Latest / The Game Business Show / Destiny’s biggest rival Warframe has had ‘two years of massive growth’

Transcript

Destiny’s biggest rival Warframe has had ‘two years of massive growth’ · The Game Business Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Four or five years ago,
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think there were some people in the company who was like,
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: oh, well, Warframe's peaked, and that's the top of it.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, as it gradually goes to the west, we'll have to start something going.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: The last two years of Warframe have probably been the biggest growth in the game.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Those hardware costs are not going to help.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's another one for us when we look at Warframe.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have this amazing optimization team.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you can play Warframe on your PS5 Pro and it looks sweet,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: cutting edge, and you can also play it on four generations ago Android phone.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to The Game Business Show.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: This week's edition is sponsored by Keywords Studios.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I find Keywords fascinating because for people outside of this industry,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: they may not have actually heard of them, but they're huge.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're in 26 countries,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: they're 13,000 people all helping studios build,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: launch and grow their games globally.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're all about long-term partnerships with teams,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: strong technology and connecting specialist expertise with with studios in need.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: One thing they do is they support game developers in making their games, they offer.
• 1:08
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• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: They do co-development, engineering, live ops, technical delivery, all sorts of things.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: The goal of Keywords is to help teams move faster,
• 1:20
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• 1:24
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• 1:27
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• 1:30
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• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right, now on to this week's episode.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: This week we are talking to Digital Extremes president Sheldon Carter.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now Digital Extremes has been around since 1993.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's made some great games.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's made some not so great games.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I fondly remember the 2008 Resident Evil-like shooter Dark Sector.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: The team were acquired by Layu in 2014,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: who in turn were acquired by Tencent in 2020,
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  SPEAKER_01: but Digital Extrems basically looks after itself,
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: and is today best known for the smash hit, free to play looter shooter, Warframe.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now I love doing these interviews because it's like stepping into another world.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Warframe has a huge audience and it's growing,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: they have their own events,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: they have their own approach to community,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: and I sort of love finding out what makes these games tick.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also really interested in Warframe because it's managed to get bigger at a time
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  SPEAKER_01: when its major competitor, Destiny, has had to give up.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now I spoke to Sheldon just before the event TennoCon.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is where they showcase new demos and updates and make announcements.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they actually ran that a few weeks ago.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: They showed some new stuff for Warframe and its sister product,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: which isn't still fully out yet, called Soulframe.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that game is a multiplayer free-to-play fantasy RPG.
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  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I spoke with Carter all about Warframe,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: how Digital Extremes operates,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: its approach to Soulframe, and indeed, how he feels about the end of Destiny.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hello Sheldon, welcome to the show.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Excited to be here.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually watched a few times and I get the newsletter, so I'm excited to talk to you.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, brilliant.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize that Warframe's origins were in Dark Sector, right?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because the weird thing about that game is I don't actually remember that much
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: about it, but I know I played it, I know I loved it, and I know I finished it.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think I know I finished it.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a bladed weapon?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Was it called the Glaive?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was the Glaive, yeah.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Warframe was actually based on our first pitches for Dark Sector,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: which was this kind of ninjas in space idea.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then when it got picked up by a publisher,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: they, you know, Resident Evil 4 was all the craze.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted it grounded in a, you know, Eastern European city.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, those are the days.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way the games industry works.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we still love that game and it was cool to make for sure.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the European team at D3P were not far from where I live,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: and I used to spend a lot of time with them.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, good group.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I used to use it as an example of a game, people,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: you don't get many of these games anymore,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I'd say I didn't realize they were the precursor to Warframe.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was the,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: not quite, yeah,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: not quite the end of an era, but it was getting close to the end of an era for sure.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're getting a few of them.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're starting to get, I don't know, I get a sense of the mid-tears coming back.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not what we're here to talk about.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: I get a sense,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: we're starting to see a few of those things,
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: like some sabre and stuff start to crop up.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I always realised how little I know about digital extremes.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have spoken to some people on the team in the past,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: but so much has changed, I think, since I last properly spoke.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: How is it set up?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: How many are you of there?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: DE was started, I guess now we're at 31 years ago by James Schmaltz.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when he was doing kind of collaborations with Epic on Unreal.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, that's when we started.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was doing Unreal, Unreal Tournament, the first Xbox Live Unreal Tournament.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The studio did that, which is exciting.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then we just talked about Dark Sector.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then after Dark Sector,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: we worked on a couple of games and the industry kind of bottomed out on us
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit in the middle, and we were definitely that kind of middle tier.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And James took a risk.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: He kind of gambled his last million bucks to let Core Group try to make
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: the original idea for Dark Sector work,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: which was what originally what became Warframe.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that saved the studio.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: it's been Warframe's been running now for, I guess, we're getting on to 14 years.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of sometimes blows my mind.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, well, there's about 500 full-time people working at DE.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, there's a...
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: A whole suite of contractors, part-time, great people.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have friends at Sumo that work with us from an outsourcing standpoint.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's actually quite a huge operation now.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's a little daunting actually when we came from such small roots.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: I have to say, I was looking at, you know, I've got some market data numbers.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're not accurate numbers, but I thought I'd have a look and see how Warframe's doing.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: In a live service world that is so turbulent,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: where people are moving from game to game and everything's changing,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: you seem remarkably consistent.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, at least from what I can see.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: What's the secret there?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is it just you've got this co-audience that just this is their game?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what is the secret?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I need to kind of like figure that out so I could write a book or have a great consulting gig.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, we have this kind of combination of definitely people who've been with us forever.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the player cake of Warframe players that have been with us.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's still a huge amount of players from,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, way back in 2013 that are still playing the game.
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  SPEAKER_00: So people, you know, for this game is, it's a lifestyle.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's their hobby.
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  SPEAKER_00: So there's definitely that, which is great.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that just keeps kind of growing over time.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I guess the secret is always creating updates that you feel like,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: as a developer,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: you're giving it your all,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: like that you want to make something that's really cool,
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  SPEAKER_00: that's going to resonate with the audience.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: But once it releases,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: being able to eat the dog food with the audience,
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  SPEAKER_00: having people playing it,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: and then realizing and being okay with the fact that we maybe didn't get it right
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: the first time, but we'll make it right.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And through that whole process, Just communicating, always communicating with the audience.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, that's what you're in trust with players.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: trust-based development is probably more our philosophy than anything else with
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: the community that we have.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know, they do word of mouth, they do so many great things for us and then it grows.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: we just had Destiny and I know that's a very different looter shooter to the one
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  SPEAKER_01: that Warframe is.
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  SPEAKER_01: But when you see something like that,
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  SPEAKER_01: a game that was,
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: so giant and suddenly it's not, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: it's still running technically, but it's like they've stopped with the updates.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: It just shows you, I think, that it's a very competitive space.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Does it worry you?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: from our perspective,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's interesting because Destiny,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know, there's a lot of overlap between the games.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: when Destiny 1 came out,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember Warframe's out for a couple of years when Destiny 1 came out
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: and it really, really hit us.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: When it came out.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a looter shooter.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's got, you know, tons of marketing and really great developers on the team.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Destiny 2 as well.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: For myself,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: it's been this evolution of,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: for a while you,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: you think about it competition and you're kind of,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know, aggressively wanting to, to try to compete with what they're doing.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And over time,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: what happens is developers from their team come onto your team,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: new people who you started,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: they, they learned what looter shooters are and how that works.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because they put thousands of hours into Destiny.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, at our studio, it was kind of a bit of a morning when they released that news.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: The news in our studio was pretty dour because of just,
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, just all the connection that you end up having.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it is the budgets and the competition to keep putting updates out.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's really difficult and every studio has its own culture and different ways
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: of doing things.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, seven habits that we try to live by.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's for the book, I guess.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: We have our own,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: our own strategies,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: but I can't imagine with a,
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: a studio as big as Bungie was,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: and they also had Marathon going on,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of different things, pulling them in a lot of directions.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So honestly, for me,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: it's more, uh, yeah,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: it's more,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: it's more,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I guess,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: sadness that,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: that it's,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: that it's over and, and, you know, I hope the best for all the people there.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's for sure.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm in the trade medium and there was a point in time where there were lots
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: of different trade media outlets and they were all really strong.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we all wanted to beat each other.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't want to defeat each other.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that was important.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And actually when there was loads of them doing loads of cool things,
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: That rising tide, everything.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: We were better.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: We were improving.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: There was a bit of competition.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: We were trying new things.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of innovation, a lot of excitement.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: when things started,
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: when one of them went down and one of them changed and stuff,
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: actually, the whole thing went down.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's why competition is so important.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I understand.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm sure Destiny was a fall in your side,
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: but also one that was ultimately good for the business.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, like I said, Bungie in general is just an inspiration to us.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I always find with games that have been around a while,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've done a few of these sort of interviews where I talk to people that have been
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: on games 13 years, I guess, at Warframe, is you've got these OG players, right?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got new players.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I've spoken to say,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've spoken to a bunch of these developers in the past 12 months,
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: where this is actually a real challenge,
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: particularly as those OG players,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: they get older, they have less time, all that kind of stuff.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: How do you balance the demands of what OG players might want versus newbies?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is a struggle for sure.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I won't say it's easy,
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: but I think a lot of times what you end up doing with core updates
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: and our big temple ones is we usually have a way that
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: the new player can get involved in that early,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: but then they still have,
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: they don't get to skip All the stuff that the OG players have done to get to the,
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know, to the end content of that.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I see.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they might get a preview of what's to come and a taste of why it's exciting.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then the players who have invested thousands and thousands of hours, well,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: they're getting You know,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: the really cool stuff at the end and that that can be aspirational or
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: that can be something that the older players can show to the new player.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Our community is definitely welcoming.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so they try to bring new players.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Warframe has always felt like a It's a bit of an underdog story,
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit, just in the industry.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those games that's been big for a long time, but not a lot of people know about it.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's changing,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: but I think that makes our players really want to bring other people
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: into their hobby.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you know that you're taken care of and you're excited about it,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: you want to share it with other people.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so new players, you know, it's not competitive.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: The game is not competitive.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of reasons to want to bring more people in and,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know, and get them involved in your clan and those sorts of things.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had a lovely story when I had the Fallout 76 people on.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Again, a very different type of game.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: But when the Fallout TV show happened and loads of people flooded into Fallout 76,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: community were sitting outside the vault
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: with like giving people items
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: and stuff like that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they can sort of be like, you know, Welcome.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Come on in.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Here's some stuff.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Come on in.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, we try to ebb and flow that too.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: We usually have like something new that the new players will,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: that teaches and onboards them,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: but then the old players get to do that because it's new content,
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: so they can still go and check it out.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the follow story is great.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that our community definitely does.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Your creative director is Rebecca Ford.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: She is, yeah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Who I hope to speak to again, actually, one day.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: But she went from being community director, right, to creative director.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And my initial reaction to that was, well, that's quite a career shift.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: But thinking about it,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine those two roles aren't radically different from one another with
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: a game like Warframe.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yeah,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: that's one of those things that I think,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: when I see lots of new games starting up and you,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: you start realizing if you're a live service game, your community is your lifeblood.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's all I've talked about pretty much since we've been talking and it's,
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: and when you realize that the person who's the tip of the spear with the community,
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: but is also working with the development team to understand whatever,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: what's happening,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: that kind of, I mean, I think On one side, Rebecca, I think is a unique person.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: She has a unique talent.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, you know, is that every community director going to be able to step into that?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So she's unique in that way.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: it does make sense when you have,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't a hard decision from my end, at least to say she's going to take the helm.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was easy.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is the thing that I always interested in is you've got creators,
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: you've got your artists,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: your team who probably have a creative vision of where they want to take the game,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: what they want to do.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: you've got The community that have a vision
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: on where they want the game to go
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: and what happens.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: How do you sort of maintain that balance?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I often look at, oh God, I need to look up this reference to make it clear.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember watching this YouTuber that,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: he's this really small little guy and he was saying like, can I eat all this stuff?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And his audience was like, yeah, eat it all, eat everything.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was like,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: can I eat like, you know, a hundred Big Macs and like all sorts of crazy stuff.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually the poor guy, like, you know, he had health problems.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like he, like he basically hurt himself.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: By listening too much.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: By eating a hundred Big Macs.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: The community changed him instead of him, you know, changing the community in a way.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that that happens at all for us, but I think that's maybe a cautionary tale.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what you really think about is you have to really listen to what
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: the community is saying And you have to play the game with them.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's really easy to sit back in your ivory tower and, you know, here's the update, enjoy.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if they don't enjoy, say, okay, well, we'll think about it.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to have people playing it and understanding what it is.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so that the community feedback is in context.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you address that,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: or when you do the next thing,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: you address the concern,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: but you twist it and you give them something unique and interesting because I think
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: As gamers, we all want something.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: If we give you exactly what you want all the time,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think part of our job as developers is to kind of delight and surprise, you know?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the surprise
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: bit, yeah.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, they fixed this thing, but they did something slightly different.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes, hey,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: if it's a bug or it's an exploit or it's something brutal you did,
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: sure, you just fix it and own up to it and say, yeah, we screwed that up.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: if you can,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: you listen to the feedback as a You know,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: as a kind of a horizon to look towards,
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: but you don't have to actually hit it pinpoint what they want.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you give them something a little bit different on the flavor or
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: a different twist, you know, that that can do it.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And while you get to maintain your own creative vision while still working with hand
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: in hand with the community.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I guess there's a creativity to approaching these things, yeah.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you see,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: and this is a very businessy question, but where do you see growth for Warframe?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're on pretty much every platform now.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Where are the new players?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Are they in different geographies?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you see the growth?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: the last two years of Warframe have probably been the biggest growth in the game
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: over.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's really, it really has been growing and that's kind of across the board.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, yeah, of course, you know, we look at new geographies as they come on.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think we just launched on Android a few months ago.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know,
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: you get Android opens a whole bunch of geographies and a whole set of players
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: that we've never been able to interact with at all.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people in the mobile space who,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: our version of fair,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: free to play is totally foreign to most mobile monetization schemes.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a bit of education piece there, but I do see that as a growth.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's still just in,
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: even in our core markets,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: there is a lot of room Um, for Warframe, both, um, on the consoles, um, and on PC.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, I know,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: consoles are, uh, the,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: there's a,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: a feeling of the decline of consoles, but I,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I still think there's a huge, there's a huge segment of people, uh, on the consoles.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, we look, we see what, what our, um, our player base is there.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: We know there's, there's lots of growth to be had.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's certainly a dark couple of months.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe months, maybe two weeks for the for the console side of things.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to be Xbox seem to be pushing back towards it a little bit
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: and Switch 2 is doing, you know, you know, pretty well.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it will keep going, I don't know, but it's certainly doing pretty well at the moment.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those hardware costs are not going to are not going to help.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's another one for us when we look at Warframe,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: we have this amazing optimization team.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you can play Warframe on your PS5 Pro and it looks sweet, cutting edge.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you can also play it on four generations ago, Android phone.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me,
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that if console demands aren't able to be kept up with or,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: people need to look at older hardware because the new stuff is so expensive,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: they're still going to have Warframe play,
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: which is a forever game that's always being updated.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a huge, potentially a huge opportunity for us as well.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Actually,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: I saw Jagex this week and I brought the same question up and they said,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: well, old school RuneScape, you can run it on a potato.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you can't quite run Warframe on a potato, but yeah, it can certainly cross.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: We laugh.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as we did Android, we started saying, hey, you're going to run this on a fridge.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can run it on a Samsung fridge now.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, so a tough time, but, you know, hopefully a temporary thing.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be optimistic about it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously you're working on something new, right?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, with Soulframe.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Warframe launched in quite a nascent life service market, really.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Soulframe is going to arrive in a far more challenging space.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: How are you approaching it?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Quite a broad question, that one.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things you learn as you do a second game that you're trying
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: for kind of the same Scope as something like Warframe is
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: that expertise doesn't necessarily mean you don't make the same mistakes as you did
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: before.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: It just means you can recover from them a little bit faster.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's been,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: the journey of Soulframe has been relearning a few of the things that we forgot
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: after so many years,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: but at the same time using that core that I was talking about earlier,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: which is just,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Establishing communication,
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: building trust with the audience and taking our time to get it to a point
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: where we feel like there's enough content,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: enough story,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: enough just kind of gameplay that when we release it to a wider audience,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to have its core.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of all we're looking at right now is we're building the core of
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: the audience before we go wider.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, that's been going well, but you know, like every game, it's challenging.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right, it's very competitive.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the fact that SoulFrame is multiplayer is
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: a really cool differentiator versus a lot of the games that we look at.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, we have a lot of things that we have to do to get that game just right.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're really excited about it.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: the numbers that we're seeing from getting into the business side of just retention
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: and engagement, it looks really promising.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's going to be more about,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: at TennoCon,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to show a bit more of what's happening with the development of the game
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: and kind of,
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: as we do with Warframe,
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: show the next big update for Soulframe and get people excited for that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll see where that takes us.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are there any advantages to having Warframe with Soulframe?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I guess you've got lots of people paying attention to TennoCon and that sort
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: of stuff, and then you can reach people that way.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Are there many advantages that you can do?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Many opportunities to get quite different games, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't a case of you making a similar game in a similar genre
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: where you might end up competing with each other.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're making quite different genres.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they are pretty different.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're right.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the one thing we have is that kind of like There is a,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: which we're discovering is there's a bit of a DE audience versus a,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: necessarily a Warframe audience who kind of like the way we do community You know,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: the way we interact with community, the way we develop with community.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that there's that core group that,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know, is just interested in what we're doing there.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the majority are just people who are more into action RPGs
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: that maybe they liked Elden Ring,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: but they don't want something that's so punishing and so precise and that love
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: the kind of feeling of You know,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: connecting with nature and, and doing, and those sorts of things.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, the advantage definitely is that Warframe gets us in the door, uh,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: in terms of just being able to,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: even just to promote it,
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: even with partners and those sorts of things,
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: the fact that we're,
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: it just opens up those,
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: those options,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: which I think are great and really hard for a new I think it would be really hard
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: for a new game to get,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: just because people are like,
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: oh, wow, this is the game from the creators of Warframe.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we'll give it the time of day, we'll cover it, we'll do things with it.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I can't say that it's not relying on Big Brother a little bit
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: to help it get off its feet, but it's standing on its own too, which is great.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's got frame in the title.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are there any learnings for more frame?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about making the same mistakes,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: but are there mistakes or things you got right that you're going,
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: actually, if we do it this way, you know, we might better get ahead.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think when you have a really experienced veteran team,
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: there's instinctual advantages in like,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: what are people going to react to in terms of how,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: powers and the packs in the game,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: which are just basically the kits that you use, how are How are drop rates feeling?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: How's the loot system feel fair?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those sorts of things that you don't have to,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: what we still experiment with and we still tinker with,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: but the starting point again is quite a bit further ahead.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that way is one.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then two,
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: is the feeling with the team that we understand that there is that cycle that
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: if you didn't get it right, you just fix it and you communicate fast.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, that's a really hard thing to get a new team doing.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's what we've learned and we try to take that forward.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I always think of Warframe and DE showed quite a lot of patience.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: There were moments,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: where perhaps the game wasn't in the best of,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: maybe shapes is the wrong word,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: but the momentum behind it dipped a little bit and it's like,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: no, we'll stick at it, keep going and we'll get there.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps maybe you would never imagine to be getting into 13 years and it being
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: the size and scale it is now.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny when you first start a second project,
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: when you start a project like Soulframe,
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you think to yourself like, well, what caused that?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd say,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: that was four or five years ago where like, oh,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think there were some people in the company where it's like,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: oh, well, Warframe's peaked and that's, that's the topic.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, as it gradually goes to the west, we will have to start something going.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the impetus.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened was instead,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: while we did start another project, we,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: changed our focus and how we were,
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know, developing the game, how we were running the game.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: of course, now, like I said, we've had a few years of straight, just massive growth.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it is really easy to
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: To worry about those declines and then make changes.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're kind of in this happy position where Warframe's really thriving.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that gives us the ability to give Soulframe a ton of, I guess, rope.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, time, yeah.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Time, yeah, to really try stuff out and to connect.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have this like massive pressure.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I keep hearing about with live service projects is that,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: if something comes out and it's good and you know it's good,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: But it may not have found the audience.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got that rope, you can go, well, let's just keep at it then.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually it won't necessarily come, but it might do.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think of games like The Finals, which is a shooter from Embark.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, Nexon felt that game was good.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: They felt this is a good game.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know we've lost all the audience very quickly after, but, you know, I believe we stick at it.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get there.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And after two years, it became a profitable title.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, maybe Marathon will go on a similar journey with Sony.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the benefit of what you're saying, I guess.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you can keep your,
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: even though we have that Warframe, I mean,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: we run the team in a pretty lean way that is kind of more reminiscent of kind
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: of Warframe circa, you know, 2012, 2014.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the pull of, you know, the team of everybody is to grow and grow and grow.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like, well, you know, we just have to keep letting it germinate.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, SoulFirm's about nature and growing.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll have a seed that we're planting and watering.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when it's ready, then for sure, you know, we'll go all in.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was true.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a period of time in the industry.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how long ago it was because I've lost track.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: I lost the ability to tell what is time.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a time when the idea of being a one project studio,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: which I know you're not, but the idea of it seemed as a huge risky thing.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with that.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the fun part from a studio perspective of having to,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: is that you really get to let people spread their wings.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I love, you know, uh, from my perspective, I love that.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love seeing people thrive.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this just,
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: we were just talking about Rebecca before,
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: but that's a great example of someone who is thriving because we're starting
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: a second thing.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's happened across the board on Warframe and on Soulframe as well.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's good for staff retention and happiness.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah, which is important.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is important.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it is, absolutely, of course.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: that's all game companies are groups of talented people and,
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know, keeping them together, they become better and stronger.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll ask one more question about it.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: How are you making sure you're not going to lose focus on Warframe?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what we've done is a, I mean,
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: this is the reason why,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Soulframe is still in its closed alpha and still,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the people that are playing it are just playing it from our website.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not on Steam.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: it's not wide because we're,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: we wanted to really carefully grow that team without hurting Warframe.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to transition slowly people and make sure that we were filling.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, um, That literally took two years and it's, uh, it was not easy.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was not easy because, you know, uh, the Warframe updates are incredibly ambitious.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: They have huge cinematics that,
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: it's like, okay,
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: well, like, can we bring, uh, Jeff Crooks is the creative director of Soulframe.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's also just a Fantastic cinematic animator.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, oh, Jeff has to come back and, and, and animate a few things.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just, that's at a high level.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of course,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: that's a trickle down to across the,
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the whole company is the teams have to jump in.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's good.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's good because then the teams aren't Yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Collaboration between the two,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: but also if you're kind of careful with how you're growing the other team,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: then you can get to the point where we are now, which is this is crazy.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have TennoCon coming up in a week and both teams have Yeah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Massive demos that
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: they can't wait to show.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you looked at the scope of that,
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: um, it really does feel, you know, that we have the scope of those two demos.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I can't even imagine if we would have done that, uh,
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know, five,
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: six years ago on Warframe,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: we'd never do like,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we're going to do like an hour and a 10 minute demo at TonnoCon.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: it's like,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: it's like the,
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: the volume and the ability to do both things at a high level have just come from
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: the slow carefulness there, I think.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Careful is the word I picked up on.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm running out of time,
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: but I'll ask one more question,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: which is the classic question I always end the show with,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: which is where would you like to see digital extremes in,
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say five years?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Five years.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, we're definitely on the road.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is the five year plan looks pretty close to what we're doing right now,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: which would be to have,
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Warframe and Soulframe thriving that,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the company has, you know, Not double where we are now.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've added a couple hundred people,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: but we're at the stage where we have two big live service games that people play
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: as their hobby that they love.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing that they do is they play our games.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're into the science fiction,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: space ninja, crazy stories, then you're going to go to Warframe.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're into fantasy and...
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Avenging nature and you're going to play Soulframe.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's that is our vision.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's our five year vision is to have both those games,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know, neck and neck with totally different audiences.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, good luck with it.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Sheldon, thank you for your time and hope you have fun at TennoCon.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Chris.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to Sheldon there.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: That is it for this week's edition of The Game Business Show.
• 30:30
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• 30:31
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• 30:31
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• 30:33
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• 30:34
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• 30:50
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