Latest / The Game Business Show / The shooter that Tencent abandoned: Wardogs hits 2m sales in one weekend

Transcript

The shooter that Tencent abandoned: Wardogs hits 2m sales in one weekend · The Game Business Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're not transparent
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: and we're not honest.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what we're doing.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're being clear.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: They know I don't believe in work from home for making video games.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: They know I don't stand for that.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: They know I expect people to crunch.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I own that.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't try and hide it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: For the last six years, we've made redundancies every single year and about 20% of the company.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: This will be the first year we haven't done it.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: The whole team went, Joe, we've got you back, you can do this.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm there like, I can't do this.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Take the job.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm telling you, we're going down.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to The Game Business Show.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: This week's edition is sponsored by Exola.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you already sell your PC game on Steam,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: but having a direct channel adds a second place to sell it and
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: the two can complement each other.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Exola Publishing Suite gives you your own PC game store,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: a launcher with your branding and payments in every market you sell in,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: and you keep up to 95% of every sale.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Makes a lot of sense, right?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: More than a thousand PC game studios already sell direct
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: and you can have your own store, live in days, not weeks.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Find out more at publisher.exola.com or alternatively click the links in
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: the newsletter attached with this show.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of which, let's talk about this week's show.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So last week, a 100-player tactical shooter came out in early access called War Dogs.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's from a UK studio called Bulkhead, who are really well known for FPS games.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: They made Battalion 9044, they made the Turing Test, they've also done work on PUBG.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they've had a few owners down the years.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: They were once partly owned by Square Enix,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: before being picked up by Splash Damage and Tencent to work on
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: an ambitious Transformers title that ultimately didn't work out.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then last year Tencent decided to invest from Bulkhead and
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: the Derby-based studio faced potential closure.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was before they were saved thanks to investment from Hero Capital
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: and Team17 parent company Everplay.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Which is just as well, because Bulkhead has just launched War Dogs to immense success.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's sold 1 million copies immediately and has gone on to do even more.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many people trying to get into the game.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's been some severe server issues too.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just been a sensation.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good time to coax Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer away
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: from fighting all those fires to chat to The Game Business all about
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: the title's launch.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, Joe.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the show.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Chris.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Big fan.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: I told you before, I mow my lawn listening to this podcast.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: A very quiet lawnmower.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, congratulations.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: What a launch you've had.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You were telling me before that you're quite tired from everything.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the Monday after and it's been Just standing up a game of
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: that scale was not what we kind of planned to do.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it was obviously a lot bigger than we expected, which is great.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's just,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: we've had to be there like,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: oh my God,
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: DDoS attacks and like constant and cheaters and like all just different kinds
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: of things that scale are just bigger problems.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's interesting.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You had 1 million wish lists and 1 million sales like straight away.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we got to like 1.7 or 8 million wish lists by the time we launched.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: We had pre-orders, so the million units were we did in pre-order.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Which was really cool because I don't mind sharing with you our like to keep going,
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: we had to do like 400,000 units, right?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that was like the bare minimum and we've got to do a load of code of work.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was like, okay, the happy scenario, like this is good.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're okay.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's like 600k.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then this has gone crazy.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's 900k.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we're doing really well just in pre-orders.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we're quite happy.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think at this point, I think whenever this goes low, it's 2 million units.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's today it's going to cross.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're really happy, but we haven't had much time to celebrate, to be honest.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is it profitable already then?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was profitable, but like quite early on.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we run a tight ship and a controversially tight ship perhaps.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we live in Derby, which is cheap.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: So If nothing else.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: This reminds me,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: because I read your Games and Shop Busy article,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: where Tencent was suspicious of your budget.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't accept the fact it could be so cheap.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not necessarily Tencent as an organization.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: More like individuals in that kind of layer often track,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: are they spending more or less than they say?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: If they're spending more, they're probably just trying to hit their deadlines.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: If they're spending less, they're probably slow.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we were, we couldn't spend like loads of money.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: but that's normal,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: all publishers, not just specific to Tencent really, but yeah, that was one metric.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: now we're,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: we learned a lot over the last few years with not,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: not booming in So now we're kind of facing that, well,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: we need to do some hiring,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: but to support the scale,
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: but how do we not boom and not upend people's lives and then inevitably have
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: to make redundancies later in a few years time.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to balance that right now.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, is outsourcing then the option there?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the solution?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with outsourcing we see is so often that the only way
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: to make it viable is that the outsourcers will put,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: or Codo for example,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: you get one superstar and then six juniors
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: and they don't really know what they're doing.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's not always the case, but that's how you make it financially viable.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas what we're seeing is that with an FPS game,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: which is particularly difficult to make,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: the only one harder is probably like an MMO really.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And with it being so difficult, you can't just be any team and jump in and do it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're an expert team,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: like we are in FPS games and Unreal Engine performance,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: if you come to us and say,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: we're an Unreal Engine performance expert studio, we're like, no, you're not.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's quite hard.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're quite picky and quite demanding.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what we've seen is we adopted the gig economy to work for us.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: We've been quite public about it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really do work from home.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Don't really like it,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: but it's kind of not true in that we do love it,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: but we'll only take you for six months,
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: 12 months, 18 months, and then we won't, you know, that's how that works.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of works for everyone in that way.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are good problems they have though, Joe.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's where we're having to invest in leads and leadership and managers,
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: basically, to manage these external people.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're having to pay quite a lot to kind of be a bit more professional
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: than we were in the past, perhaps, let's say.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So what fires are you putting out then?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: You had such an influx,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: servers fell over,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: and you had some warning this might happen, but it obviously exceeded even that.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: For an FPS game, you generally don't have loads of queues to get into the game.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: But for a new MMOs, brand new MMOs, It's like, you will.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: But for us,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: we had an issue really early on with getting into servers,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: which meant there was a backlog at the queue.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when the queue had a backlog,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: it just meant it just got bigger and bigger and bigger
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: and we're just taking stuff down.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we basically had no choice but to do our best to fix it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: But really, we just stayed really calm.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was an amazing thing for us is we made a game years ago called Battalion 1944
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: that massively struggled at launch.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, all of the servers went down.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Everything was broken.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was just nowhere near.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: We were just a bunch of kids making an FPS game.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because of that really negative experience,
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: we knew this time around we had to invest massively in it.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we work with a company called Pragma,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: who kind of run our And we have our own backend guys who work with them.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we had a really, really professional AAA backend team.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what people probably don't see is
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: that actually it looks like small indie team in Derby.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: We have a hundred people and we haven't,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: we've outsourced some of our backend work and,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know, it's a lot bigger than people think.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's people over at Tencent right now looking at this going bugger?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Look, we had a great time with Tencent and this game wouldn't be possible without them.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's people at lots of the companies we've worked with over the years
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: as far back as Square Enix.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: We were with them.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: They're our first kind of publisher, I think.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone like that is kind of kicking themselves.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I'd say that like the one constant throughout that journey is my first year in
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: the industry was Debbie Bestwick and Team17.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And she will not mind me saying that we tried to negotiate and I was big headed
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: and I turned her down twice when I was both times was like,
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't have done that afterwards.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then this time she was like, if you do that again, I'm done with it.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: She's been very nice and very helpful,
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: but her advice has kind of helped me get to this point where I went through
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: so much learning as an indie dev who came through the British education system,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: the British games education system into university,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: into setting up its own studio and to kind of end up back with Team17 and
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: a British publisher has been a really good journey.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I wouldn't say Tencent specifically are kicking themselves
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: because I think they've got plenty of good things coming.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But with War Dogs, they pushed us really hard to make something great.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that was our time there.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, very un-Joe answer there.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's true.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Debbie, not to deep derail it,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: but years ago on Games and Shop Bits,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: she was incredibly supportive,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: very encouraging of me to go off and do Game business and had loads of calls
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: and chats with her.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I had a family tragedy in 2018.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: She invited me up to see her and spent the day with me.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely person.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: She is nice.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Scary but nice.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: She keeps me in line.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Scary but nice.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Told no prisoners, I guess.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: The iron lady of the games industry.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure she'd like any of these descriptions.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think she would.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think she would.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously you've been, you're quite known for being transparent and honest.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed that you've been actively encouraging players who have had some of
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: the issues to take a refund and then maybe come back later.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Does that level of sort of,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: transparency,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: that level of honesty,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: is that really important, do you think, from a brand loyalty point of view?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you think about when you say those sort of things?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite funny because I've had this sort of question a lot throughout
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: the last few weeks in Gamescom and we're not transparent and we're not honest.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what we're doing.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're being clear.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And right now it's in our interest to be transparent about some things,
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: but we're not telling everyone everything we're doing and we're not,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I don't, I'm not saying we're lying.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm saying that like the brand is becoming that they believe we're transparent
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: and honest and that's creating a new problem.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that if we choose not to be transparent or honest about something
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: that therefore we're Moving away from the thing that people believe we are.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas we've always been the same.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: We've kind of,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: my, my LinkedIn kind of not, I don't want to say famous, but famously divisive.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I get no likes in my comments,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: but somehow everyone at Gamescom has said, I love that post you did.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you could have clicked like, but in the, um, in the, like, I think there's too much.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this goes for the game marketing side as well,
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: not saying what you, mean and not being clear.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was something from Satya,
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot his name,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Nadella, yes, where he said like people should know what a leader should stand for.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And at Bulkhead and online, people know what I, they know what I believe.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: They know I don't believe in work from home for making video games.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: They know I don't stand for that.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: They know I expect people to crunch.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I own that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't try and hide it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean that we also didn't try and do the four-day work week
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: and make workplaces better.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: They know I care about my team and my very close team.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think with War Dogs and how we did this marketing approach,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: it very much came from not just me,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: but also Howard,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: one of our founders,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: and a few of our founders who were very frustrated on our journey from Square Enix
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: to now with people who have the inability to say what they want or
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: to hold themselves to account.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And with War Dogs,
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: holding ourselves to account, saying,
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: we're not going to monetize an early access is a kind of big thing,
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: but also being clear and saying,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: don't play the game if you want these things, because we're not that.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be upset.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people respect...
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: We knew that that 10 Reasons Why video, when we wrote it, we knew it was a hit.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: We knew that already.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But in many ways, it was like obvious.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: To us, it's obviously not Call of Duty.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Don't buy this if you want to play Call of Duty.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's obviously not.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think just saying it and owning it in all aspects of Bulkhead's marketing
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: and Wardog's marketing has been the way to go.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I wouldn't necessarily call it honest and transparent.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have elements of being honest and transparent,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: but I think that's a mistake to say that because,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: spoilers, Chris, I'm not giving you all the answers.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's a shame.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm here.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about that 10 Reasons Why, what's the name?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: 10 Reasons Why Not to Buy the Game.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not to Buy the Game video.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know what's quite interesting about that?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's made this tenuous thing,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: but one of my first interviews on The Game Business was with Arrowhead,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Cold Dives 2.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously they had an idea of what their game was,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: they had a vision for their game,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: but then they had this situation,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: which maybe you're in now,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, where they suddenly got an influx of Call of Duty players.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, oh, we weren't expecting you guys to like this game.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then they adapted their game to what they thought Call of Duty players wanted.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, they realized that was a mistake.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they had to undo it.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Move back to the sort of game it was supposed to be because ultimately people wanted
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: the different things.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess you sound to me like you talk about clarity.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Does that clarity help you?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, setting expectations, I think, and expectation management is really important.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we can't pretend that we didn't set War Dogs expectations really high and
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: that we said it's going to be a really good game.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, lo and behold, War Dogs is a good game.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: There are people at Gamescom saying, hey, how would you do this and your 10 reasons not to buy?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, your number one reason can't be that the game's a bit shit.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: That can't be the number one reason.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the game was good, so we were confident.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: But the biggest challenge for us now is that we were quite clear with the players,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: but they weren't all have seen it,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: is that we said we're not going to...
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Basically,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: you would struggle in any of our marketing or messaging in the last two years to see
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: where we say, listen to feedback from the players.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: You'll struggle to find it.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: You may say, like, listen to the community or, like, observe or things like that.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: But we know what we want to make.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a problem throughout not just Tencent from Square Enix up
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: to Tencent's splash damage and even Team17 recently to some degree.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've learned is each layer we've gone
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: through is people have understood like,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: we've got tougher is what I'd say and being like, we're not listening to you.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to listen to you.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to listen to you.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that makes enemies.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: But what we found is usually the middle layer of all publishers,
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: to be clear, all publishers and businesses in the industry.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: A middle management layer seems to really struggle
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: with having their position threatened and needing to exist and needing to control.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the higher up people in all of these companies again seem
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: to really like our approach in that we know what we're making,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: this is what it is, if you don't like it, Don't fund it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that has been rewarding us.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we're now sticking with that.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is it hasn't gone wrong yet and I'm sure it will soon.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll have a lot of people telling me I told you so,
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: but that was mostly my journey at Splash Damage.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of like, I'll try this.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: It'll work.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we've, we've.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you ever listen to my interviews with live service games,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I actually ask that question a lot,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: which is like,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: how do you listen to the players but also stay true to your artistic vision?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they always have an answer and it's always around You listen,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: then you go, right, what will their saying mean for us in our game?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we're in a unique position, right,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: where we didn't go,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: this is what the early access version of the game will be and this is what
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: the big version of the game will be.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: We were making a big AAA game and then had to choose to go alone and we need to make
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: a smaller game to then release it in time in a reasonable budget.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of designing a game and then Arrowhead being an example of how do we keep it going?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Or Grey Zone Warfare, another example, how do we figure this out now?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: We were like, What do we not do to get it smaller?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then now when we're like,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: we know what we're making and players giving feedback,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: we're like, we already have all the answers.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, especially when it comes to some of our balancing stuff in the bigger game,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: we have the answers.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: We have to keep building that thing that we're always building.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's sort of a model early access game in that we designed the full game
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: for years and then very late when let's just build half of it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: In the old days,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: people would put that as the first game and then the sequel would be
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: the game it's meant to be.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: We live in a live
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: service world.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: It very much is that, yeah.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: when I think of shooters and I think of this genre and you think of the games
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: that succeed in it,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: and there are always ones that break through here and there,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: but they still often And bring up Heraldimers 2,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: it's not the best example because I guess they're quite a small team,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: but like Battlefields and even the Ark Raiders.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone talks about Ark Raiders being a sort of small double-A game.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was a lot of people and a lot of money.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot less money than Battlefield,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't hide the fact that it was a huge project.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And here we are sort of talking about,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: and I know it's very early days,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: they all could disappear tomorrow,
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I guess, but you've got a huge amount of success very, very fast.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is it always a bit of a myth that this is an impenetrable genre?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's all I want to say because I think War Dogs has a very unique background from a team.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Very few people make a game like Battalion 1944.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: The game bombs.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it made some money and got us on the map, right?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it bombs and then you go, let's try that again, but bigger.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like no one does that.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's very penetrable,
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: but I think to pretend you can Being an analyst wanting to get into FPS games is
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: a mistake.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be an FPS player because the community is so vicious and fragmented.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I've said this a couple of times, people.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: War Dogs is closer to Mecha Chameleon than it is to Call of Duty.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: For me, like when we were designing War Dogs, it was about the social aspects.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at men,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: 18 to 40 years old,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of lonely or bored or underappreciated men who miss their mates.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And War Dogs' audience is 99.9% male.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean we don't want women playing the game.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: It means it's a huge demographic there.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what we realized was we need to provide a space for them to have fun
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: and do silly things.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And a space where a 35 year old man can still make a penis joke is kind of what it is.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we wrapped it in this military aesthetic.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think it grounds it and people can very quickly understand the rules.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas something sci-fi that you'd be like, I don't know how that's going to work.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we basically made a social experience
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: where people are basically playing digital rock, paper, scissors.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you buy this gun, there's a counter for that.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: You buy this one, there's a counter for that.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're just doing stupid things and getting stuck.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like everybody thought that all of the publishers,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: all of them that were with this said, you can't have team killing on.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, absolutely not.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: We need team killing on.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of funny stuff that happens with team killing, it's hilarious.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think when you look at shooters,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: people look at them in a different way to how we as players look at them
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: and their opportunities to spend time with your friends.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that is what we were trying to do.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: How did your FPS game show, the FPS game show, how did that go?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Better than we thought, harder than we thought.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was really cool that we can make something specific and bespoke for that audience.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Cause I think, um,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: as you could,
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love Geoff to come in and take this over because it was harder than I thought,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: but, um,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think any do better job to say, but, um,
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: the reality is that our pub very public and unfair,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: perhaps feedback to Big shows,
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: obviously one of which being some of the ones that Geoff himself is involved with,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: is that I don't want my big game to be next to an Asian MMO.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And because it's my big opportunity and it just,
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: you just get mixed messaging and then the players kind of dogpile something,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: but they never should have even been watching it, you know?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think breaking it up was really the way for us to go and Seems to have worked.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: If we faces it himself,
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: he said it on when we came on,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: actually talk about The Game Awards, that it doesn't work for every game.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And also you are competing.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very competitive space.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: it's all about everyone's trying to outdo each other's trailers and all that kind
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: of stuff.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're Capcom and you're trying to find a wider audience of Resident Evil
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: beyond your core base, then there's an opportunity there.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm a Nintendo fan, you can tell.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I watched the Nintendo Directs and it's great
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: because I'm almost watching Wall-to-wall stuff that I'm probably going
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: to be interested in to some degree.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I watch something like one of the more,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: multi-platform shows
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: and I might discover something I never even considered I'd be interested in.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: But actually most of it, I'm like, no, that's not for me.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not for me.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not for me.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: So from an audience perspective, I do find the big shows quite fun as well.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I do find the targeted ones definitely have a have a role.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to be in those big ones, right?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's there's a It's a prestige that goes with it and that
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: the FPS game show will never deliver, right?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also, it's almost a digest kind of thing is what we're saying.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: FPS game show digest is what it really was.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: We can come digest all these updates from all these games.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's a higher chance you're interested in and then move on.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the real question is if War Dogs doesn't have a massive release on
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: the doorstep, does it still carry interest?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or was War Dogs driving all that?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I want to do more of a festival type thing going forward and try
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: and have like a,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: some sort of paid tier because it did cost us a fair bit to run,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: but really just covering costs and then having a pre-show where a bit like
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: an opening act where you can for free pick those indie games of teams of one
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: to ten people that are making indie FPS games and go, this is what they're doing.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, still toying with different ideas at the moment, but harder than I thought.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everyone will be doing it.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people are.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: War Dogs.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll wrap up talking about War Dogs.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Loads and loads of players.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lots and lots of interesting engagements.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Probably two million by the time this goes out.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about how you might need to hire up.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: How fast are you having to move in that regard?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are you completely sort of caught on the hoof?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, our,
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: our scenario where we sold 400,000 units,
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: we were making a few redundancies and just slimming up, um,
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: for the last six years now,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: actually thinking about this now out loud, uh,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: for the last five years,
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: we have made six years, we've made redundancies every single year.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and about 20% of the company, this will be the first year we haven't done it.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's what actually happened was the first year we did it is we cut quite
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: a few people because we'd overexpanded and we cut quite a few people.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Adequate performance, warrants for generous severance is the kind of thing we'd stuck to.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then ironically,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: we did redundancies two years ago when it all kind of really started being a thing
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: and people were panicking,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: but we were like, guys, we made less redundancies than we've ever made before.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is like, it was like eight people in the end.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think We're very conscious of scaling up and upheaving people's lives
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: and also getting a stain for kind of doing this.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not something we want to keep doing,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: but we do want to lean more and more into the kind of gig economy approach of it.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've been doing is going, you're really good.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: We want you to leave your current job and come work with us.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you do 12 months, 18 months remote?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: If we all get along, because that often doesn't happen, right?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: We don't like how we all work.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're working together.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: We go,
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: we'll give you a big load of money in like a fixed offer to come and work for us
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: in office.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you can take like,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: you've got this trigger,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: you can pull in our contract and be like,
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like my 25 grand now, please in cash, because I'm going to relocate to Darbados.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that price, that number is going to have to go up, I think, but it's, Yeah.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I think we're not,
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: we're definitely needing to scale and we definitely need to support the code
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: of partners who did support us throughout, um,
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: the journey, but,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: um, we need people and the cost of code is so high and the reliability is so low.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: The best way for us to do it is to hire internally.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we're trying to rush in people who like FPS games.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's who we're looking for.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit more broadly before we have to wrap up
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: because you've brought yourself out.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think Hero Capital has a stake and Everplay,
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: which most people know as Team17, has a big chunk.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the rest of it is owned by you and your staff.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, isn't it?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: So is it everyone's an owner in it?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is it like a big partnership?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: How does it all work?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone, but there wasn't enough to...
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: It had to be meaningful.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same way we do bonuses.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Not everyone gets a bonus, but when people do, they get a meaningful bonus.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same with our shares.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: We actually had to fight quite hard to get a...
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Bigger option pool and take it out of like some of the founders packages
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: because it was unusual to have such a big one.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the whole vision is when the game does well, you do well.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we're going to be a company who says we do crunch,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: then we have to also say, but you get something for it.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Especially recently we've been saying we need to be like the Lannisters and pay up
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: at this point.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: We want people to know that like those people who do work hard,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: like that you do get that return and it is life changing.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, it's quite a controversial stance for us to have, but we,
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: there's numerous people who've worked at bulkhead,
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: bought houses with cash they've got.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this time around,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be really excited to see there's juniors who've been with us
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: for two years,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: three years,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: who are going to get Money again to buy a house or at least a down payment.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what we actually find is we have to coach them
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: with this is not financial advice,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: but please don't spend all your money on takeaway and energy drinks.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a new kind of responsibility to our younger staff
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: who are making good money and usually often money they haven't seen before.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm interested, you've brought up crunch twice now.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: What does that actually look like?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because it can mean different things to different people.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know somebody who's a much younger person that I know who started in game development.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And him, Crunch, was like, occasionally having to stay a couple of hours.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that sounds like you're on deadline.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's quite the same thing.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: But everyone has different views on those.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Generally, it depends what age you are.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's what we're seeing.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: The older guys are like, this isn't Crunch.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is...
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: But to do that,
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: we have to be very conscious and supportive of our own staff and try and coach them
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: to know when, when it's enough, when it's not enough.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: And what's quite frustrating is I find British HR I'm sure our laws quite
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: restrictive to wanting to do better things.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: The 4-Day Workweek, for example, was very restrictive.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: We had to get around laws to make the 4-Day Workweek possible.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when we try and do something a bit different, again, we hit blockages.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of defining what it is, I always use the analogy of life being a balancing act.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: if you ask someone to mimic balancing,
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: they will put two hands out, like they're on a tightrope kind of thing.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: But really, it's probably more like this.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And for the last three months,
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: War Dogs has been more important than a lot of their family lives.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: It has been, because that's what...
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: It pays the money for them.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: But now Bulkhead and me have to acknowledge that it needs to go the other way.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: So for example,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: everyone's pushing us to get console out earlier and we've just said,
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: no, you don't understand.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's not how it's going to work.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: We can't, we can't push them more.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're not doing that.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to release in 2028 when we say it's going to release.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: So for me,
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: it's about balance and helping people and making sure that they have a company
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: where they know they can say,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm tapping out and not feel like they're going to get fired for tapping out.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is that not because you're talking about,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: trying to bring people in and I appreciate you upfront and you're transparent
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: about it.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is what's expected of you in this company.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I always think about there's the industry gets older, right?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And people who make games get older.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I have so much less.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: When I was starting off in game journalism, nobody made me do it.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be clear.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, I was never working anywhere that sort of told me I had to work extra hours, but I did.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I did a lot.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I physically can't anymore.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I do.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Move my hours around and stuff,
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: but I have far less ability to do it now that I've got children.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a certain level of expectations.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it sounds like all sorts of different, how difficult that is.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's getting harder, right?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: The average age is 33 in the company, so it's getting harder and harder to do.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, just means we had to make an adjustment.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, we once tried to do paternity leave and give people 10 weeks paternity.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a disaster because they took the 10 weeks as they should,
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: but their partners, when it got to week 11, could not handle them.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't handle the fact that they're on their own with a kid now.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it was super consistent.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we went the other way.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: We went two weeks paternity, the bare minimum.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then what we said was the third week, you come back half day, just the morning.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't care if you do no work,
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: you're training your partner how to look after their first child together
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: and you're building a routine.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third week, it was like you do full days for two of the days, whatever.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then what we say is we're going to give you Three weeks to use
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: as paternity weeks across the entire year for the first year.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because as you know, the first two weeks are actually kind of easy for a lot of people.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: For some people it's, it's a
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: lot of sleep.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you get, you get, it gets a lot harder later.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, and that again, like.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that you can interpret that in HR laws,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: other people being given more holiday than others who are not in the same position.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you can actually go, that's not fair, but we're just like, sue us at this point.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is ridiculous.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to look at it in different ways when you talk about... You've always done this, Joe.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously you took part in Best Place to Work Awards when I launched
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: that many, many years ago.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And from the four-day working week was your effort to sort of go,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: hey, we're introducing this, we're trying this.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Even back then,
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: I remember from your entries,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: it was like, there's a lot of really thinking about this.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm coming up with alternative ways of trying to approach things,
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: just like your example there around paternity.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what one day I'll write a book about this when we're all doomed.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: But the four day work week being, it was never about working four days a week.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was always about working differently.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the snazzy title was four day week, four day work week.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: But really it was like, if we had, we had a great idea.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: We really liked to have like, look in the summers, we work in office in the winters.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: We work from home and having that seasonal flip of like, it's always dark.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: You never get the sunlight spending time in traffic.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's miserable.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just work from home.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: You get to see daylight a bit more, but that doesn't work for kids in the bedroom.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think just doing something differently and accepting that challenge and
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: to credit the staff when we,
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: we would like playing with their lives going,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: change the amount of time you're doing something and going,
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: okay, we're going to work these hours now.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard, but it took the two-way relationship of a company for that to work.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: The staff have to work with the company as well.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: But to your question before,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of people that may have an issue with crunch,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: rightly so, I understand, you know, I understand that issue.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say we are.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: We always try and avoid it, right?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't hide that this is going to happen at some point.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: They often don't make it in the door because we want to be known for that.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is a place you come to work hard.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you care about the work you're making and the result of what you make here,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: this is a place to work.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: You'll feel really valued.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't, you will feel slave driven and
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a constant to and fro with that.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we will check people's socials.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging, this should never, ever be a thing.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: We know that.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, look, you're not going to be happy here.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not going to go with you.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's interesting.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: You brought up,
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: in another interview,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: how when you told staff in December that, look,
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it was December,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember exactly when it was, but there might be some redundancies.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: You were all at risk of redundancy.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody leaked that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that was a good one.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: We said,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: if you leak it,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: it'll change the whole dynamics of our deal that we're working on with Hero
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: and Team17 and all these guys.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we can't leak it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And what was more annoying was we said,
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're going to do absolutely everything to protect everyone's jobs here,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: guys, that's what we're doing.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've got it, but we can't guarantee anything.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have a job, go look for a job.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you've got an offer, I'm telling you to take it, accept it.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: We know hard feelings, like, please do it.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: And, um, What happened was the whole team went, Joe, we've got you back.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can do this.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm there like, I can't do this.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Take the job.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm telling you, we're going down.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a Titanic sinking.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, it's okay.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: We'll fix it.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: We trust you.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was a, a great team moment and they stuck together.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: But if we hadn't pulled it off, I would have been like, guys, please.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: You've stopped the four-day work weeks now, though, isn't it?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: You've had to take a break.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: We've always been clear that it doesn't make you more productive.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've never, ever said it makes you more productive.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: It makes you, shock horror, 20% less productive.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we've always got an ambition Let's go back to doing something else.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the staff today, we told them they've got the entire December off, right?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, nice.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: But then someone tried to book every Friday off between now and December.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, no way, you asshole.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's balance this.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: we're always trying to do something a bit different,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: but at bulkhead,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: you have the standard holidays,
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: like 20 days statutory, but no one's ever had 20 days holiday.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: They've always had more.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah,
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: it's a weird Trying to work within the law and provide a good service to people in
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: a law that's designed to stop bad people, it makes quite restrictive, difficult.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Are some other questions related to that?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have like a net, I read something about a Netflix group.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is that thing still happening?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've had a Netflix, it's not Netflix, it's a Netflix approved camera setup thing.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: They've been following us for four years now.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: We always call,
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: talk about ourselves as bulkhead as an entertainment company that makes video games
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: and the video game is a vehicle for us to make entertainment and money kind
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: of thing.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yes, we make money on our game sales, but we need to keep people interested in us.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: So again,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: it's not necessarily transparent in that We're not showing people everything,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: but everything's on camera.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we can choose what to show them.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, we had the service go down on our launch day.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: The entire thing,
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: we had two cameramen in the whole thing,
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: just all night for like eight hours of filming.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then we cut it together and released it 24 hours later, I think.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're deciding whether we go with or have some conversations
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: with those bigger platforms.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: But ultimately,
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: we think we have more power and control
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: if we do it via this new YouTube Premiere system it's got.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really interesting, if nothing else, I think.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll just see, like, it just is hard work.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can't make War Dogs without hard work.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: There was talk about you being involved in the Hell Let Loose series.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Has that, I mean,
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: it sounds like you've been quite busy with War Dogs, but has that come to pass?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's no secret that we were working with Team17 and they have a big FPS game
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: and we love World War II FPS games.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't have any confirmation right now because we're only so many people,
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: but wherever we can be involved in working on a cool FPS game, we will be.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we're talking about it, but it's not like a, this is happening thing.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, just, I'm always down for more Hell or Lose.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was surprised Hell It Loose and the War Dogs were so close together.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking from the same publisher.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was a bit of a, yeah, I was, yeah, anyway.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's always slips and date slips and then eventually they end up in
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: the same window and at a certain point you've got to release them.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: But also you said earlier about competition and I think that a lot
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: of these players buy all these games and move between them.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's kind of nice to see it because I don't think
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: the UK has necessarily been known for shooters.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: trying to fix it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: fix it.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you go back to Goldeneye,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: I guess,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: and Rare,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: and then sort of TimeSplitters and the bit of,
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know, here and there and Black and whatever.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: But like, certainly not recently, but then there's you and then there's the Hell Let Loose team.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've forgotten their names for a second there.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Battlefield 6 has been made in Criterion.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's part, they're not the lead studio on it, but it seems like a little bit of a...
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think for us, like, that's one of our, that's our advantage, right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is you can make, we also work on PUBG, right?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: We have a PUBG team.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing some stuff there.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: The couple of times we've gone to hire someone and they've gone, we go watch the dream game.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, this guy's gonna be awesome on War Dog.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna really help us out.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, ah, my dream games work on PUBG.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, for God's sake, I think it's gonna have to put
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: him on the PUBG team.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, like we're trying to be the place to go and work if you wanna work on an FPS game.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Joe, I had that when I was a GI.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I invite someone in to do an interview and say, I'd love working for Eurogamer.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, ah.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, balls.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: It'd go eventually.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've taken up too much of your time,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: so I'm going to ask my question I always end with,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: which I know you're in the middle of sort of,
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: this huge launch and dealing with all these players and all this feedback
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: and all this noise, but where would you like to be in five years?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, that's a good question.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think the easiest answer is I want to be making games with my friends still.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's why our thing works is we've been friends for 12 years since we left uni
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: and made a company.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be making games with my friends,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: new friends come in, some But that's what I'd like to be doing.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And within that,
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: really what we're trying to do is this hard work period has made us a lot
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: of our own independent money that we can choose what to do with.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: We can choose how hard to work and That's what the staff really got behind
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: after years of being owned by different people.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: The ability to say, we don't want to work on that, I think is a really powerful thing.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Will only make us make better games,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: but being able to spend more time with our families and then make games
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: with our friends feels like a dream come true to us.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Joe,
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: it certainly seems like it's been a battle,
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: but congratulations on the launch of War Dogs.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be watching it,
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: as the numbers inevitably go up and down and do all that thing where
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: the emotional rollercoaster of running an online shooter game.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'll still be listening to your podcast, so please keep going with it.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like the fact you mow the lawn every week.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot to digest in there.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's it from us for The Game Business Show.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: I will be back with more news, analysis, insight and interviews in the days and weeks ahead.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can find all our stuff on thegamebusiness.com.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you can sign up to our newsletter there to make sure you never miss an episode.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that's it from us today.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you for tuning in.