guy that pointed out,

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like, let's get rich to the US. And, you know, I'll always be grateful to him for that.

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So did you apply for a Blizzard position in France? Did they reach out to you?

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How did the job come about? Yeah. So i i was a rabid everquest

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player i led a fairly ineffectual but

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reasonably large guild in everquest played it

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far far too much to be healthy more than i would ever want to

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admit can't even remember what my play time is but i've

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never admitted online it was so bad there were so many

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hours i put into that and actually you know quite negatively

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it probably affected my life for a couple of years because i was doing nothing

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but playing it but i loved the mmos you know it played into that whole adventure

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back to the dumpster dragons and the fantasy worlds everquest being whatever

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quest was it was sort of the leader of what he did at the time and a couple

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of my friends managed to work in a uk office and ill-fated you you you uh uk office.

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Sony online entertainment and they became game masters

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you know the the guides or whatever they called them that

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that basically helped people out and you know

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we were talking about and this was the game we were in all the time and you know

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i was in awe of this was like you've got to be those

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dudes in the world with the fancy clothes and

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you know don't worry everybody i will help you and i

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really wanted to do it as well but i can't remember why but it just didn't sort

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of happen and then really soon after they all got the jobs something odd happened

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i don't really know a long time ago but sony like suddenly closed down the office

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like shuttered it and they turned up at work and there was no, there was no way in.

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So I don't really know what happened there. But what it did do is it,

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it lit that spark of, you know what?

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Maybe I could actually work in here. You know, I've done a lot of stuff where

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you could actually look in it. And at the time I was working in film, I was working, looking after some aspects

10:48

of post-production in film. So I was like, Hey, these are even sort of, sort of transferable things.

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So, you know, I've worked in film. The film stuff I was doing was dreadfully boring.

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I was doing a lot of writing for, you know, role-playing games,

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playing a lot of them, doing a lot of that. So I thought, well, why not? I'll keep an eye out, but I don't expect anything to come up.

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And then in a computer magazine, if you remember those, I opened a computer

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magazine and there was an advert for World of Warcraft.

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Hey, World of Warcraft, here's a shiny picture.

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Come and join our team. So I thought, well, that's interesting.

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I'll, you know, I'll email off. I think it was email off

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and didn't expect to reply got an interview flew

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to France didn't expect anything to come

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of it and then actually pretty quick they came back

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to me and said come to France and the

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rest you know that was sort of history but you know

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it was just you know the the cliche of

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uniting your passion with your work and all that stuff I

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also don't believe in the if you love your work

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you don't work a day in your life because you know I'd love

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that to be be the case but anyone who's worked in games knows that

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it's fundamentally not true but there are days there are

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days there are weeks there are months that i really like it

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and you know i i have friends who do very

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boring jobs very very boring jobs indeed and you

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know they are happy with those jobs but

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i think once you've been in games and once you've been part of some

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of these incredible stories you know that that's how.

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I see it as it's really it's really quite a journey i

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don't know how you could truly be happy going back

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to you know what are we doing with today's say

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insurance and i'm sorry for anyone that works in endurance but

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like for me i just don't think i could do something

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like that you know i have to have a level of passion in what

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i do and i know that because i worked for

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quite a while before games and stuff i didn't care

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about you know including phil and i love phil now i

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love the narrative side of it but i wasn't doing that i was doing dulce

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but but it's it's amazing how things can fall into place if you follow your

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passion if you kind of know what you want to do and without yeah i mean as you

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said you just see some adverts somewhere you apply you don't expect anything

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to happen and all of a sudden you're in paris,

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working for blizzard and it all happened really quickly you know i remember

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i remember it wasn't a tremendously great time in my life if i'm honest around

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that you know i had a lot of close friends And it happened really, really fast.

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And, you know, I, it was also driven a little bit by back then me saying like,

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you know, this isn't a great period of my life. I have to fundamentally make a change. I'm not doing anything I enjoy.

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I'm kind of miserable all the time and, and wanting to do that.

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And I, you know, I lost touch with loads of friends. I had to move really quickly.

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As soon as I moved every day was like a full on.

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12 hour day not even just work it was because

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the the first i want to say the first year of

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blizzard europe was a phenomenon

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not just because of the game which everyone knows the history if

13:51

you you know it it's because of the team you know

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we were apart from the french side of

13:57

the team we were at home we were all these you know

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kind of expat people from you know

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germany austria uh you know

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ireland england you know wherever sweden

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i remember denmark all these different nationalities

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thrown together in this place where none of us spoke very good french and unfortunately

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you know that that was something that i really wanted to but was never particularly

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good at but you know we were all kind of felt like we were on a bit of an island

14:26

everyone was a bit nervous about this you know and we spent huge amounts of

14:30

time together they were like these huge, the incredible bonds between the team, you know, we'd work together and work really hard.

14:36

But then in the evening we'd all, you know, I'm talking the whole team,

14:40

but for the French people who had infrastructure there and even them sometimes,

14:44

but you know, like the whole team would be like, right, where are we going for dinner tonight?

14:49

You know, and you'd be in their side all in the same restaurant. And that happens.

14:53

And I'm not joking. Maybe for a year, it was really long after that.

14:58

Of course we got bigger. He got bigger. You know, By the time I was moved over

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to the US, the team was more than 1,000 people.

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So you do have the sort of politics and divisions and strains of that level

15:11

of velocity and growth that happen.

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And some of those bonds didn't remain, and some of them did.

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But I always remember that time incredibly fondly, that forming part of what we were doing.

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And you know and i still remember arina

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and ronaldo let me use their washing machine because

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i didn't have a washing machine in my apartment it's a strange thing

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to remember right you know and those things stay with you

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i think those things stay with you because they're they're just poignant reminders

15:39

of of incredible moments in time and blizzard gave me a lot of those they're

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not the only ones in my career but i will always have a huge on this for for

15:49

blizzard for you know People like Mike Morhaime, who were great leaders.

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People like Thor, who helped me achieve one of my lifelong bucket list ambitions.

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There were a lot of very kind and great people along the way.

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There was also a lot of stress. There was lots of mistakes. We made tons of mistakes.

16:07

Imagine having predictions that you maybe, maybe might be as big as EverQuest, and then,

16:13

Yeah, that's not what happens. You know, I remember Itzig Benbassa was the sort

16:19

of the inspiration behind Europe existing as a region.

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He'd sort of managed to sell that to the US, at least that's my understanding of it.

16:26

And he was kind of the guy we would message in America.

16:30

And I remember we had an agreement to call him when we got to certain numbers.

16:35

We just kept calling him and he was like, oh, I'm not sleeping tonight, am I?

16:40

And i know i did 36 hours straight on

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launch in world of warcraft and in the end we

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had to get cabs home because we couldn't see straight but it

16:48

was so exciting what we were seeing and i

16:52

remember working on an excel spreadsheet not my favorite things but

16:55

i worked on an excel spreadsheet and i just couldn't see the

16:58

the the lines and the columns and rows were all

17:01

over the place it was just so tired but you know

17:03

we kind of had to be sent home there you know

17:06

by mutual agreement i suppose because everyone was so excited no one's seen

17:11

this these numbers were you know now you're seeing them in more games like fortnite

17:16

league of legends you know and to others then those numbers were unprecedented

17:21

just an absolute phenomenon and like i say not only was i.

17:26

Extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time to be one of the

17:29

people that was sort of involved in building up these massive teams but also

17:33

doing so on a on a project like that

17:36

i don't think will ever be forgotten i mean it was it was incredible when it launched i remember,

17:42

so many people at my school was playing it i mean

17:45

like everyone everyone was playing world of warcraft and we would play in like

17:50

internet cafes and i don't know at home as well i've had i've had many people

17:55

that i've interviewed and taught when i when i did some lecturing at falmouth

17:59

university many people come up to me and say it's your fault it's your fault that i either

18:05

failed in my education or you know i spent two

18:08

hours on that game and i was like well i feel like you have to

18:11

take part of the responsibility there you're the one that paid the subscription yeah

18:14

but you know obviously it's all in jest and it's

18:17

nice because people generally genuinely

18:21

appreciate the fact that you know there was there were people behind the success

18:26

of that game and and how it was supported but what what was your role in it

18:31

can you can you talk about that i mean My first role was,

18:38

I'm trying to remember the title, I think it was back office manager.

18:42

Which is the most weird and sort of bizarre.

18:44

And basically the core of what I did was all the sort of higher escalations

18:52

for what was going on. That was the first of it.

18:54

But it was also, you know, we all played a part in building the entire team

18:58

across all the different groups. And, you know, building an organization, building a huge organization.

19:04

And I think, you know, my role as in my title, you know, I always feel embarrassed

19:10

putting on my resume because I've had a couple of people start to be like,

19:15

what does that mean? Well, I don't really know. Right. It doesn't really reflect anything we did. And I think most people back

19:20

then, I don't know where these titles came from.

19:23

I think it might have been, you know, old school business France or something.

19:28

It's just we were in France. but I never really understood sort

19:31

of what that meant I mean we dealt with a lot of things you know

19:34

everything from training and overseeing

19:37

sort of the training of the team and sort of growth side of things all the way

19:42

through to fighting against gold farmers now gold farming then was an enormous

19:46

enormous business certainly you know after the after the first sort of year

19:52

or so you know and you know we even had someone in our team who knew a couple of people who were

19:56

part of one of the big sort of gun farmers so there

19:59

was a you know the occasional email that passed

20:02

through saying oh it's a shame we shut down all your

20:05

accounts today you know just a little bit of

20:07

fun but you know in all seriousness that was something that that we needed to

20:11

do and a lot of those functions ended up being automated we had some really

20:16

amazing people in the u.s side who you know who were really taking big strides

20:22

forward of not just sort of fighting it day by day but but also,

20:26

you know, the automation. There were ups and downs for that where, you know, there were times when perhaps

20:31

some people were banned when they shouldn't have been, but that's a bit,

20:34

you know, open to individual opinion.

20:37

But I think from, you know, most of the time, automating that stuff was helping

20:41

people from having to do an awful lot of grime.

20:44

But, you know, the big thing was about building the team.

20:47

It was a constant because it had to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

20:50

And unfortunately, of course, the European organization more

20:53

recently has been has been cut cut away

20:56

that that's that's you know like a sort

20:58

of symptom of recent years and i was sad to see that

21:01

and obviously i still have friends that were affected by

21:04

it people that you know stayed there for the entire time

21:07

as well as you know it's a bit of an end of an

21:10

era i suppose but things move on right yeah they

21:13

have to and they have to it is it is a

21:16

shame of everything that's going on in history nowadays but yeah

21:20

it's nothing you can do nothing thing you can control

21:23

i guess in this stage well yeah i think

21:25

we can all try to there's a lot of things that we can all try

21:28

to support to to drive this forward but yeah i mean there are a lot of factors

21:33

we can't affect you know we can't affect world economy we can't affect the fact

21:38

that businesses that have shareholders see the world differently to the way

21:42

you know developer one through one thousand does i'm not excusing that by the way you know i.

21:49

I have strong feelings. You know, I understand the business side.

21:54

Obviously, you know, I've been close to the development side for a really long time.

21:58

And so both living in both worlds, it's useful, but it's also difficult because

22:05

there is no real explanation for making this decision.

22:07

But you know in a hard business sense whether you

22:11

sympathize with it or not you can

22:14

functionally understand what they're doing

22:17

even if you maybe wouldn't want to take the same decision yourself

22:20

you know what are they doing what are they doing in

22:23

your opinion are they are they trying to just to simply cut costs and save money

22:29

because i'm not saying anything that i'm not saying anything thing that i have

22:34

to be careful here because obviously i you know i don't claim to be better than

22:37

any of these people leaving these studios but i'm not saying anything new when i say that.

22:44

Everybody overhired during covid right lots of

22:47

people invested everyone a piece of the sweet sweet pie that was games at the

22:51

time and so teams had to grow people you know there was obviously the insane

22:57

m&a fest that was you know coming out of sweden for the reasons that you know

23:03

So capital was available and people were using that to buy studios.

23:06

You know, you had Embracer, Embracer then, not Embracer now.

23:10

They're different things, right? And they're not the only ones.

23:13

So I think it's a bubble that bursts.

23:18

You lose confidence when you don't start getting what you want.

23:22

And the thing that frustrates me is that investors don't just want sort of 10x returns.

23:27

And 10x returns are pretty damn good, right? they want 100x or 1000x and you

23:33

know games aren't that reliable sure you know there are,

23:37

sorts of things to tell you they're not reliable you know you could be

23:40

making the next sort of water world for games uh

23:44

you hope but you know there's a lot of things you can

23:46

do to insulate from that you know we do user testing some people

23:49

do early access which is a different matter entirely but you

23:53

know you can get it out there and get some type of understanding but generally

23:56

speaking you're spending the money before you're seeing anything coming in and

24:00

you can't be spending for a very long time and you're not 100% guaranteed that

24:05

you're going to get that return on investment and I think that's why I've,

24:11

I've tried to fund a studio since I left my last one, and I found it immensely frustrating.

24:18

Because, you know, even some of the bigger concerns, I shouldn't name names

24:22

here, but I spoke to a lot of the big people that you would expect are putting

24:26

money in, publishers, and the story was this.

24:30

Why don't you get this game made to the point whereby,

24:35

you know, it's really de-risked for us

24:38

and then we'll jump in or can you get somebody else to

24:41

to to do the first part of the funding and

24:44

then maybe we'll come in later so what you're saying is when

24:48

i don't need your money maybe you'll give it to me also all the developers are

24:52

working on that how am i going to get them to develop that without being paid

24:56

how am i going to pay my mortgage and it was a really it was a really rough

25:00

time and you know fox one was something that i started and And, you know,

25:05

still have a concept for a game that I think is immensely compelling and actually

25:11

could give those 100 or more X responses.

25:15

But like I say, it's so risk averse right now to investors that they just want

25:21

those massive returns and they want to de-risk it.

25:24

But I'm seeing some very strange, strange decisions being made.

25:27

Even now that i don't understand you know there's certain certain big organizations

25:32

who are choosing a you know an individual and saying we'll build a team around

25:36

you and that's great but why that individual and not that individual when that

25:41

one and not that one it just seems to be luck.

25:46

Honestly you know there are a lot of people with a track record of success i'm

25:50

not saying it related to me actually you'd only have to look at the people looking

25:54

for work or the people that are or the people that are considering doing things,

25:58

but I'm, you know, I'm, I'm looking at a lot of people who are out there looking for funding.

26:04

I've talked to a lot of people that are out there who are looking for funding.

26:08

You know, you have things which you, you know, in my opinion.

26:11

Are absolutely fantastic and yet they're not

26:14

getting the recognition and drive forward that

26:17

they should get you know you look at the guys at unleashed games

26:20

for example are my prime example

26:23

of people who should be very well funded by now for some reason

26:26

you know don't seem to be getting as much recognition

26:29

as they should you know a great team of

26:32

people that are they're passionate about doing things the

26:35

right way i've got a great idea of being

26:38

very public about the development art man you know you've got

26:40

people like arena you know heading the studio people like jason

26:43

hutchins and you know production it's a fantastic team

26:46

but you know they are

26:49

still kind of fighting to to get

26:52

you know more support or at least that's my understanding i don't work with

26:56

them but you know there are also seemingly random investments and i think it's

27:02

like to say it's just a shotgun approach whereby sometimes people are just sending

27:07

stuff out and selling it yeah Yeah, I mean, I've witnessed,

27:11

I've been witnessing some random investments as well when it comes to games,

27:15

and especially in the Web3 space that, you know, you...

27:19

Yeah, I am interested in Web3 space.

27:23

You know, I know a lot of people in the industry are very sceptical of it,

27:28

and they're just, oh, it's just all crypto bros and rip-offs.

27:31

But I do think, and maybe I'm wrong here, but I do think the first time a game

27:37

is made where the intention is to make a compelling, high-quality experience.

27:46

Which not just fulfills some part of the need of crypto, but also does all the

27:52

normal game stuff, I think that could open a door and we'd see a lot more of it. For sure, for sure.

27:57

And I wish most people would focus on that, but it feels like a lot of people are not doing that.

28:03

And it seems like there's some people that are coming into that space without...

28:07

Even prior experience in making normal games so so

28:10

in contact with a lot of people and i've done a little bit

28:13

of work with some of them in the last few months and i

28:17

think it is challenging right unless you're really

28:19

an expert in that space i think it's about authenticity

28:23

which is something i think is important everything but as

28:26

to what people's are you know in what their intentions

28:29

are because there are a huge amount of people in that space who

28:33

are just looking to make a huge amount of money really quickly

28:35

sure and they don't care about how they do it and they

28:38

don't care about how that impacts the people who are not

28:41

the ones getting the money and those people the ones i'd like to

28:44

stay clear of but there are i do believe there are good people in

28:47

that space and i think over time it would be inevitable that

28:50

some of those will rise to the surface and that

28:54

hopefully we'll see something that actually pleases all of

28:57

the groups across including you traditional gamers but

29:00

right now i haven't seen that yet i'd love

29:03

to see it but i haven't seen it so with

29:06

the situation now that the publishers or the

29:09

investors they want to see some kind of a almost

29:12

a finished prototype or they want to

29:15

have they want to see other people interested or

29:18

or yeah in a position to invest in

29:21

the project that you're doing at the moment how different was the world

29:24

i don't know five years ago or 10 years ago i don't know if you came across.

29:27

If you were in a of similar situation where you had to yeah so i i mean i've

29:32

i'm not really the biz dev guy right so i fell a lot more into that with antimatter.

29:37

Games over the last decade being the ceo of a studio that was you know.

29:43

It was we are only ever sort of up to around 100 at

29:46

the absolute most with what with you know what people working

29:49

on the game stuff so it meant you had to wear a lot of hats a

29:51

lot more than i had in triple a and the reason that i really wanted

29:55

to join antimatter in the first place was to see if i could

29:57

replicate the sort of success i've been part of in

30:00

the other studios with loads of money finally because all the others

30:03

let's let's be honest you know blizzard obviously even

30:06

though they were just opening and it was pre-world of warcraft they had money you

30:09

know bethesda the the same you know rio yeah

30:12

they had a few quid and the you know the same a

30:15

little bit slightly less rio interactive but now these

30:18

were all big well-known triple a companies antimatter when

30:22

i joined was was was not it was tiny and it

30:25

didn't have any money so i wanted to reproduce that success see if good games

30:28

could be launched out of that if we could build it take it through acquisition

30:32

all that all that stuff and we could and i did but i also had to wear a lot

30:36

of hats And so I had things like pitching games during that time to a more intensive degree.

30:43

You know, I also saw other people pitching games and, you know,

30:47

worked on that process actually with a lot of students at Falmouth University

30:51

while I was working alongside them.

30:53

But I think, you know, what you used to have before, you know,

30:57

a million people said, like, the thing that is the most useless in games is ideas, right?

31:02

Because everyone has them. And the important thing is about good ideas, but also execution.

31:07

You have to be able to execute your ideas and execute it really well.

31:11

You also, frankly, have to be able to market well, market it well, and all the rest of it.

31:16

Because good games don't even sell, especially now, and it's very congested.

31:21

The market's extremely saturated. But back then, I think back then what was really nice was you could work on things as a group.

31:29

You have a sort of vision holder who kind of unites that.

31:33

And you could put together documents and you could show concepts of what you wanted to do.

31:38

You could do it in documentations or very basic outlines.

31:44

Lines and you know people would support that

31:47

they would understand your profile they'd understand

31:50

what you've done before they'd get the idea and

31:54

you know they would they would invest because that's

31:57

what you're doing good ideas and people that you think can execute them right

32:00

you know the thing i always used to teach students about games business is you

32:06

know you've also got to understand that it's not just about the product it's

32:11

about the team that make it you know there's There's a lot of stories of Silicon

32:14

Valley where investors like the team, but not the product, right?

32:18

So they might buy the idea of a product from one team and get another to develop it.

32:22

That's pretty well known. I mean, it's just dated now, but it's pretty well known.

32:26

So, you know, I appreciated that because it was, to my mind,

32:30

it was a way that it was done. And of course, not everybody made money.

32:34

But are they making money now, even though they see these prototypes and things?

32:39

You know, the very big publisher that I spoke to that comes most to mind said to me,

32:45

I don't understand why a big group of veteran developers such as yourselves

32:50

can't knock a prototype together and get to near vertical slats.

32:55

Because we've got groups of students and recent

32:58

graduates who've produced some promising things and

33:02

you know i've said well you know it's exactly the

33:05

same right we obviously are still on the university course that allows us

33:08

to do that we're obviously still in you know relatively inexperienced

33:11

you know i i can't live with my parents anymore they probably wouldn't like

33:15

it you know my my i have a son you know i have a family it's i i have bills

33:21

dude like i can't i can't just knock up your approach type and also yes it doesn't

33:26

take two weeks right yeah and find another 20 people who.

33:30

Would join you and take six months off and do the

33:33

same thing i mean there was a time when

33:37

there was a time when i was working with family university where you

33:41

know it was very hard to find funding for students but

33:44

i said look let's see if we can formulate a studio made

33:47

of students we got this idea for a game let's see

33:50

if we can make it and we'll have an agreement that we'll all work on it

33:53

together and we'll understand that we're doing that because

33:56

if we can get funding then everyone gets jobs right it shortcuts

33:59

the thing and long story short that didn't happen

34:02

no one did fund it didn't get far enough the students weren't

34:05

committed enough to deliver and execute but i still

34:09

remember there was still one person on that team who afterwards

34:12

said to me something along the lines of

34:15

how dare you ask us all to slave

34:18

labor work for nothing and i was like yeah so that

34:21

wasn't the agreement right we all said we're going to do this together and

34:24

the idea was that if it comes off we i haven't got any money out of this either

34:27

right we're trying to do this to get jobs to build something from nothing so

34:33

you know i kind of learned a lesson from that you know i did have good intentions

34:37

there and you know there was it was only one person on the team that said that

34:40

you know and i don't necessarily think that person had the.

34:44

The most ordered view of the matter but that's my opinion

34:47

but you know you can't ask people to work

34:50

for nothing you know all of our time at antimatter you

34:53

know we had all those students on our doorstep from brampton

34:56

university if we did internships there's no

34:59

way you know we did have people would say look take me and

35:02

you don't have to pay me we're like well no because there's no

35:05

way anyone is not going to get paid and you're also going to get paid not not

35:10

the you know the the basic you're going to get paid the living wage which is

35:14

a little bit more than that because why you're working yes you're an intern

35:18

but you still need to pay your rent you still need to you still need to eat

35:22

you still need to go out you still need to do this stuff you know and.

35:25

Asking people who've been in the industry for a really long time who are

35:29

going to be further wrong in their lives who are going to have mortgages dependents

35:32

all the outgoings that comes with that stuff it's just

35:35

unrealistic so that's quite frustrating and it's

35:39

why rather than them be frustrated i moved

35:42

away from it just said you know what thor and i because it

35:45

was thor who was mentioned earlier and i who were

35:48

you know gonna hit that studio said you know

35:51

what let's just stop let's just stop and focus on other things because if this

35:56

is the market that it is we are you know we had had quite a quite a few of these

36:01

calls with the same message again and again which you said it's just going to

36:04

be frustrating and we're wasting time we have to you know start earning money again,

36:10

let's focus on something that isn't going to be a constant frustration,

36:14

which of course is not the case with the job search in the current market. Sure.

36:19

Yeah. And there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people nowadays are looking

36:22

for work and a lot of people that have been, have been looking for jobs.

36:26

For a long time i think i saw statistics somewhere

36:29

somebody mentioned it that the people

36:32

that are graduating from university in game

36:36

development courses they have something like a one or two percent chance of

36:40

getting into an industry now yeah i have a very recent story about this in actual

36:45

facts i when i went out for my with my wife this morning we had breakfast and

36:52

and this This is a true story. It sounds a bit too coincidental, but it is true.

36:56

The guy who was waiting at our table took our order and then said,

36:59

are you Rich Barham? And I said, yeah.

37:02

And I couldn't quite figure out. No one knows who I am.

37:07

And it turned out he was a game student that had been on the course when I'd

37:11

given some lectures. Okay. You know, he's waiting tables. You know, it's rough.

37:16

It was actually a little awkward for me because I wanted to,

37:19

I was thinking about it and I was like, do I mention, like are you making games to him because

37:23

obviously he's not making games he's waiting this table you know

37:27

is he doing that in his spare time is it going to be awkward for him to answer but

37:30

it's actually a slightly awkward moment but you know i

37:33

one of the reasons i didn't want to keep working with

37:36

the university locally there was because

37:40

i i was not completely convinced by

37:43

their model right they were they were taking in

37:46

as many students as possible into the courses businesses like

37:49

a business without real regard for

37:52

the fact that there was such a tiny opportunity

37:56

for them you know and they were

37:58

also trying to extend their education into starting their own studios in an

38:03

incubation manner and you know that was going to cost the students part of their

38:07

company too and i don't recall well let's just say i don't recall very many

38:12

successes coming out of that and it feels like throwing mud at a wall right

38:15

hoping something will stick so you've got a success story.

38:19

And I can understand why you'd want to do that, but I think it's sad for the students.

38:24

I just wish it were different, but reality is this is a very hard industry to be successful in.

38:32

And if you are encouraging people, go and start your own indie studio,

38:35

the one thing they're lacking, no matter how much you say that you've developed

38:40

it in an industry-led course, is practical knowledge of what actually happens.

38:46

And you just can't prepare someone for that. And it's why, personally, I always tell people,

38:52

look, if you can really work hard at getting those internships and really work

38:57

hard at trying to get some job, even if your absolute goal is to establish your own studio,

39:04

just go and do it somewhere else.

39:07

Watch the things, good and bad, because no matter where you are,

39:10

there'll be good stuff happens, bad stuff happens, to varying degrees.

39:12

Degrees just experience that without being

39:15

the one that's actually behind the desk having to

39:18

figure out how to solve those problems for now because there's so

39:23

much to learn from people who've done it before and if you don't have that knowledge

39:26

your chances of success well they just became pretty astronomical but you know

39:33

there's always a success somewhere right somebody is going to succeed somewhere

39:37

there always be someone that magically says you know screw you i'm not

39:42

going to go and work anywhere else i'm going to start my studio and ends up

39:45

earning you know hundreds of millions or something ridiculous yeah it

39:48

happened and then win the lottery too it happens

39:51

but yeah it's i guess the odds are similar to winning a lottery i mean you do

39:55

i agree that any profession that you do you should you should go out there and

40:00

gain some experience and work for bigger companies and and yeah just learn from

40:05

other people how to do before you go out there and you want to do on your own.

40:08

I totally. Yeah. And I, I think, you know, experience can't, can't be overstated.

40:13

You know, I talked about the mistakes we made at Blizzard.

40:17

You know, at Blizzard, when I joined Blizzard, I worked in management leadership for a while elsewhere.

40:23

But looking back on it now, you know, I would never conceive of some of the

40:28

decisions and things that we did then.

40:31

Why? Because we just, you know, we hadn't experienced this stuff before.

40:35

So making decisions or we're doing things, you know, I remember conversations

40:41

or disagreements about certain issues that happened early in those days.

40:47

And now that wouldn't even be a conversation because if you know a bit more,

40:53

those things don't even come up, let alone become an argument.

40:57

Just going back to Antimatter Games again. So when you joined the studio.

41:03

You said you were very small, right?

41:05

How many people were you? i want

41:08

to say about 15 15 might have

41:11

been slightly more than that but it wasn't really very very many

41:14

it was started by started by

41:17

a guy who i mean realistically he didn't he he was a guy who he was a bit of

41:22

a sales guy he could talk a good game and do stuff he really wanted to be in

41:27

charge of a game studio but the reality was that he didn't really know how to

41:32

do that and he certainly and he didn't know how to deal with people.

41:36

And so he left really quickly. You know, I joined and within a few months,

41:42

he'd just, he'd left the business. Okay. And then we had, you know, we had a board, which was me and two other

41:48

guys who were great guys, but predominantly, specifically were gang developers.

41:53

They weren't managers, they weren't leaders, they weren't, you know,

41:57

experienced organizers or anything else.

42:00

And so I had to put a strategic plan in place least for sort

42:02

of five years and say this is what we're going to do

42:05

you know it was hard because the publisher that we

42:08

were working with they had worked with this guy

42:11

who founded it and essentially they were

42:14

just modders at the start they were just a gang of modders who had

42:17

formed into a company and in the eyes of the

42:20

publisher that that started working antimatter i

42:23

don't think they could get it into their heads that this gang of like really

42:29

disorganized modders could become a proper company and so we i think we outgrew

42:34

one another i suppose in that respect they maybe wanted more of that sort of

42:39

informal sort of gang of modders who were very very very cheap.

42:43

But you know would sort of self-taught in most cases and

42:47

you know the plan that i put together was

42:50

build the studio bringing bring in experience prepare

42:54

us for sort of what's next go beyond

42:57

what we're developing now look at what's beyond that how do

43:00

we set ourselves up you know what are we going to do you know

43:04

i knew pretty much from when i came in that you

43:07

know just judging the relationships and meetings and everything with

43:10

the publisher that i'd seen that we shouldn't work this

43:13

publishing anymore nothing against them yeah but just they

43:16

just saw us as this gang of people they were like you

43:19

guys don't know what you're doing so we'll just tell you what to do and you

43:22

know in terms of financial deals in place in terms of the relationship that

43:28

was too hard a set of preconceptions to break so you just needed to move away

43:34

and that's why you know we when we We were scaling down on the DLC of the game that we made.

43:40

We were already, you know, concept and early development, pre-development for

43:46

our own title, which would then lead us to looking at other publishers.

43:51

We had a publishing deal with a very large organization. I mean, a real household, no?

43:56

And we had the contracts. And the contracts were like, you know, on the table.

44:01

And then at our Christmas party, I had a phone call.

44:04

And i stepped outside to take it and it was this company like say a huge company

44:10

and they said that the person responsible for that division had just just quit

44:14

so they were wiping the slate clean.

44:17

Withdrawing all the contracts starting again with the projects and we only had limited runway,

44:23

we had we had set ourselves up limited runway you know we got this but they'd

44:28

been doing due diligence on us for like months so we lost months so we were

44:33

then our runway then went from sort of here to to here i realized that this

44:38

is audio only so that is a useless thing to say but it is.

44:44

You know our runway got dramatically shorter yeah

44:47

and it was kind of panic stations were like oh holy you

44:50

know right gdc i'm gonna

44:53

go to gdc i'm gonna meet with everybody i can and i'm

44:56

gonna to try and get us a different person because these

44:59

guys who they were a huge organization the deal

45:02

was good and all the rest of it through no fault of our own i at the christmas

45:07

party i didn't go back in and tell anyone i waited i didn't ruin the party by

45:11

the way yeah i waited till afterwards but and now gdc i spoke to everybody and

45:17

again we had some really big name interest.

45:20

But no one could do it quick enough because their due diligence and their amount

45:25

of time that they would take would take us beyond where we had money.

45:30

So they would be buying nothing because we wouldn't exist anymore.

45:33

You know, that was a story of how we came to be acquired by,

45:36

you know, a really sort of nascent, new, you know, would-be embracer from Sweden

45:42

when we didn't really expect that, you know.

45:45

And that, you know, that came out of nowhere. but you know i talked

45:48

some yeah i shouldn't name names but i talked against some

45:51

really big names and they were like we'd love to do this but just

45:54

so you're aware like our process is this this is this is right and

45:57

i knew i knew we couldn't survive that long and i was very i was very honest

46:01

with people because i felt that was the only way to be you know i didn't want

46:05

to be cagey because you know we were at the point now after the last deal fell

46:10

through because of what happened that you know i had to be honest with them

46:14

and say look we you know here's reality i know it's not,

46:17

the best negotiating tactic but we

46:20

cannot do the deal in that time because we did not

46:23

have the runway left for us to be able to do terrible negotiating position not

46:27

our own fault but that was what it was that was a very exciting gdc i i did

46:32

a lot of steps those days that's for sure but yeah it came off in the end we

46:38

got a deal and you know for the first while that deal was It's all okay.

46:42

And, you know, and the studio was saved. But, you know, that sort of biz dev

46:47

side of it, then I had to show the game.

46:50

Luckily, we had some sort of early stage stuff. We were well known for tactical

46:54

shooters with a good background. We'd won awards for doing that.

46:58

And a lot of that stood us in good stead, but it's hard. It's much harder now

47:02

than it was then. And so that deal came from GDC directly? Or did it come after?

47:06

It was essentially rubber stamped in a cafe over a salad.

47:13

Nice. Very cool. How long is an average due diligence process that companies need to go through?

47:22

The honest truth is it depends with the size of organization.

47:26

Organization i think i want to say that because

47:29

we signed up with what i would i guess i'd

47:32

call them sort of a micro publisher back then

47:35

they were pretty quick relatively okay i

47:38

think the whole deal was about two months from then so we were still okay but

47:43

you know certainly with the first company who like i said were a big international

47:46

household name it took them more than four months to get to the stage where

47:52

they issued us draft contracts and i think that's It's just,

47:55

you know, big companies have more paperwork. I'm sure that somebody in some big company, you know, may listen to this and

48:01

be like, that's nonsense. It only takes us. And I'm sure that's true, but you know, it is different for every company,

48:07

but it's always slower than you want it to be. I think that's the rule that

48:11

you definitely can apply. It's always slower than you want it to be because when you're sitting there

48:15

and you're like, what else can you check, dude?

48:17

Like you want my shoe size, like my favorite color, you know,

48:20

you've given them the accounts, you know, we were lucky. We were profitable year on year.

48:24

As an independent growing so i had no worry about that we were doing really well.

48:29

But, but the truth is, is, is it takes forever.

48:33

And a lot of it, of course, you know, when we were, when we were,

48:37

when we were bought, we bought by a public company, they were on the stock market

48:41

in Sweden and they were also doing another deal.

48:44

But of course, because of insider trading, they couldn't, they couldn't tell

48:48

me, they didn't want to put me on the insiders list at that point.

48:51

They couldn't tell me who the people they were buying in front of us was.

48:55

Our deal was also held up slightly because they

48:58

they had decided for whatever reason they were

49:01

going to close and announce this first deal first okay

49:04

before announcing ours and we were actually announced pretty much

49:07

immediately after the deal before us in the

49:11

end so yeah it's i think it's

49:14

a lot of people when you go into games there's a

49:16

different skill set between making a game and and leading a department

49:20

a company a studio whatever and the truth

49:24

is is that a lot of people do get to studio leadership when

49:27

they've been creative in the first case and i

49:31

you know i really sympathize with that because a lot of it is how are you meant

49:35

to know unless you magically did an mba or something somewhere just because

49:39

how are you meant to know about all this stuff about how you know public companies

49:44

work and insider trading and when someone starts talking about about transfer

49:48

pricing, you're like, this is just. I don't even know what these words are.

49:52

I did because I'd done the business side anyway before I even touched games.

49:57

But a lot of people, you know, it's a very difficult world for game developers

50:02

because a lot of them aren't hardcore business people.

50:05

You know, you can tell because it depends whether someone's wearing a hoodie

50:09

or they're wearing a shirt and a, you know, a shirt and a sport coat at an event,

50:14

you know, you can spot the business, dude's.

50:16

But it's a tough, it's a tough situation because our industry is so creative.

50:22

You know, a lot of leaders are creative and a lot of these business things,

50:26

like I say, unless you did a business qualification or unless you somehow just

50:29

learned it, it's not typical stuff that people just know.

50:33

So you get acquired, you exist for a few more years as Antimatter Games.

50:40

Yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, obviously I've got to be careful about this, but in short.

50:46

There was a big change of leadership in the group the entire c-suite sort of vanished overnight,

50:52

the entire publishing arm which was a big part of why

50:55

we wanted to be acquired by this company because you

50:57

know they were we're going to build a best in breed publishing arm

51:00

and they had some great people working in that arm and

51:04

they all essentially got fired overnight and then

51:07

the company became something that was called a financial instrument which is

51:11

quite hard to understand when you're a game developer and then the strategy

51:15

became more about supporting certain studios games than others and less about

51:21

supporting new intellectual property okay and we were.

51:26

We were building new intellectual property you know our prime game was igi which

51:33

was a reboot of the 2000s title had a huge community you know some of our videos

51:38

are getting more than a million organic hits on youtube there was huge amounts

51:43

of chatter about it the game was,

51:45

progressing a little bit slower than it should have been but it was still hitting its milestones

51:48

we were still on target but you know i don't

51:51

want to come on here and moan about it but all i'll say is we

51:54

never got the financial support that we needed when we

51:58

were very clear about what we needed to make the game to the quality we did so

52:01

we were always kind of running behind the curve where we're like we need

52:04

this we can't have that but you know this is what we need to

52:06

deliver what you want us to deliver right so it

52:09

was very difficult we never got the financial support what we did so always balancing

52:13

that out with you want something but you don't

52:16

really want to pay for it that was how it was for a while sure

52:19

and then obviously came to the point whereby they were

52:23

not really gonna fund new development there was a lot of you know i have a lot

52:27

of a lot of strong feelings about that period and you know i don't think it's

52:31

appropriate to talk about them publicly but i will say that it was not necessarily

52:37

a very good experience when we felt that we had,

52:41

worked very hard to produce a game that we think, and I still think today,

52:46

would have been extremely, extremely profitable if it had been supported.

52:52

You know, we had another game in development, but really that was just,

52:56

you know, another tactical shooter, a bit like the stuff we worked on before.

52:59

IGI was by far the better game and was by far the better financial prospect.

53:05

I think it had a much better chance of making really solid money,

53:08

which is why we had stopped working on 83 through to concentrate all our resources on it. Sure.

53:12

But, you know, it wasn't so long out from development, less than a year from release.

53:18

So it was hard to hear that our studio was going to be closed because of that.

53:21

When we hadn't exceeded our budgets that we were given, when we were hitting

53:27

the milestones that we had agreed, even though we were under a lot of duress,

53:31

and even though, you know, the community were crying out for this game en masse.

53:36

So that's tough to take, you know, and that's why, that's why I went to bat

53:40

for the team to try to get everybody jobs so they wouldn't lose a paycheck.

53:45

You know, and I think the statistic was 90% of the team got jobs as a result

53:51

of that without losing a paycheck.

53:54

So they didn't even miss a paycheck. So they got redundancy and a paycheck.

53:58

So actually, technically they made more money, which is a nice story.

54:02

And I stayed on, got them bedded in.

54:05

But, you know, the new company had leadership in another country.

54:09

It wasn't really the sort of company I was very attracted to work for,

54:13

but everything was handed over. And then that took us sort of to this year, start of this year,

54:19

where I've been doing consulting and trying to decide what the next course of action is.

54:26

Because I want to make sure that, you know, I've seen some things that in the

54:31

last year and a half have not been necessarily the best that our industry can show.

54:37

And I want to make sure, you know, that it's not just me, it's also my family

54:40

that will be impacted by these decisions. So you want to make ones that, you know, there's a match of the role,

54:46

but also a match of values with the company.

54:49

And I think, you know, I have strong beliefs in some values.

54:52

They're nothing special. They're nothing surprising. frightening you know they're fundamental things like

54:57

you know a company that actually believes in team

55:00

where you know where people are supported where kindness

55:03

is a is an expectation where you

55:06

know it's not you know there's not a culture of people stabbing

55:10

each other in the back to proceed those are basic fundamental things that do

55:15

not inhibit your ability to make money in games but they're also things that

55:20

some companies don't do very well i want to make sure that you know i'm I'm

55:23

working somewhere where I feel valued and I can add that value and somewhere

55:28

where I will enjoy working, ideally both in location and in terms of, you know, in terms of what the company is.

55:36

If you were given enough funds to build a studio from scratch,

55:41

if you were to join a studio that's in that stage where, I don't know,

55:45

early stages, 10 people, they want to get to a hundred, how would you go about building that team?

55:51

And what sort of projects would you want to focus on?

55:55

I don't know, in terms of genre, in terms of platform, what do you think would be successful now?

56:00

So what would be successful? i'm not going to tell you what my idea

56:03

that they're trying to get funding was because that

56:06

i still believe that that could be that

56:09

sort of thousand plus x project but that's

56:12

interesting you ask that because the type of games i really want to make and

56:17

the way we were living with antimatter games this was our this was our creative

56:21

strategy that i'd laid out for antimatter games those are the sort of games

56:25

i like to make i'd like to make first person or third person games Games which

56:30

have an element of combat, an element of adventure,

56:35

but also where narrative decisions make a difference.

56:41

So, for example, with our title that we were building in IGI,

56:46

depending on the outcome of your conversations, the actual levels would play differently.

56:52

Okay. And I think, you know, I love stories. I love writing.

56:55

You know going back to what i've said earlier like i was

56:58

doing writing before anything else and it's what i expected to

57:01

do i think you know a true story is

57:04

something that people love and you know this

57:07

is why even in games like league of legends which don't

57:10

pull story naturally at all right you still

57:13

have a big lore and you know even animated tv

57:17

series that have come off of it because you know even though

57:19

when you look at that game the game doesn't encourage a

57:22

delivery of a story really it's a frenetic second

57:26

to second paced game but because so many people are

57:29

in love with it they've built a world around it and they've

57:32

built other properties in a transmedia sort of experience around it i love storytelling

57:37

so i'd love to be able to tell those stories you know one of my favorite games

57:41

ever is dishonored you know and dishonored has it doesn't quite go as far as

57:46

i'd like to in your in your decisions making things different because

57:51

they were two smaller teams of them.

57:53

But I believe that if you are in a situation whereby what you do and decisions

57:59

you make actually affect the way the game plays,

58:01

that delivers narrative in an all-new way and one that ties it much more closely

58:07

into gameplay. That's what I'd like to make. But in terms of the sort of studio, you talk about how would I build it up?

58:12

I'd build it up small is the answer because, you know, I think there's a reality

58:17

here which is not popular, but I think it's realistic, which is that most people

58:22

who get into the games industry now, juniors.

58:26

Are probably going to cut their teeth for cognitive studios or outsourcers, call them what they are.

58:33

They're probably, and a lot of people tell me I'm wrong and they'll do differently,

58:37

but a lot of them, I think, over time will probably

58:40

cut their teeth in those sort of big codev you

58:43

know sort of studios because they're just bigger

58:46

there's more opportunities sure i think you know over time we're seeing things

58:50

contract will it grow again yeah i really hope so but for me one of the things

58:56

i've talked to people about is i don't just want people in a studio that i lead

59:00

to feel welcome of course I want them to actually feel treasured,

59:06

like they're something we really care about. Why?

59:09

Well, firstly, because that's just a nice human thing to think.

59:12

But also, on a hard-edged side of it, because you want to retain people.

59:18

Losing people is expensive. It's damaging to morale. It just sucks all around.

59:24

You want to bring in quality people, and you want them to work there as long

59:28

as they want to, right? Not have them leaving after two years because they're

59:34

not treated well, they didn't get whatever. And that's not about giving people infinite salaries because that's not sustainable either.

59:42

But ways in which you can reward people well, give them great benefits and look

59:47

after them is by having people who are really good at what they do and rewarding them for that.

59:53

And that means letting them do the good stuff and, frankly, letting people that

59:58

work for large-scale studios do the rest.

1:00:02

I would rather have a core team of excellent people and then allow them to do

1:00:08

the work they love most instead of having a team of hundreds.

1:00:12

And I'll tell you why. It's not just about the security of those people.

1:00:17

Obviously, it's much easier to contract your expenses if you're small.

1:00:21

But it's also about the fact that a lot of the leaders that I've worked with

1:00:26

over years have said to me, I really like mentoring people, making them better

1:00:30

at what they do, but I don't like endless one-on-ones.

1:00:33

I don't like endless team meetings. I don't like endless admin that stops me doing what I do best,

1:00:39

which is doing my discipline and helping other people to do their discipline.

1:00:43

If you take away the volume of those teams, you take that away.

1:00:47

You give them much more time to do what they do best. you you

1:00:51

mentioned mentors there and maybe maybe

1:00:54

just to finish to finish this off obviously you worked

1:00:57

for some big names so you worked at riot

1:01:00

you worked at zenimax you worked at blizzard can you

1:01:02

mention or do you remember a few people that sort of made an

1:01:05

impact in your journey or you could call the mentors that you

1:01:08

learned from i've had i've had people who have been

1:01:11

great leaders and who have been great mentors while i've worked there but not

1:01:16

mentors that have persisted beyond my working history but certainly great examples

1:01:21

of leaders i would say i have been fortunate enough when i was in france my

1:01:26

boss was a guy called frederick menu and you know fred,

1:01:30

fred was an exceptional leader in that he was he had a real good sense of humor

1:01:35

and he was able to he was able to blend that sense of humor with just being

1:01:40

eminently calm and reasonable you know situations where everyone was het up or.

1:01:46

Really passionately inflamed about. He was very good at calming those situations.

1:01:51

He was good at those one-on-one difficult conversations. Not just a decent person. He was tolerant.

1:01:58

He was, he was tolerant, you know, he was passionate himself for sure,

1:02:01

but he was also tolerant. He was kind and he was very smart.

1:02:05

I like smart people because hopefully I can learn from them.

1:02:08

Moving on to the US, you know, I have to mention Thor again.

1:02:11

Thor was the one that batted for me. He's the one that supported me.

1:02:14

You know, he's, he's very mild in fairly mild mannered, but also,

1:02:20

you know, a guy who was reasonable who

1:02:23

was who was kind who was supportive who was

1:02:27

able to sort of always give perspective on issues mike

1:02:31

moreheim you know i mentioned him i think before mike

1:02:34

was you know the chairman ceo whatever his title

1:02:37

was then a blizzard you know a legendary guy

1:02:40

in the world and you know

1:02:43

he he was human you know he

1:02:46

was still human he still cared about people obviously had

1:02:50

his moments you know as well he's a very powerful

1:02:53

man but you know he he was so respected by

1:02:56

everybody at blizzard when he was at blizzard as somebody who

1:02:59

cared about the team cared about the projects and you

1:03:03

know put those both together in terms of priorities and you know mike moved

1:03:09

away from blizzard i'm sure it's changed i don't work there i haven't worked

1:03:12

there you know mike left after i did but he was you know he was a guy that i

1:03:16

would love to have had as my long-term mentor for sure You're like both smart,

1:03:21

but also really principled.

1:03:24

You know, I'm not saying everywhere, because I don't want to go through every

1:03:26

single one of my, you know, people I work with.

1:03:29

But, you know, another person that really stood out for me was the guy I worked

1:03:33

for at IO Interactive, a guy called Hannes Seifer.

1:03:37

And, you know, I think the only thing I can say to Hannes, and I've actually

1:03:39

said this to Hannes before, I think you'll laugh, but Hannes knew,

1:03:43

it felt like Hannes knew everybody's job better than they did, including me very much.

1:03:48

You know so smart so so

1:03:52

tuned into both the business and the development sides of

1:03:55

everything just incredibly incredibly

1:03:59

smart could be quite stern could be a little bit intimidating from time to time

1:04:04

just you know he was quite stern from time to time but he was also incredibly

1:04:09

human and incredibly kind supportive and you know so smart just just such a smart guy Wow.

1:04:18

Look, Rich, it's really a pleasure talking to you. And yeah, I appreciate your time.

1:04:24

And yeah, it was really interesting to learn about your journey and your stories.

1:04:29

And yeah, thanks for coming over.

1:04:31

Music.