Latest / The Game Business Show / Arkane veterans Harvey Smith and Ben Horne reunite: “We’re back to the games we love”

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Arkane veterans Harvey Smith and Ben Horne reunite: “We’re back to the games we love” · The Game Business Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard people across time,
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: very well-paid people,
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: say things to me like, first-person games don't sell, or RPGs are a niche market.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not working on a free-to-play game now, in five years you'll be out of a job.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: MMOs are the future.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really know what turn the industry might take and we're probably not going
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: to be very good at trend chasing.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so our best shot here and what we're so excited to do is to rally around
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: a creative vision that excites us as developers.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: We went to Microsoft and said, I know we're fired.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know we don't work here anymore, but can we please release this?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And to their credit, they did not say no.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there were fires.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: The government announced aliens at some point.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: There was a swarm of murder hornets that were coming toward Texas.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: We had an ice storm that put power and water out for like two weeks for some people.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: This week's edition is sponsored by Keyword Studios
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: which helps game developers build, launch,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: support and promote their games basically from concept all the way to release.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: The company has some 13,000 staff across 26 countries and it says
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: that it is Supercharged by technology and shaped by long-term partnership.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now in order to deliver a real global impact that also feels local,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Keywords offers services around localization,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: QA, localization, QA, and player experience expertise.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: The firm helps studios Well, Keywords doesn't do that.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: You can find out more via the Keyword Studios website or
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: the newsletter associated with today's show.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Speaking of which, let's get back to it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: This week we are talking to two legendary video game makers.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: The first is Harvey Smith,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: the former studio leader from Arkane who is credited with helping create Deus Ex
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: and Dishonored,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: you've no doubt heard of him,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: he's famous for his work in the Immersive Sim genre now if you're not familiar
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: with immersive sims if you've heard the term I don't really know what
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: that is sometimes they're shooters sometimes they're rpgs often a mix of both
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: but they're all about player agency so rather than
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: a single path these games provide players with tools to get through the game
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: in sometimes unintended in creative ways
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: a typical example would be you can stealth your way through the game
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: and not kill anybody or you can blast your way through the game or a mix of both
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: And alongside Smith,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: we're talking to Ben Horne,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: a producer and production director who has worked
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: across major titles including NBA 2K, Deadpool VR and Redfall with Harvey Smith.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Now Redfall, as you may remember, proved to be a disappointing release.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: It was a multiplayer take on the immersive sim games
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: and immersive sims are typically single player titles and it just didn't work.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: A year after it came out, Arkane Austin, the studio that made the game, was closed down.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: But Harvey and Ben have now reunited at a new studio
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: that they've formed called Black Pony Immersive.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: No multiplayer,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: no live service this time,
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Black Pony is all about making the sorts of immersive sim games that Harvey,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Ben and their team of veterans that they've put together,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: many of which come from Arkane, like to make.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now Smith is the CEO and creative director of the new studio with Ben acting as COO
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: and executive producer.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been funded,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: the team of a publisher,
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: although they're not ready to disclose who that is just yet.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, this is a rare piece of good news in the nearer rough heavens.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Now, ahead of this announcement, I had a chance to speak with Smith and Horne.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to find out how they're structuring the studio for the modern age,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: the state of the immersive sim games.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Do they really work?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Lessons from Redfall.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a really enjoyable conversation.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: So check it out.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, Ben.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, Harvey.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the show.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having us.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Congratulations on the new studio.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: I love a bit of good news in this industry.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's a rare treat for us at the moment.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: You've told us a bit in the press release already,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: but I'm interested to know where this name came from.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: What a way to lead off.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it feels like in a sea of doom and gloom,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: the last few years,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: so many of our colleagues suffering,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: developers falling left and right,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: and everybody else doing everything they can to reach out or help them.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Even on the publisher side, nobody's happy to see the business in the state that it is.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard you talk about various movements and trends and patterns and one
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: of your kickoffs to one of your segments,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: you mentioned Vince Impala passing last year,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: like Ben and I had dinner with him in Austin, um,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: over a year ago,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I guess when we were starting to,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: to talk about kicking off Black Pony Immersive and it, um,
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: there's just so much bad news and,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: and, and it's shocking the state of the world, not beyond video games.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like to do something optimistic in the face of that is to be a dark horse
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: and it is to have,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the drive to like say, no, we're going to fall back on what we love.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to work with the people we love.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to have fun doing it.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to reach out to as many people as we can and, you know, let's do it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so Black Pony immersive Kind of is tongue in cheek for that,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: but also Immersive is right there in the title.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make Immersive Sims.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make single player narrative driven first person games where you explore
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: and you can solve your problems creatively.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Think Deus Ex, think Dishonored.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're doing.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: I will come on to Immersive Sims.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's a fascinating genre, but if you can call it a genre, but how are you?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Are you fully funded?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have all the everything you need to even go for a year?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Did I hear?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: August 4th was our first day of operations last year in 2025.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So a little over a year.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: You got investors and publishers.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: I know you probably can't tell us the names.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know how video games work.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: No one comes in with a pot of gold and says, here's Misha.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Take it and make something beautiful.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's milestone driven and it's phases of development with gates along the way.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest, hardest gate, you know, Ben and I flew around.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: We went to just north of the Hamptons all the way down We flew into New York
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: and took a two-hour car ride to go out to North Fork.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: We went to Dice.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: We went all around once we decided, hey, we're in this.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: The Great Gatsby opens with the narrator looking across the We want
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: to do something cool and beautiful.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: We want to pull together our favorite game developers and make something amazing.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: But no one just shows up in a coach and like,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: writes a giant And so the biggest, hardest gate, of course, is the first one, right?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's get some money to assemble a seam and get off the ground.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: We did that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then the first year is harrowing because you're like,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: you have to sing for your supper and prove at every point
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: that you're making something.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Something incoherent, something exciting.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we've just gone through that and we,
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: maybe everyone says this,
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: but we exceeded every milestone and it's a great relationship that we've got.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've moved into the second year, which was another big funding gate.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that if we can get to the end of this next cycle,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: which is the first one was all about functionality and the nature of the game,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: The core gameplay of the game.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is, can we make that beautiful?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I very much believe that we can.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we are funded in a real sense for 26 people, but it's not a giant bag of money.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's ongoing gates.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Ben, this is more your territory if you want to jump in if I misspoke or anything.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, all of that was great, man.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I would say everything that you just said and probably add to that that
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: the 26 people that we have at Black Pony Immersive,
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: they're based all in the United States.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some folks up in New York and Seattle and West Coast and North Carolina.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And those people have real families.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: They left real jobs, you know, to come work with us.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so that demands, you know, fully funded.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're just like stoked to be able to provide that
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: and assemble this team that's like purpose built to make the games
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: that we're passionate about.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously,
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: we can't talk about the game because we're still early doors,
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: but what scale of projects are we talking about here?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Are we looking at AAA big budget production?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Are we looking at something in between?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know what that even means in 2026, to be honest.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: But give me a sense of what scale we're looking at here.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting question because,
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: like you said, I'm not sure really what it means anymore, Chris, either.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like games that receive $50 million in funding and $250 million
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: in funding are all classified as the same type of game.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's much more funding spectrum even below something that's like $50 million.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to be able to put that together.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think the most important...
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thing that we're asking ourselves is like,
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: how can we keep our goals ambitious for what we're wanting to work on?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: But at a proper scale for this size team, we're not done growing.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think we will project some growth into the future,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: but the kinds of games that we love,
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: this first person shooter RPG hybrid type of game that we love is really great.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an audience that loves these kinds of games that shows up for it.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it is not at the same fever pitch of like military shooters or something.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everybody's showing up every year to the yard for those types of games.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just unbelievably competitive, you know, with tens of millions of players.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: We have to think about how do we scope and scale our project to fit our team,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: but to hit ambitious goals.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that is like, that's enough work right there, you know, to keep us busy for a while.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just the constant, you know, back and forth that we have to do in development.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: We'll come back to the genre or whatever we call it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of those studios that are starting up today,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: the ones that I've spoken to,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: what they're doing is they're building this sort of core team of however many people
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: that is.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then when they've, I hate the phrase, but when they've found the fun, they scale up.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of the time they're doing it through outsourcing and contractors,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: sometimes in cheaper locations, sometimes not.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: How are you thinking about things in that regard?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's an interesting way to phrase it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I think video games are constantly figuring this out.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're an individual contributor or an executive somewhere,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: that constraint actually helps you.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: It helps you find what you're looking for.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: It reduces the noise some.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: It drives clever solutions.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so being a small core people who get the vision for the game and
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: that have worked in the space,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: have a lot of institutional knowledge,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: and importantly,
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: have a lot of creative chemistry back and forth, that only helps you.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: The modern take on external partners, I think, is getting better and better.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have real relationships with people that we've worked with in the past who Um,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: you have one of these groups that has like two or 300 people
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: and they've been working together for 15 or 20 years.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we had dinner the other night with a group that's in Argentina, uh,
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: that we've been working with and we love these guys and we,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: and for us,
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: You read that we're working with Ricardo Ver,
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: long-term creative partner since the late 90s from Deus Ex, Dishonored Prey.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Ricardo is our design director.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's a treasure working with him every project.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And, uh,
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: he went with us, uh,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: to dinner and Ricardo is originally from Spain and these guys are from Argentina.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So soccer world cup was, was like a topic that we kicked off with.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: But, uh,
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: in any case,
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: our relationship with him is real and these are people that work They work
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: on project after project who,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: if you give them a good enough brief and you give them notes
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: on how your animator likes to work and what the function of this character in
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: the world is, they can airdrop in a bunch of people rapidly, do the job.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay, now let's go to two or three characters at once and let's keep this going.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then at some point, we need to be smaller again, actually.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: at the end,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: you don't want to be a giant team because
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: then you have animator number five asking you, like, what are we doing?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing for the next project, you know?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, it's like you want a finishing team.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like it's fraught talking about the Hollywood model or whatever,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: but like, you know, we look at film.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: They figured out a long time ago that there is
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: a very delicate creative force here that's also very powerful and you need
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: the industry side.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like games ran with the industry side for decades.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes what gets crushed is this little core because You know,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: if that little creative core just answers to layer upon layer of group above,
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: then its priorities become lessened, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: So being independent,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: being between a giant partner,
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: having between us and a giant partner,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: a contract is actually like a healthier model, right?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Being small at the beginning and at the end is actually a healthier model.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so as you say, there is a moment where you need to scale up.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's the model that we're pursuing.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it potentially is good for creators as well as being good for business.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think it can work.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think the journey getting to that point is, well, we're seeing it.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's a painful one, isn't it?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm interested to see that how it will unfold.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Games isn't like films,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: so it will be somewhere,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: it won't be exactly the same,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: but it is a popular conversation at the moment on our show.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: This might sound like a loaded question,
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: but based on the current status of Dishonored and Deus Ex and Thief and things like
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: that, isn't the immersive sim genre like kind of dead?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that it's a loaded question and I feel like people like to ask it And
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: at some point you're worried,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: like, do questions like that create a self-fulfilling prophecy?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I have an answer for it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: if you look back through those games in particular,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: there are a lot of titles that people still talk about 10 or 20 years later.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: They have a lot of cultural cache, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there are a few,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: if you look at Bioshock or Deus Ex or Dishonored,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: that punch well above their weight class and make a lot of money.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you look back at Dishonored,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: for instance,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: the budget that we were working with was,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say tiny,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know, many IIII developers would envy that budget, but it was very reasonable.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then we, you know, our ROI was four or five
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, first of all, all games struggle.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's hard to make any game.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, people say, you know, 90% of restaurants fail or whatever.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's probably because most people starting a restaurant don't know what they're doing.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: That would be,
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: of the people who really have done it well in the past,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: what percentage of those people succeed or fail?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's a different number, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have a team of people with a lot of institutional knowledge,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: a very amazing group of people at Black Pony Immersive.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the real answer, I think, to the question isn't about this little subgenre.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's where our values are.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Remember when you were a kid,
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: maybe fantasy literature might have been very niche,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: certainly was when I was a child.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then at some point it exploded and it took over everything
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: and you wouldn't even recognize it, right?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you would play a sports title or a big shooter, RPG features have dominated that game.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all of those games have RPG features in them.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: some of the favorite features in those titles are originally
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: from this like super nerdy niche world.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like in the same way,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: the features that make immersive sounds cool have spread out I believe
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: in what we're doing because it's very exciting.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody we pitch it to gets lit up.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I know that
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Those problems solve themselves if the game is good enough.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I've just seen that over and over.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And yes,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: lots of things fail,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: but you know,
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: lots of people set out to make like extraction shooters that fail, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of people look at the biggest game in the world and they go to copy it and
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: a big percentage of those fail as well, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was just going to add to this that like,
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think the industry is growing in such a way that there are a large amount
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: of players with a really varied appetite of games of like what types
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: of games people want to play, what they find interesting.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it almost feels cutting edge to double down on kind of
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: the basic fundamentals of this business,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: like time is a flat circle in some way,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: but just to be honest with yourself that like...
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really know what turn the industry might take and we're probably not going
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: to be very good at trend chasing.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so our best shot here and what we're so excited to do is to rally around
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: a creative vision that It excites us as developers.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It excites the audience that we know will show up and wants to play this kind of game.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the best chance I think of making something great.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there are teams out there who have that same kind of passion for
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: an Extraction Shooter,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: like Harvey said, or something that's like a third person action adventure game.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's great.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the industry can support all of these things.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the order of operations,
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: the thing that is very important,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: that feels like it's been lost a bit,
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: but everything flows through it is that vision.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the thing that excites you and your team about what you want to make.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you can endure so much.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you're fueled by that, I think
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: through development.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, keeping the budget right is critical.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's gotta be.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Always.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: We love some of those big games too, by the way.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Our team,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: constantly plays Arc Raiders,
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know, PUBG,
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: lots of different things,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: even though we're focused on single player immersive sim type stuff.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is kind of a beautiful thing to remain optimistic.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: After 33 years of hardships in video games and great moments as well,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: we've had the most high highs and the low lows, I think.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at winning game of the year a couple of times or you look
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: at studio closures, it's all over the map, right?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I've heard people across time,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: very well-paid people say things to me going way back now,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: but like first-person games don't sell or RPGs are a niche market.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not working on a free to play game now in five years, you'll be out of a job.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: MMOs of the future.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: In the future,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: games, all games will have live motion video sections with Hollywood actors in them.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard everything and,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: a Imagine the lines never go down and we're all making games as service games
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: and they just keep going.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard smart,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: good people,
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: people I like,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: friends of mine in the industry and executive positions say these kinds of things
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: over the years.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: But what Ben just said,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: falling back on what you love and going with a strong vision,
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: it often comes through for us.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we got to do.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: There is a trend in the industry today, is that there isn't a trend.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: And you used, interestingly, you both mentioned extraction shooters.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Extraction shooters,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: actually,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: within that genre, it's actually quite a niche, until Ark Raiders did its thing.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And Souls-like games, yeah,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Dark Souls was well-loved, but it was never that big until Elden Ring happened.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And even Metroidvania's tiny little genre, and then Hollow Knight happened.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you've got these countless, you know, you can go into TV and film.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: Game of Thrones,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: one of the nerdiest shows on the planet was what became
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: the biggest thing everyone was watching.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can you imagine the surprise of George R. R. Martin going to these conventions?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love this man going to these conventions and talking to these people
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: that he would throw in a one liner like a thousand pages into some book
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: about someone's great aunt who did something crazy and some fan is there at
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: the convention ready to pass.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: and now suddenly everyone in the world,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: before they did not stick to landing, everyone in the world was watching that show.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: We had viewing parties.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like we'd have 12 people at my house sitting down in
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: the dark watching uncomfortable nerdy sex scenes and dragons burn people alive.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was like, I was like, what pinched me?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: What world am I living in?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, it's a good, I think a good thing.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the right thing, Ben,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: as you said, is,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: you know, Focus,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: the publisher,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: and Arrowhead,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: who make Hell Divers,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: have the same basic motto,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: which is a game,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: it's a variation on a game for everyone is a game for no one,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: and that if you focus on making a game for somebody that you know,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: which is the games that you love to make,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: and you do a really good job of that,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: You might only reach that audience,
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: and if you budget accordingly, great,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: you're doing fine,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: but you do have a chance to break out in the way Game of Thrones did,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: or Elden Ring did,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: or Ark Raiders did,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: or Hollow Knight did, and there's loads of examples of that, go on all day.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think very specific things drawn from what people know and love are always amazing
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: when they come together, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of qualifiers,
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: but I was at Arcane for 16 years,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Raphael Colantonio is a friend,
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: we worked side by side, we had an office together for years through Dishonored.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember people would come to us and tell us,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: man, to keep the business alive, you better take some contracts.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: You need to be working on whatever you can get.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And for a while, we tried that, even though it felt wrong.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: There was a point in town when Arkane was about to go under.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think we had four months of money left,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: because we wanted if we were going to end, we wanted to pay people some severance.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we were working on boom blocks with the EA.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: We were pitching to Ubisoft.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: We had we had a couple of guys on A zombie shooter.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: We had three guys working with certain affinity.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: We were farming people out left and right.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: We were on nine projects at once.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point, we just realized this is not the way.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like we are here to do a very specific thing.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's focus on that and let's go under if that's what is going to happen.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And instead,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: the result was Dishonored,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know, which was like one of the big turnarounds of my career.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was another great game that I was privileged enough to work on.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that sort of focus like I have friends at Question Games,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: a tiny studio who right now are working on a game called The Killing Stone
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: that you can get on Xbox on Steam.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that's where I got it, Steam.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it is written.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is a love letter to Faust and Shakespeare.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is so weird and it's so cool.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a deck builder and it only would come from the minds of Jordan Thomas
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: and Ken Strickland and the guys there at question.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like a crazy thing.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's an easy game and I love them for making it.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if you liked Inscription, you probably liked that game, but I hope it blows up somehow.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: But if it doesn't, I'm happy to have encountered it as an artifact, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do think that motto that you just expressed,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't heard that before, but it makes a lot of sense.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's smart.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: It is a great one.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: And also Boom Blocks is a brilliant game.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: You've both obviously created some of the best games out there,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: but the last title, Redfall, went a bit awry.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: What happened there?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: What happened there?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was a difficult project.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Arkane is very specialized,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: but the industry is growing and there's always more mouths to feed and there's
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: a bigger infrastructure.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing wrong with that.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when Everybody likes to get paid and it's great when you can reach a wider audience.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I understand those goals.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: When Arkane started, it was four guys in a room in Lyon, France, right?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And by the time I left there, it was part of Microsoft, right?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: But at some point along the way,
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: we kind of got swept up in the games as service thing and had the, I had the
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the foolish chutzpah to assume that, you know, it always works out for us.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: We can do this.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's take what we do and what we love and we mix it with that and like,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: do a day-night cycle and do different mechanics by day and night and,
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know, have character classes.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And in the middle of all that, COVID happened on top of everything.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that was purely the difference maker,
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: but we also had the great resignation where everybody went remote
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: and everybody started changing jobs.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, uh, I'll just say this about Redfall.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: We finished the game and it was very poorly received because the first version
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: when we launched it was not good.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: We then worked on it for a year and we patched thousands of bugs and we got laid off.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we had in the pipe, I think Ben, it was 1.4 was the version.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like the latest of like three or four big patches.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the one that like fixed tons of stuff.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we went to Microsoft and said, I know we're fired.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: I know we don't work here anymore.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: But can we please release this?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And to their credit, they did not say no.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so they let six or seven of us sign forms that we could come back in
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: the building and we weren't going to burn the place down.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And after being fired or laid off,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: whatever you call it,
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: we released 1.4,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: which I think if we had released on day one,
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: it wouldn't have set the world on fire, but it was a much, much better game.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're very proud of the work that people did.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the last thing I want to say about it is The experience we went through on
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: that long troubled project where I was clearly out of my lane and I was not working
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: on the kind of things that I should be working on.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some of my proudest moments watching the leads that I worked with and
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: the other managers and the people on
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: the team rally around incredibly difficult things like,
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: politically,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: there were very hard things,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: there were fires that would The government announced aliens at some point,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know, that there was a swarm of murder hornets that were coming toward Texas.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was like we had an ice storm that put power and water out for like two weeks for some people.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that development cycle, I'll never forget it.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And yet at the end of it,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: people came back together to release that patch even after losing their jobs.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And some of them wanted to work with us again after that.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just like, You know the old cliche, it's about the journey.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's about the golden ring and you really want the golden ring
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: and you learn from your mistakes probably more than you do from your successes,
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: let me tell you that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: it really is sometimes just about the experience together as developers trying
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: to do something really difficult.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is what it is.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would add to that from my perspective, Harvey,
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: you mentioned a lot of like punctuating moments during that development cycle.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes my brain thinks that way.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think about,
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: oh, in 2018, we released a conceptual prototype and In 2020, we did Vertical Slice.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think about like Murder Hornets or,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Great Resignation or whatever is happening in that timeline.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing I think was true,
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: like within ZeniMax at the time,
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: there's all All kinds of different company strategies and objectives,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, VR or games as a service.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the inception of Redfall really came about when games as a service was,
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: that was the prevailing strategy, right?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta figure out like, how do we, how do we do this?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: There were many projects during the time at ZeniMax that were going that direction.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Each one of them,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: or most of them, I think trying to find ways to kind of bail out of some of that.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: But for me,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: what I remember the most Harvey is what you said,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: after the studio was announced to be closed and Arcane Austin would be no more.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: People that had gone through such
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: an unbelievably challenging development were willing to continue
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: to push out something that we all worked really hard on.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And again, like having to sign forms and say, hey, We're not going to subterfuge here.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're just trying to release something to try to leave it in as great of a place
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: as we can so that we can spiritually move on from what we've been doing.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And to have that opportunity,
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it's an achievement unlocked for me in my career to release something
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: after I've been fired and the studio was down.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'll ever have the chance maybe to do that again as a producer.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the team and the people that...
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Came together there.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And like Harvey mentioned, many of them had worked on Prey and Mooncrash.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: They had worked on Dishonored and the DLCs.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Many of the core people there are now with us at Blackpony Immersive.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like when you have that galvanizing moment,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes even more through failure than success, that is a powerful binder.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that I just, that's why I'm doing this.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm in this.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm aware I'm out of time,
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: but I do want to end on an actual black pony note, which is a very general question.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: What's the dream?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: What's your dream for black pony immersive?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Blackpony Immersive is a dream in and of itself.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned earlier the highs and the lows.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: we've obviously had all the setbacks that every other game developer can tell you
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: about.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: when we shipped Dishonored,
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: I could talk all day about what great things happened to us in the aftermath
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: of Deus Ex with War Inspector and company.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: But later at Arkane,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: when we shipped Dishonored, Uh,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: we got to go to the Game Awards and Robert Altman sent a private jet for us and Raf
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: and I and some of our leads rode on a private jet for the first time.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like poor kid, small town riding a private jet.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, this is an amazing experience.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we got to the Game Awards.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this brave little girl that had sung the Drunken Wailer song
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: for Dishonored stood on stage with a full orchestra behind her.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're sitting in these amazing box seats about to go on stage,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: be handed an award by Jessica Alba
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: while she's standing there facing this massive Galactic Senate arranged around her
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: at the Game Awards and she's singing her heart out.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: There are moments like that that just blow your mind.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: At this point,
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: this is almost embarrassing to say and it shouldn't be,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: but in a few months, I turned 60.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've been in games 33 years.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a lot.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the military before video games, right?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've done a lot.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was in during Desert Storm, you know.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the dream for me is no longer just the gold ring or just surviving the tragedies,
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know, that happened to developers.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's pulling people in.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's mentoring them.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's watching them grow.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's watching a feature come together.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's watching that delight that people have.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: When they, an emergent solution to a problem, your AI does something unexpected.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Physics does something unexpected.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: That is a dream for me, like to get the game functioning like that again.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we have another experience that people are talking about in 10 or 20 years,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: like Deus Ex, like Dishonored, like Prey, you know?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that typically the success follows that.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Great answer.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Ben, Harvey, thank you so much for your time.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, Chris.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's it for today's edition of The Game Business Show.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: We will be back with more news,
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: more analysis, more insight and more interviews in the days and weeks ahead.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: To make sure you don't miss an episode, head to thegamebusiness.com and sign up.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: You'll receive an email every time we put out an edition, which we do twice a week for free.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, however, thank you for tuning in.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you could work on one IP, one entertainment property that isn't your
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: own, what would it be?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, this has been true since I was like 10 years old.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a nice answer.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's the greatest album of all time?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, you're going to make us feel old and kick off a fight.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: I will just say that I listen to some very old,
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: old man music, like I Love Pink Floyd and things like that, but I'm also like...
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Julian Casablanca from The Strokes has a side project called The Voids.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And Prophecy of the Dragon from like a year or two ago is one of my favorite songs of all time.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I range through music, but it's probably OK Computer by Radiohead
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: for me.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: So closely related, I almost don't want to say it.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: When I have friends over for dinner parties or we're just hanging out together in
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: the evening and we put a vinyl on and we're listening,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: what are we listening to most often?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think about albums like Love Supreme or things like this that are just seminal.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: But Kid A by Radiohead is probably the one that we put on the most.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I just love it.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Radiohead.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: PC or console?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give a weasel answer here.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: In truth, the PC...
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Concert.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: I am a sicko, man.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: I play games like Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Kud on my Steam Deck,
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: and I love taking those just on the run.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: The controls are pretty gnarly,
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: trying to dig through elevation levels and Dwarf Fortress and all
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: But Steam Deck does such a wonderful job at being able to control,
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: customize your layout, share that with the community.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Other people would hear, oh man, this is great.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I mean, I guess.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: You've gone handheld.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've gone handheld.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: You've created a third option.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Best immersive sim that isn't your own?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's an easy answer for me.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: I could easily say Bioshock because I think when Ken Levine's team is on, they're very much on.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was very powerful.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: However, I didn't work on Prey, a game done by.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Bioshock for me was one of my first like real experiences in that.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny too,
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: because like immersive sins,
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: the design philosophy around them,
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I experienced a little bit of that actually playing like Morrowind back in the day,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: and playing through that experience on console was like kind of a mind blowing thing
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: for me as well, placed into an open world.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: But Bioshock,
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think for a story and character design and just wonderful systems,
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: it was, it was great.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is quite a long quick throw around, so I'll ask the last one.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: What one piece of advice would you give to someone looking to build immersive sim games in 2026?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's interesting.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I had a call the other day with Project Shadowglass guy who was very amiable
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: and was really fun to talk to,
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know, because that's like kind of a very, very tiny team.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: At one point, it was just one guy trying to make an immersive sim.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I give him tons of advice about constraining down to one location
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: and doing things to change that location as much as possible.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's his challenge.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's our challenge.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I remember this video I saw somewhere online and it was this person Asking
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: the same question you just asked, Chris, to just pass her by on the street.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he happened to ask this question about what advice would you give in your career
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: to Willem Dafoe, who is just walking on the sidewalk.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the person did not know that this was Willem Dafoe.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, hey, like, what do you do for a living?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this guy said, like, I'm an actor.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, oh, cool.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what advice would you give?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Willem Dafoe just said, I don't give advice.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just do what it is that you love and go out and do that.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And like, don't take advice from me.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he left.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel similar.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: The industry just needs people working on the things that they're most passionate about.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's an immersive sim, then fucking go for it.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll play it.