Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Dev to Dev, the podcast about everyday video game developers and why they do what they do every day.
I'm Alex Solman here once again with another exciting conversation and this time we're chatting to.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Layla Mamedova. I until recently was the Cinematic Pipeline manager on the unannounced canceled project at Cinemax Online Studios.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Yeah, another fellow ex colleague but you know, excited to kind of dig into history like we were saying, you know, on the preview show. Didn't necessarily work directly with each other.
So I'm really excited to kind of get to know you a little bit more and understand your path.
So I like to kind of open this with, with just a sort of going way right back to the. To your kind of early origins. What. What was the first thing that made you fall in love with video games?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Okay, so this story is going to sound probably a lot cooler than it is.
So I was born in Russia in the 90s, just a little while after, you know, the WA fell and the USSR kind of dissolved and that whole transformative period. And my grandpa was just like really into stuff coming in from the west, like now that it was allowed to. And he was the one that brought me, I think the NES.
We had like an NES, maybe a Super Nintendo, maybe a PlayStation one. I don't know how he got any of it. Like knowing how much those things cost and how much the ruble is worth, I'm like, what were your priorities, sir? But either way he did it. And I just remember like the first games I played were like OG Jurassic Park.
I played, you know, the Super Mario Bros. Then. But the ones that really stuck with me weirdly are the PS1, like animated movie tie in games.
So I actually learned how to lip read English from doing the Hercules tie in game. And I have vivid memories of like the Chicken Run tie in game. So that's where I started. And then when I got to the States, immediately my new stepdad bribed me with a PS2, which I still have actually is behind me. It's 25 years old I think.
And that is where I fell in love with like JRPGs. And that is probably my true origin, my villain story, honestly, my jokerification.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm already, I'm already very excited. This is so starting where you started. Like you say, video games work were kind of, I mean, you know, hard to come by and rare, I suppose. So getting to play them, getting access to them must have been, you know, quite the thing for where you were where you were growing up.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: I mean, I wish I, like, knew. They just kind of popped up in my house. My favorite thing, though, is that the experience of your parents not quite understanding what your hobbies are is universal. Because I remember I was, like, really into Pokemon when I was little.
Obviously. Who wasn't, right? They're adorable. And I remember I was so excited. I was like, if there's a Pokemon game, I want a Pokemon game. Not knowing that all the Game Boy games are. You know, there was nothing on PlayStation at the time for. For Pokemon. And my mom's boyfriend at the time brought me a Digimon game. And I remember thinking the COVID was, like, so scary. But then it's all I played for, like, ages. That's how I found out about Digimon. So, yeah, it's a bizarre experience, but it was really cool. And then when we came here, I skipped right past. I remember when we were, like, picking up the PS2, one of the Sonic games came out at that moment.
But I was like, I don't care about this blue hedgehog. Give me the anime people. I'm gonna figure out what that's about. And that's how I got into, like, the DOT hack quadrilogy. And then, like, my villain origin story is Xena Saga and Kingdom Hearts and all those things, so.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Right. All right. Okay. And you mentioned kind of learning English through playing those early, early games.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So that. So they really. So they didn't just impact you as a gamer. Right. They impact you as a person.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: I mean, I don't want to give them too much credit because it's just like words here or there that I could either pick up on or do whatever with. But it definitely. I remember being on the plane, coming here, and the only two words I knew were like, thyme and ice cream. And I'm pretty sure one of those I picked up from lip reading or I picked up shut up also. I was really proud of that one. I didn't know what it meant, but I told my family. I was like, I picked up a new word today. Shut up. And they were like, good job. We don't know what that means either. I was like, great.
But, you know, I did come here and learn through, like, your standard public school English as a second language program. But it did help to, like, start to pick up on the phonemes and stuff like that.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I did a similar thing. To this day, I can still remember the symbol, the way memory card is written in kanji, because I used to Play So many Japanese PlayStation games and memory card saving loading would pop up all the time. And you kind of pick up on those things, don't you, as you play? If they. If they're, you know, alien to you, your language or grammar wise.
Okay, so you came over here. PlayStation 2 had a huge impact in JRPGs. What drew you to JRPGs?
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Melodrama.
So I grew up watching, like, soap operas with my grandma. And not, like, not American soap operas, the good stuff. Spanish telenovelas. That's what we had going dubbed in Russian Channel 1 Rue. That's what we were. That's what we were watching the whole time. My grandma loves to tell this story, but apparently I. I never looked like I was paying attention because I have, like, turbo adhd. I need to be doing three things at once.
And my. At the time, I would just, like, sit and draw. And my grandma was like, oh, she's fully focused on drawing. She has no idea what's going on. No, no. I'm listening to that, like a podcast.
And at some point, you know, it's your usual telenovela plot line. Someone's cheating on someone else or whatever. And I just, out of nowhere, six years old, look up and go, oh, will he make up his mind?
And so I grew up on, like, that kind of vibe. And like, my family is also very melodramatic because we're Slavs. Whatever. We're Middle Eastern. We're Slavs. Very dramatic people.
And so, like, I really loved anime growing up. And as soon as I hit those JRPGs, and it's just the most, like, contrived melodramatic nonsense you've ever played in your life. And the systems are so complicated that I kept my little brain busy. I was. I was in it to the point where I actually did not know that you could make games in America. I thought all video games were made in Japan. And that's why I went to animation school instead of game school.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Ah, interesting. Okay. I had a very similar thought myself when I was a kid that video games were made, you know, all in Japan.
Even though there was a boatload of video game development in the uk for some reason, it was because all I was playing was Japanese games. That's what I was drawn to as well.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Oh. In the uk and like, like I played myself some Tomb Raider games that pronounced that funny. Tomb Raider. I don't know how to say that word anymore. Tomb Raider games, Indiana Jones titles, you know, I played things that were made in the United States.
I just. It didn't Click. Yeah.
And I didn't ever look at the credits.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Yeah, the Japanese. There was something about the Japanese games. It was like that's, that's it. That's what I'm all about.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: What did you, what did you play? Did you do a lot of the like 2000s turn based stuff or.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: I mean I was a little bit less on the JRPG. Final Fantasy 7 was what? Well, that's not true. Secret of Manor and some of the Super Nintendo JRPG kind of hooked me in. You know, obviously obvious Zelda ones. But it was more the kind of action arcade games that I was really drawn to. And Japan was the best at those. So I think that's why I was very kind of an arcade rat. So a lot of those games, like they're made in Japan. They're made by the best people. Yeah.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Like the like arcade isn't like with the. The case like the standing games. I forget.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I used to play in a lot of arcade. Exactly. Yeah. Arcade cabinets. So I'd play a lot of, you know, arcade games in various places. So then being able to play those at home was like incredible, you know, because they were so twitch and skill based and it was kind of. That was kind of my jam. And so so many of those games were made in Japan and when they were made over in the west, they were always a bit lame. They were never quite as good.
You know, a lot of fighting games and stuff like that really pulled me in. So I think that's why similarly I was like, yeah, but Japan is where it's at, right? They're. They're the folks that make games. And I'll never get to go Japan and make video games. So I can't make video go. I can't make video games. I think probably similar.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: I just, I. Even with the. So I'm not as familiar with the fighting games that come out of that region.
They just. I need a story. I know this about myself. I've learned this about myself. If I don't have a story, I just don't care.
And so the fighting games, you know, I would play them with like friends. I would play a lot of soul caliber and like middle school with some friends and stuff. But if other people weren't around, I wasn't drawn to them at all. But I think the thematic overlap between my Beautiful turn based JRP RGs that are. Have turned me into an evil person. And you know, the, the fighting games, there's just this commitment to the bit that I think has stuck with me artistically because if you look at like the lineup of your Street Fighter or your Soul Calibur or your Mortal Kombat, those people don't look like they're going to the same event. And it's just kind of all wackadoo, but it's so committed to its own internal logic and it doesn't care to explain it to you that I'm like, oh, this is hysterical, actually.
And I'm bought in to, I don't know, Chun Li's whole thing. Or again, I'll. I'll bring up Xena Saga at every turn. Actually, one of our other co workers is a Xenosaga freak like me. Xena Saga has a. I will. I have a little figurine of her. This is Cosmos.
She's, as you can see, a blue haired, sexy Android. And what Xena Saga very seriously posits to you is that this blue haired, sexy Android has the will of actual Mary Magdalene.
And then the third game has Jesus in it. And they play it completely straight and you're like, okay, I'm in. I don't know what's happening. But that's, I think, why Kingdom Hearts works too, because it's just like fully leaning in and you're like, all right.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Kingdom Hearts is such an incredible clash of those sensibilities with the sort of Disney stuff that you kind of know and love. And it makes for such a bizarre pairing. I always love the Kingdom Hearts games.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: I don't think you could make it today. Well, I mean, obviously they're making four today, but I don't think they could make Kingdom Hearts one today.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: No, I agree. Yeah, I don't think it would land or gain the traction that it did at the time, especially on the PS2. That was. It was such a perfect place.
So, so, so you come to America, you get a PS2, you kind of get hooked on JRPGs.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: And. And at this point it sounds like, like me, you know, a similar point in my life. You have no belief that you could make video games. You can none play them. Correct?
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Correct. Oh, I was all in on animation. I was like, I am going to be an animator and my dream was to work at DreamWorks.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Right. Okay. So that was that. So that was the destination was become an animator and get yourself to DreamWorks specifically.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: I was like, I'm gonna work on the third how to train your dragon movie, so help me God.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Okay, okay. Love that.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Oh, so good. Just a. Just a movie of all time, really.
So I did. I ended up going to Animation school.
Um, there actually, I can tell you two. I tell you two movies that turned me.
That really locked me in.
One of them was a good one and one of them was a bad one. The good one, well, it wasn't a bad movie. The shot was bad and it galvanized me.
The good movie that really got me to animation school was 2009, Princess and the Frog.
There's like this very specific moment where the.
Oh, my God, what is his name is a prince. Navi. No, I can't remember the prince's name, but he is a frog. And there's. It's during. Dig A Little Deeper, which is like the. The Wise Old lady song. He's just looking at Tiana, who is also a frog at the time. And he smiles in such a way where in my little ninth grade brain, I was like, you can't make a human actor look like that. Like, that is something so specifically directed. That is something you could only do in animation. I was like, I gotta just go for it. And then the other one was Sam Raimi's Spider Man 3.
I might be misremembering, but I think there's a shot where Tobey Maguire as Spider man runs. It's like in the very beginning of the movie, I think he's like going to that rally in the beginning of that film. I could be misremembering, but I think what happens is he likes jumps onto a rooftop and then runs in front of a superimposed image, the American flag. And that made me so viscerally angry because I was like, come on, I could do better than that. And that's the energy I've taken with me through my whole career.
I. Spite.
Yeah, it's total spite. I was like, God, I love Spider Man 3, though. That stupid dance sequence is everything to me. So no hate. No hate to Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire.
Just that one shot.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: I just watched all the Spider man movies and were kids, so. Yes, I remember. I remember Spider Man 3 vividly.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: So am I remembering that correctly? Is there like a lame shot like that in the beginning?
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I certainly remember that opening sequence being one of the least successful of the CG sequences in that movie.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: It's something.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
Okay, so. So animation and specifically animated movies kind of hooked you and gave you a career ambition.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, correct. I went to animation school. I did very poorly. I.
The thing about being 18 is that sometimes you make questionable life decisions. And at the time, without getting too into it or being too much of a Downer.
I was not doing well mentally. I did not have a great home life during that period of time. And so basically my goal was just like, I need to get the hell out. And I don't know if, if you've heard, but school in America is very expensive.
So not only was I not doing well mentally, I went to a very expensive school because that's the American dream that they sell you, right? You, you go to private school, you do well, you're successful.
So I said it. I'm signing my life away. I'm signing a mortgage here.
I'm going to go to the school, I'm going to be good. Problem is, I did not know that physical bodies have limits and, and I reached mine about my third year and I actually ended up flunking out because I was working three jobs and also going to school and had just a bunch of untreated stuff happening up here.
I was suicidal. Like I just wasn't well.
And I'm so glad that that happened to me. Like, don't get me wrong, it sucks. If I could save anyone from that fate, I would love to.
But I'm glad it happened to me when it did because I think if I had been successful and if I had made it and gotten to my dream, I think I would have crashed and burned in a way that was far more consequential in my mid-20s than having done it in my early 20s and coming to a bunch of really important realizations about myself and my career and my self worth when I did. So after I flunked out, I moved home for a little while and then I moved to Texas, which is where I got my first animation job. And I actually went back to school in Texas and I finished my degree.
So fellow designer on our, on our project, Emily Turner, she and I technically graduated I think the same year, even though we never overlapped in school.
And she, she and I went to the, the same school. But yeah, was tough. It was a really tough period of my life. I actually don't remember much that happened between like 2010 to 1718 because it's just, that's what trauma does to your brain. It just shuts it down for you.
But I came out on the other end, you know, working in animation. I went from being a junior, I skipped senior, I went straight to lead because it was a small company.
And then I transitioned to game production from there because I had realized kind of that working in animation and animating I just didn't have the patience for, would much rather keep People organized.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Right? Interesting. Okay, yeah, because. Because you, I have your career. You were kind of, you were a staff animator at Minnow Mountain and then, and then you moved on to kind of being a concept manager and then. But went back and were back at Minnow Mountain for a few, for a few years.
So that was kind of the animation and then you shifted to kind of project management.
So you got to do the animation job that you wanted to do professionally and then found that it actually maybe wasn't for you, but you found another path.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: I did. Minnow Mountain was great. Shout out to the good, good folks. At Middle Mountain, I worked on seasons one and two of Amazon's Undone. If you watch both seasons back to back and you're like, wow, the season two hairlines show sure look way more stable.
You're welcome. All me.
I actually touched almost every shot in season two, save for the days where I took pto, which it was a small indie studio, we were all contract workers. So we got one day of PTO per episode. So I was there most of the time.
So I touched most of the shots.
That is where I got my so cinematic pipeline Manager.
I'm a producer who kind of turned into this researcher, pipeline manager person who designs this giant workflow. And for folks who might be listening, who don't work in cinematics or don't know cinematics. Cinematics is one of the more complicated pipelines you can make in games. Usually only bigger studios, unless it's like jury rigged.
Mostly bigger studios have these big cinematic pipelines just because it's so expensive to make one. It is at the confluence of a bunch of stuff.
And so my specialty is kind of being a context machine for this giant machine of a, of a pipeline that has to be stood up. And I was under the leadership of Leslie Harwood, who was our cinematics lead.
I forget what her fancy title is. Associate director or something. Something.
But I reported to her and she was brilliant and really, really, like, forward looking. But in terms of building a pipeline, Minnow Mountain basically stood up a 30ish person animation studio overnight.
And it was a learning experience for everybody. And so when I was staff animator, I actually got pulled aside with a couple of my coworkers to be compositors, which was just kind of an informal, informal job. It was just like, hey, can you, the four of you have a brain for this? Can you just check your teammates shots and make sure that. And like assemble all the pieces and do all this stuff?
The way my brain works is very systems oriented and so immediately I started building a system. And because I was like 20 at the time and suicidal and a bit weird, I had the audacity to put together a document that was basically like, hey, if we do a season two, you should let me fix this and you should make me the lead of this little team.
And thank God my assistant director knew me and was like, okay, Layla, whatever. But then they did call me and they were like, hey, actually we think you could do this and we want you to do it. And we introduced like a new. For season two, we introduced a new tech workflow and it was, you know, early Covid, so we were all like working from home for the first time and my cat.
And it was, you know, really scary to like, train people. I was in charge for the first time.
Yeah, you, you manage people, right? Like you're. Yeah. So, you know, do you remember when the first time was that you started to manage people and you, you, you.
It's terrifying, but it's also weird.
Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure you weren't as bad as you think you were.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Maybe not, but I definitely felt terrible. I felt very ill equipped to begin with.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: And that's the kind of self reflection that a good manager has, because a really bad manager is just like, nope, this is fine.
Do you remember the moment you realized that people looked at you as somebody with power and were like, a little nervous?
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I think I remember feeling very, again, very, like, ill equipped to be considered that way.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: I know what you made, it's really. It's really crazy, but that was the first time that happened to me when. When one of my reports was like, I'm sorry, I'm just nervous talking to you. And I was like, what? What do you mean?
Have you met me? I'm weird. I'm just a little guy.
But yeah, so. So that was a huge learning experience. But that was really like, like, you know, pedal to the metal, like, build a pipeline from scratch in this entirely new environment. And happy to say this is on my resume, reduced the production time by like 30% for our team, reduced crunch in a really big way.
And that's kind of where I started to be like, okay, I think I'm getting really burnt out.
Drawing and drawing, building a portfolio that would be marketable to less niche studios because Middle Mountain was Rotoscope.
And then on top of that, working on personal work, splitting my energy, those three directions just wasn't working for me. And I burnt out for about three years. I couldn't draw. I'm back in it now but I just like you just can't your brain just fries.
And I started talking to my producer because I really liked working in Chakra. It made a lot of sense to me. I started talking to my producer about what she does.
I got into right as that season was about to end and our contracts are about to end. I got into the IGDA Foundation's virtual exchange program which is the cohort that I got into was the one that takes people from out of industry and brings them into industry.
And then like you said this in the pre show I'm a very noticeable person whether I like it or not.
I have just terminal Yep itis I love to chit chat with people and so much like people will notice me on Slack. I caught the eye of the executive director of that program at the time who recommended me to the place where she was working which was Genvid Entertainment, which is still around I think. I don't know what they're working on though.
And I I became the art producer.
My first games job was I was the art producer on a Silent Hill interactive experience which was just kind of bananas.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: That's an unusual first project for sure you're telling me.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: But I was technically a publishing producer but not in practice at all.
In practice I was an embedded development producer and I worked with a bunch of code of and XDEV teams and really cut my teeth on games production in that position.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Right, Fascinating.
So the shift from kind of directly drawing to managing and organizing pipelines and kind of improving production flow sounds like that that really appealed to you and pulled you in.
And I can't help but reference the fact that when you talked about JRPGs you talked about systems and wanted to kind of understand how things fit together. Feels like there's a correlation there.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: I listen My life is a turn based video game.
It is. I love turn based video games. I love internal logic, I love systems. I love picking things apart and seeing how they work. And so my the more I learn about ADHD and the more research is done into it. I got diagnosed by the way at 27. I'm almost 32 now so it's been a minute I've been living with with understanding why my brain is the way it is. But fun fact adhd if you don't know this ton of overlapping symptoms with autism and when I learned that I went because in my career and you might have picked up on this I a lot of my career is built on two things. It is Understanding systems.
I actually recently had it pointed out to me by a industry friend that I treat people like systems, which is I guess a rare skill set.
But my approach to production is like very holistic in the sense of like, if I'm producing a team, yeah, a lot of producers will want to know if something's going on at home or whatever.
I want to know as much as people are willing to share.
Because the way I think of it is this is the example I, I usually bring up. If there's two people on two teams and they're fighting and I know that it's, it's like a deeply personal fight.
Most, a lot of folks will say, like, hey, that's not my business. I'm going to say, no, it is my business. I want to know exactly. As much as they're willing to share, I want to know. I'm not going to tell anyone else, but if it's a fight that I can resolve, then I can at least try to resolve it. If it's a fight that I can't resolve, like if, if two people I don't know were in a workplace relationship, cheated on each other, it's like a no go situation, then I can build my pipeline around that, that I don't want to, but I will.
Same thing. If like, if someone is sick, I'm like, okay, if that person is sick or unreliable right now, we're just gonna build around that and when we change our pipeline, we're gonna change it around that.
So you know, it's, it's a, I, I try to build people like systems and build relationships like systems and have people interact with each other to make sure we're building a team, like big team relationship.
But that being said, I actually people, I think people get really confused by me because at work and in this conversation, for example, you're my colleague, right? I would be talking to you as I would maybe in a meeting, very upbeat, very, I don't know, people, people say I'm very like energetic and I'm like cool as soon as I leave flat done over that. Because everything I know about interacting with people comes from the systematic understanding of interactions. I am always just building on an interaction tree in my head.
I, I got dialogue options in front of me right now, they got skill checks next to them.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: And it's like I, I just have to treat it like that in my head.
And that is really tiring when your entire job is talking.
And so when I get home, like, I don't, it's so funny. Most of my careers in multiplayer games, I, I don't play them. I can't do it. I'm so tired by the time I'm done that I'm right back in that turn based single player RPG space.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: So yeah, just focus on playing a game, just you. Rather than negotiating the, the realities of interacting with people. It's, it's, it's just that whole idea of sort of stuff, seeing people, assistants. I've never heard that before. That's amazing.
And, and you know, already I like, like you know, we just said, it feels like it, it correlates directly with who you are as a person in terms of what you're drawn to and, and, and what motivates you. So that's, that's amazing.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Have you read the Murderbot Diaries?
[00:29:44] Speaker A: No, I have not. No.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Okay.
I've never related to a character more than Murderbot in my entire life.
Which is a funny sentence to say because it calls itself Murderbot.
But it's so. For folks who don't know, for one might be listening. Murderbot Diaries is a series of novellas by author Martha Wells.
About this in the, in the far, far future in deep space, this security construct that looks humanoid, that has broken its governor module and therefore no longer takes commands from the company that it belongs and all it wants to do is watch tv.
Wants to be left alone. Yes, there's a pretty good Apple TV adaptation.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: I'm lukewarm on it. But it's, it's. Alex Skarsgrd gets it.
But the books are all from Murderbot's perspective. And I, on social media, I follow a quote bot that's just like Murderbot bot. And it just constantly reminds me that me and Murderbot just think the same way. It is just it, it, it's so crotchety in its interior monologue and the answers that it comes to seem so obvious to it. But it is dealing with these like irrational but well meaning human beings that it likes and wants to protect. But it's just frustrated by the, the way that the world doesn't make sense because it doesn't adhere. It doesn't. It doesn't have the same clarity that it has about the problem space in front of it. And I find that so relatable because I'm in. My inner monologue is so crotchety. I'm like, I, I just, I'm like, why aren't we coming to this very obvious conclusion that is right in front of me? But. And that's the frustrating part of like having a brain wired like this.
But it's just, I think the more exposed I become to people who maybe think similarly or. I think the benefit of a diagnosis is not necessarily to pathologize everything I do, but it is, it does give me a frame of reference and avenues to investigate why I might feel certain ways about things.
It's just, it's very helpful. But like, Murderbot has just been so funny to me because it's like, I read it and I'm like, yeah, this robot is right. And the reason it calls itself Murderbot is because it wants to seem kind of edgy and sharp and it wants people to leave it alone.
And I'm like, yeah, that's why I'm goth.
Yeah.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: So I love it. Yeah, it's. It's sort of the, the. The. The quintessential definition, you know, of kind of that, that mindset and that role that, that approach that you sound so self consciously aware of, you know, that it is who you are and how you see the world.
But, but also, in many ways it sounds like it's, it's almost a superpower for, for the, for the, the focus that you, You've taken on in terms of organizing and shifting and, you know, pipeline work, etc.
That it sounds like, I mean, you mentioned Shotgrid, right? Shotgrid, it, for those that don't know.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: Is kind of my friend, my enemy.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: I, having briefly dabbled with it recently, I can see why it's both those things, but it's very much kind of an organizational tool for that very complicated pipeline process of, you know, of building. I mean, not just cinematics, but, you know, it seems to primarily be focused on cinematics. And it feels like that that tool itself is perfect for someone that wants to, you know, I, I don't know ADHD that well. I don't. You know, I'm pretty sure I have some version of it, but having chat to some other people about it, there's a, there's an element of kind of keeping all the plates spinning and kind of having all those stimuli that something like Shotgrid is like, perfect for, because it's got so many areas of it, it's got so many lanes that you've got to keep stuff organized in. I would imagine that you kind of connect with that and it's very, you can use it very effectively.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: It makes sense.
Yes, it makes sense. To me. The, the thing that makes me more of a specialist in the, in the very specific lane that I'm in is that my, my mission in life is to learn how to explain it to other people in a way that makes sense.
Because I see the vision. I'm like, ooh, I do. I see the Matrix. I'm like, oh, I understand that. It's like a.
It's so hard to explain, but, like, basically the way it works is anything can be anything. You set up. You have specific entities for shots.
You could set it up for whatever cinematics. We actually had a custom entity on our project that was Quest that I was, like, testing.
We didn't end up using it, but it's like, you can make a folder for all these things, and you can, like, assign attributes to entities that are shared with other types of entities, and you can filter in, like, a hundred different ways. And it's. It's very matrixy, and it requires a lot of initial setup, and it also requires a lot of really thorough documentation.
The other problem with Shotgrid, Autodesk, no hate, but Autodesk continues to buy up other pieces of software and then kind of like haphazardly tacking it onto Shotgrid and going, here you go, new feature. And you're going, great. Is this integrated into the other feature that has an overlapping set of features? Nope. Okay. I guess this is just choices we have now.
So it's very confusing to explain to other people. And part of the reason I got hired in the first place was just because teaching is something I'm really passionate about. I think giving people the right amount of information is something I'm working on, because my first my approach was give people the most information because I want the most information, and then I decide what's important. I've learned that people who are not Murderbot get overwhelmed. And I go, okay, so now I'm working on giving the right amount of information for people who need to know.
It's a complicated piece of software, but, like, it makes sense to me. And the thing I've been saying for the past year or so is, like, the key to AAA efficiency and budget efficiency is not AI. It's not a chatbot. It's 30 perverts like me. Put 30 of me in any AAA studio, see what happens.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: See how things get organized.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Oh, it would be so beautiful.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: So.
So it sounds very much like you have found a role that is, like, the perfect encapsulation of who you are as a person. It really, you know, sort of suits your mindset, your thought process, you know, your.
You know who you are, and that's, you know, it sounds like you sort of found that in that shift from animation into production, and since then, that's just been your home. Yeah.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's not all roses, obviously. I think that the thing that I'm working on now, other than the information thing, is just.
I think I overcompensated at some point in my early career for.
I think I got too friendly and too open, and that was useful in a position like at genvid, where I was working with people who had way more power and experience than I did.
We were in a tricky production environment, and, you know, the art director that I was working with was, like, a Diablo 2 veteran, and the everyone else I was working with were, like, you know, Lord of the Rings online veterans and, like, had these huge resumes, and I knew I could do the job, but I had to convince them that I could do the job. And our relationships, some relationships within the team were kind of deteriorating by the time I came in. And so I had to be the friendly little guy that patched things up. And the way that you can build relationships when you're a woman without getting stereotyped is you really lean into kind of the disarming, funny, friendly little guy thing.
If you talk to women across the industry, you'll. You'll probably get a fair number of us that have learned that trick that if you just present yourself as a woman, you can. You can either not be taken seriously, you will get called too serious or mean or whatever, but if you're funny, that's disarming. People don't know what to do with funny, unfortunately. Funny to me is exhausting. Like, I like being a little jokey jokester, but doing it for work all day is really tiring. And. And I'm trying to find this balance now between liking to make jokes and liking when people like me. And I'm friendly, I like to think.
But the problem with that now is as I'm kind of graduating to a more senior position in my career, when I lock in, people get really scared of me.
They're like, whoa, where did that come from? Because I'm just, like, very serious suddenly. I'm trying to find a balance between those two things. Feels more authentic, where I'm, like, more serious. And again with the ADHD thing, it comes with something called rejection sensitivity dysphoria, which is like, if someone tells you no or you feel like they don't like you, it feels so much worse than it does for people without this brain wiring.
And I am really trying to focus in on telling myself, like, hey, it's okay. If, if, if I present myself more seriously and that means people are a little bit intimidated.
I'm just moving into a position where that is now more okay.
And then it's okay if people take time to warm up to me.
So I'm trying to find a space like, yes, the functions of my job, as you were saying, are a really good fit for me, but the way that I execute those functions is the thing I'm working on now because I, I don't think I have the mental capacity to keep doing what I've been doing for the last, you know, five or whatever. It's just exhausting and it feels inauthentic. And nothing feels worse to me than folks who maybe think they want to be friends with me and, but they want to be friends with my work Persona. And then they find out that behind that work Persona I am actually like pretty flat and kind of serious. And, you know, I don't actually talk all that much.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah, they kind of, they know one sided you, but they don't know. They don't know all of you kind of thing.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and the two sides are, are very, quite different also. I'm so sorry for the audio quality. My cat is really trying. Right.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: That's okay. What is it? Is it an orange boyfriend?
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Yes, yes it is.
And now he's gonna be up here because he makes less noise up here.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Oh, what's his name?
[00:41:20] Speaker B: This is Toulouse.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Toulouse. Oh, I like it. Yes.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: My little old man.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: The only reason I don't have cats climbing all over me is because the doors close. So I know how it goes.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: One bedroom apartment. There's not much that could happen in here.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Exactly.
So just sort of going back to that transition from. So you went from animation, the creative field of animation and tv, TV shows creation into video games.
How was that shift? I mean, you kind of mentioned, you know, there was, there were some veterans there and things like that, and maybe there was some, some personal challenges within the studio. But did you find a sort of cultural difference in, in, you know, moving from, from the animation field over to the video game side?
[00:42:03] Speaker B: I don't know if there's a. I mean, the cultural difference was more in the fact that I went from a very artsy, fartsy, kind of homey startup animation studio with a bunch of fine artists to a more serious corporate world.
I'm a better fit for kind of middle corporate. I don't do artsy fartsy very well and I don't do hyper corporate well.
Kind of what we had at Zos, kind of like middle corporate is where I thrive.
The pipeline shift is just that TV production is really linear for the most part, whereas video game production, as you and I both know, are very iterative, more complicated. The cultural shift was, was. It's less about the medium, I think, and just more about how the size of the organization is. What I found, and especially in aaa, working with, you know, the animators that we worked with on our team, people get increasingly technical as you kind of move up. I don't think any of the artsy fartsiness.
We just don't have time for that kind of thing in aaa. And we're talking more about like, I worked with some of our tech artists, I worked with some of our animators. And the conversations you have very. Are like, again, just like technical people become. It becomes less about the feeling of a scene seen in some context, some more about like, hey, what can the engine actually do? Hey, we're clipping. Hey, is the skinning right here.
So yeah, those are, those are the shifts. It's just the types of conversations you have change by necessity. But I think it has more to do with the size of the team, the complexity of the pipeline, than any kind of inherent vibe between the industries that makes sense.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: Did you, did you find that, you know, kind of being amongst gamers, you know, game developers and therefore more gamers, did that resonate with you or, you know, had you always been kind of working with people that were game gamers?
[00:44:13] Speaker B: No, I, I've worked with a lot of fine artists. Not a lot of, not a lot of gamers among those folks.
I don't. That's a really interesting question. I don't think I've thought about it in terms of resonance. I can find my people, my JRPG perverts very quickly.
There's again, one person in particular on our team who I just. We clocked each other right away and I was like, there, there they are.
I do find myself not, not judging, but I do find myself hearing people talk about the games that they like and going, oh, you make sense to me now.
And it's just like I feel suddenly very seen either. See. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, somebody will say something and I go, oh, that's. That's where your whole thing comes from.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Right. So you directly correlate kind of people's gaming habits with who they are as.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: People, who they are as devs, because their, their tastes are very. Their decision making starts to make sense. Sense to me.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Right, okay.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Because what is art but decision making.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Very true. Yeah. Can you give me a, you know, a nondescript example?
[00:45:36] Speaker B: I, I mean, I can't even like pull one from my head to obfuscate, but like you even pointed out, right? Or I talk about like my, my systems based JRPGs all the time. I want everything to be a system all the time. I'm also very big on if you have a narrative driven game. I want your systems to make sense with the narrative driven game. But I'll hear someone talk about liking, let's say, I don't know, Fortnite or something, and then they'll, they'll be a person who will push, for example, more social function in the game and that's their focus in a way that doesn't make sense to me as a priority because I have different experiential goals. And then I'll go, oh, that's why you're pushing chat or emotes or whatever. I'm like, because that's the thing that you're drawn to.
Or sometimes it'll be genre based too. Sometimes people talk to me about, you know, oh, I like the Last of Us or something. And I go, I see, that's why you're drawn more to the, I don't know, the enemy design or whatever. Like it just, it just clicks what, what people are paying attention to.
And I found that very interesting because I'm better at discerning that from games than from like people's favorite movies or whatever.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: So you've pretty much summed up the very reason why I'm doing these podcasts. Because that is exactly the thing that I find fascinating. Right. Because especially as a designer, you, you invariably have to separate what you like to plant and what you're drawn to from what you're doing. Right? Not all the time, but there are often times where like, oh, that's not necessarily my jam, but I need to apply my understandings to it, you know, understand it and then apply my understandings from it. And so I think you're absolutely right that, you know, the role we do in game dev and the games we play are so intrinsically connected to who we are and how we separate them. Those or not can make a huge difference over the way we make games and the way we play games.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
Which I guess leads me to ask you, you know, from the, in terms of like even we talked earlier about the fighting games and stuff, but what of that do you feel like you carry with you? Like what, what do you focus on then as a result of that.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: I mean, historically I focused on game feel a lot. Right. That's my, that's the thing I'm the most curious about always. Because in my opinion, video games are nothing without interaction, right? They don't. If they don't have interaction, they're not video games.
And in my opinion, and the quality with which you interact with them, to me, can often determine their inherent quality. Now, that doesn't mean that everything has to be Twitch, right? No, I'm not saying that. But the call and response of game feel, right? I press a button and the game responds and gives me feedback to me is what makes video games video games. And so I'm in turn constantly obsessed with that, right. How games feel, why they feel the way they feel when they feel good, why they feel bad. That's been very much my bread and butter. So I'm drawn to games that have good and bad feel because it's fuel, right? It's fuel to me.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: But I'm also very drawn to games of different types to understand their feel. Right. The feel of a jrpg, a tactical JRPG versus the feel of a fighting game, right? Very different, but the rules are very similar.
And so that's, you know, that, that's. I think that's why I have quite an eclectic taste of video games. Partly because I'm obsessed with that element and partly because I think I have a form of, you know, I like to jump around between lots of different things.
So I'm very all over the shop, you know.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: Right.
So it's, it's my personality, I think it. So it's a moment to moment to feel though, right? It's.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: It's like a.
Yeah, the immediate moment to moment. Yeah, that, that's certainly the core of it. But then, you know, how those systems and how those features and how that you interact with, interact with those features over time is also really fascinating to me as well.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, I totally agree. I, I love the thing, the design thing I'm always looking at is like meta systems.
Like what?
Not just like, hey, what is the immediate in game, in universe feedback that you're getting? But what, what habits is this game building? And then how is it either using or subverting those habits?
[00:50:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: I think my favorite examples of that are like the New York Times Connections game. First of all, those people. Have you ever played it?
[00:50:19] Speaker A: No.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: Oh, it's just a word game, but it's diabolical.
And the thing I'm picking up on is the fact that whatever the first word you look at in the top left corner. It actually puts your mind in the right frame to start recalling the connections that you need. The, like, really obscure connections. You need to, like, match all the words.
But the other one I really like is Final Fantasy 10 because it spends the entire time, its entire game time, setting up a cycle that it then breaks and reverses for the final boss fight. And even though that final boss fights mostly on Rails, that is why it remains effective is because it's the inverse of a cycle you've been building the entire time. So, yeah, I love, like, systems and meta systems in gaming. I think that's my favorite part of design.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And it's only got better over the last couple of decades in terms of the scale of the systems.
Okay. So, yeah, I think definitely seen some correlation there between, you know, personality and. I love, I love the fact that you use people's game choices and favorite games to sort of deduce who they are as people. I think that that's. That's excellent. I love that.
How does your. You kind of. Yeah, you mentioned your. Was it. I think you said your granddad, you know, and then you stepdad kind of, you know, got you into games in the first place. How does your family in general relate to your career, relate to, you know, what you do?
[00:51:49] Speaker B: My mom spent the last year telling people I was a consultant for Microsoft. Sure.
We're going to say, sure. When I told her I wanted to transition into video games, this literally what she did, I was like, hey, I think I want to go make video games instead of doing animation. She goes, video games for people who don't have the video. Like, it's just like mimed a controller at me. I was like, yeah, those.
They have no idea what my job is. They have no clue. They just. They're like, as long as you're having fun and making money. I was like, I am doing both of those things.
[00:52:26] Speaker A: Yep. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I think, again, that's a very common thing.
And have you, have you ever had people kind of externally relate to, you know, what you do, you know, when you've said, oh, I work on this or I've worked on that. Like, do you have any kind of, you know, stories of people that have kind of connected with what you do, you know, from the general public?
[00:52:47] Speaker B: Not yet.
Our Silent Hill project was not very successful. And that is, is okay.
I'm famous to about 30 people because I was a dev streamer for it.
Our project obviously will never see the. The light of day or at least it's not likely to.
So not yet. But I also am a very private person where I actually don't tell people I work in games for a while.
My first thing that I say is that I'm a project manager. Then I will say I'm a project manager in tech. And then once I know you're cool, that is when I start to go into. I'm a game developer or producer or whatever. So I actually don't know if I'll ever have that moment unless I become recognizable, which I hope I don't.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: Right, Interesting. So you kind of keep it very guarded then.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: I do. I don't wear my shirts, my dev shirts out very often unless it's still a deaf meetup.
My profile pictures on social media, the little social media that I do have are drawings of myself.
I'm like. It's like, you could if you want. It's not like, hard to piece together who I am, but you have to put a little legwork into it. And I just. I prefer not to.
I prefer to retain my privacy as much as possible. I think I just want to be just famous enough to get on game show shows, but not any more than that.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: Okay, well, I. I appreciate you doing this even more then given knowing that now that it's something you keep very guarded, something you keep very private.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: Ah, well, yeah, it's. I mean, it's fine in. In professional contexts, you know, I am happy to have the opportunity to chat and I. I think it's important. I like projects like this because I think there's like this weird dehumanization of game tips.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:54:44] Speaker B: And, you know, I'm like a normal person with a life and a cat that made a lot of noise through this recording and a dog that was sitting pretty back there earlier.
You know, I.
After this, I'm gonna do chores.
Like, it's just. We're normal people with normal goals and. And there's no, like, I sometimes get this impression that people think we're like this, like, mustache twirling, you know, class of villains. It's like, no, it's just a bunch of nerds.
[00:55:14] Speaker A: Exactly. And about, you know, a bunch of eclectic people that are kind of, you know, have their own path that gets them into the pros, the very complicated process of building a video game. It's not. It takes. It does take lots of different people, lots of different types.
[00:55:28] Speaker B: It does and takes a lot of independent research and a lot of willpower and a lot of.
A lot of chutzpah.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, you know, as you're sort of bringing up, it kind of. It can impact who you are as a person, you know, in positive and negative ways.
You know, it defines us in many ways who we are as people. I think not everybody and, you know, and sometimes not all for good that it does, but it certainly does for me. It certainly defines who I am. Just. Just quickly, as we sort of wind this down, how has. Has actually making games affected the way you play games in any positive or negative way?
[00:56:05] Speaker B: You know, similar to going to film school, I think, when something.
Oh, actually that's.
That's an interesting framing I haven't had to confront, I think, until this moment. Going to film school is fun because movies are so much shorter than most games that if. If my critic brain is on in the theater, that's a bad sign. That means I'm disengaged.
If I'm sitting in the movie going, oh my God, the shot selection or what's going on with this lighting or, you know, like deconstructing the plot in my head, then that's bad. Games, I think, have the opposite effect on me because the more I learn about how to make them, the more fun I have deconstructing them while I'm playing.
I just wrote a case study on Lies of P because I think they have an incredibly smart art and cinematics pipeline.
I'm in the middle of a case study on Final Fantasies 7, 8, 9, because they're kind of the PS1 trio that the PS1 hardware was like a nightmare to do graphics for.
Super inefficient. So they did some really clever, really cool things.
And I feel like the longer I work in games and the more I understand how they're made, the more interesting it is to me to sit there and play. And from a cinematics perspective or an art perspective or a design perspective, asset reuse perspective, production perspective. I'm sitting there going, oh, that's so cool what they did there.
I'm playing Kingdom Come Deliverance right now. And it's so cool how they set up their combat system so that the player doesn't actually have to look, learn all that much. And they just stack a bunch of passives on the main character to make him feel like he's getting better as a knight while you're playing him. Like it's stuff like that where I'm like, oh my God, that's amazing. That's so cool. And it doesn't take me out of the world like it would in a movie. It Actually, I think it triggers something. Some, like, some scratches, some itch in the back of my head where I can be involved in this world and in this story and in. In the interaction of it and appreciate it artistically at this or technically at the same time, without those two things getting in the way as they do for, like, other mediums that I might be going for.
[00:58:23] Speaker A: Right. So it's kind of enhanced your. Your understanding and what you get out of the games that you play.
[00:58:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. You could just feel the fingerprints of all those people. Right. You can. You can really be like, oh, these clever bastards, like, they. They did something extremely cool to pull off this effect, and you appreciate it for what it is. Like, Even Dragon Age 2, I talk about all the time, because people are so.
People don't like that game. That's my Shayla. That's my baby. And I'm sitting there, and from a. From an artistic perspective, I'm like, yeah, sure, all the dungeons are the same with the doors closed, but that's still pretty cool that they thought to do that, where they're like, okay, we can actually take this one map that we have or two maps that we have, and we're just going to close different doors. And people who are paying attention to the map, they're going to. They're going to sense that, and it's not going to be great. But the people who are not paying attention to the map, they're going to have a different experience every time, and that. That's good enough for the tools that we have. And, like, I don't know, it just made me appreciate. It makes me appreciate the constraints that we all face more.
[00:59:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great way of looking at it. I love that. And this has been a fantastic conversation. I love that you've, in many ways, kind of embodied the principle of this podcast. You've also demonstrated, you know, how what you do is so much a reflection of who you are as a person, and, you know, it's a story and a journey that, you know, is unique to you, and I'm glad we got to dive into it a little bit. So thank you for your time.
[00:59:51] Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time. I know we've gone way over, but hopefully, hopefully something listenable comes up.
[00:59:59] Speaker A: No, it's an excellent conversation, and I'm glad we were able to have it, and I was glad to spend the time with you, so thank you.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: Such a pleasure to hang out. Alex, thank you for having me.
