The Besties - Tackling the Backlog with Tina Sanchez

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

With Justin and Griffin on tour, we've brought in Tina Sanchez (@teanah), who has worked on some of the biggest franchises in the games industry (and even hosted a podcast with Chris Plante ages ago!). She's here to teach us the magical world of video game producing and how the sauce all comes together into a bigger, better sauce. We're also diving a bit into our backlog, from Yakuza 0 to Outer Wilds and beyond. Other things talked about: Call of Duty, Apex Legends, God of War Ragnarok, Stray, Deep Rock Galactic and The Rehearsal on HBO. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

fresh i got a question for you yeah i've been living in southern california for a year california is that what you said california yeah is it time for me to go full la i don't know what that means i love la like that it's just singing the song that's full la i love my friends no i love my wife no i love my dog her name is possible i love it like that yeah i that's what full la is right you put on the shades just being randy newman yeah you pull on the shades you go to work at like i don't know 3 p.m you end work at four you hit the beach i love it i mean i guess so i my understanding is there's a lot of driving yeah well that's why you start singing like an unhinged lunatic and that's why you show up at work at three o'clock is because you've been in traffic the whole time you've been in traffic the whole time and then you're like i gotta get to the dodgers game. Yeah. And then you like, you have to leave four hours early

and then you get there and then you're like, you know, that was not fun, but I love it. I mean, at least there's no like fires or anything. That's true.

You know, the thing that makes it all worth it is the fires. No, it's a beautiful weather. It's so beautiful. And also the fires are inescap's a beautiful weather it's so it's so beautiful and also the fires are inescapable shout out to great britain which is going through a heat wave that is utterly horrifying yeah the whole world is going to be on fire soon enough so i might as well pop on my shades and

work one hour a day do you think it's the fires just heard about how great the weather was and they were just like i need a piece of that i think that's the fires just heard about how great the weather was and they were just like, I need a piece of that. I think that is. I like that we personified a force of brutal deadly nature and just turned it into a real Pixar story. Things are going to be great. Things are going to be great.

Is there another way that you would put that? I love LA. I love LA. I love LA. My name is Russ Froschek, and I have the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I'm diving into that backlog. I'm Tina Sanchez and I'm coming out of retirement to podcast. Nice. Wow, very good. We have a very special guest this week on the Besties, a video game club that goes all year long.

And guess what? Just by listening, you'll remember. The Mackle Boys are on tour this week but that's okay because we've upgraded with tina sanchez old friend of uh both chris plant and i um and uh i would say a journey person of the video game industry at this point. Yeah. You botched her name. That's her old. She is up. She is transformed.

She has grown. She has expanded. I was just going to say she just called herself Tina Sanchez in the intro of the show. I did. I can't. Well, because that's what people remember me as. Okay. Well, what would you prefer? We could do the O'Hara as well.

Sanchez is cool. Okay. We'll stick with cool okay it's all good i had it right in the rundown and then she curveballed me married name you know i just went seeing a chance it happens it's something that happens in the game industry to married women you have one name in another game you have one in another oh yeah yeah like your mobi games page imdb like doesn't really exist i just thought that you would want to include the last name ohara because you aren't irish but you represent ireland so well you actually sought out a husband for no greater purpose than to get this name. You know what's funny is Ohara is a Japanese name as well.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So when I'm in Japan, you know, people think I speak fluent Japanese. Well, Chris Plant is working on it. So maybe he can join you and really sell it. Ohio goes high mass. There you go uh just to bring people quickly up to speed on who tina is uh as we mentioned briefly in the intro tina worked at one up was that your first basically first job in the video game industry

that so my first job in the game industry was at koei corporation before they merged oh i didn't know you worked at koei yeah before they merged with Oh, I didn't know you worked at Koei. Yeah, before they merged with Koei Tecmo. And I was a sales and marketing assistant. And I also did PR because it was like four people in America. Wow. And I had to, you know, pitch my wares. And I was like, come on, GameSpot, cover us on the front page.

We have water. You can swim now. And yeah, that was very humbling um and then i met the folks that went up and they hired me as their community manager back in 2008 before we knew what community management really was yeah did that role even exist in the world in 2008 uh i think it just i mean that was like barely started you might have been the first one yeah i think that's like literally twitter launched well twitter launched in like 2006 i think on cell phones but i think the website was like 2008 2007 2008 i mean it was before youtube really took off too yeah damn old yeah and you And you made quite a stand there at 1UP.

Yeah. And did a bunch of very, very cool stuff. Yeah, that place was really special because they let you be, you know, who you wanted to be. There was no faking. Just play whatever games you like. I ended up falling into the shooter category, and I covered a lot of those. I met a bunch of game devs through there and then when infinity ward imploded i don't even remember what year that was 2011 2012 when everyone went to

respawn you mean yeah uh yeah they offered me a community manager there and i was like sure let's try this um but it ended up working out and i uh when i was doing interviews a lot of people would ask me technical questions that I couldn't answer. So I ended up making relationships with the devs, asking them how they do stuff and how they get things in the game, and that led me into production. So I've been a producer since 2013, 2014, and I haven't looked back. I worked on Apex Legends, which you may know.

I worked on Call of Duty. I worked on God of War Ragnarok for about a year and now i'm working on something new i had all of these written down in the rundown so i could have done that for you but i'm so glad that you did it yourself because honestly i think it comes comes off as more honest and true to who you are except except that like humble brag where you're like apex legends which you may know maybe you've heard of it it's a little better right now game it's like making a gajillion dollars and isn't escapable it's insane uh ea did not believe in it it's crazy uh yeah not surprised there we will go into it but i wanted to ask real quick, what was the first game that you were producer on and not CM?

Was that at Call of Duty still? Yeah, I think it was between Infinite Warfare and Call of Duty World War II. Yeah, wow. That's cool. Dang. Yeah, I remember I was at some review event for one of the Call of Duty games, and we had a nice little reunion. It was like probably the, might have been the last time I saw you face to face. Man, are you serious? Wow.

Yeah, you staffed some review event for one of the Call of Duty games. I think it was Ghost or something. Ghost, probably. It was probably Ghost. Yeah. Being the female rep for that franchise was insane. It was pretty wild.

I feel like I can handle anything though now because of that job the thing about call of duty is it lacks all controversy and you know it has a lot of interesting things to say oh yeah should we talk about our backlogs we are we are going to talk about our backlogs i i think the plan right now is we're going to talk a little bit about video game backlogs and sort of just the general idea of them, but also our specific video game backlogs. And then the second half, I think we're going to learn a little bit about how the video game industry actually works from expert Tina Sanchez, O'Hara sometimes. And that's exciting. So let's just dive in. First of all, backlogs. Okay, so we're going to jump into backlogs right after the break

okay so video game backlogs for me and i'm just speaking for myself there's two forms of video game backlog things that i keep in the back of my head of oh this is a game i need to play form a it's out of professional necessity so game of the year is coming up or we have a besties episode coming up or something like that and i need to play a game because it's the talk of the year is coming up or we have a besties episode coming up or something like that and i need to play a game because it's the talk of the town if you will the minecraft of our generation um and so there's that and then there's also the man i think i would like this game i just haven't had time i think that's the like bulk of the backlog categories. Are there any other categories I'm forgetting in terms of backlog stuff? Not that I can think of.

I think that's the bulk of it. Tina, I feel like, do you have any like professional responsibility backlog games where it's like, oh, I need to know what the industry is doing? Or is it entirely, this is a game I think I would like and I'm going to play it in my free time? There are games that we try to play together if we're trying to understand a particular feature or get some inspiration on how other games did things. So we'll play games together like that.

But yeah, in my free time, it's been pretty rough. Just insofar as you don't have time. Yeah. Well, you also have a new child, so that complicates matters a little bit. Yeah, she's six months old. Her is sam she's pretty cool oh oh i guess that's cooler than playing yakuza zero but not by much uh plant do you what do you what is your general like oh i need to play this game like back for backlog purposes is it what is the like usual motivator

of like oh i'm finally gonna do this so i i used to have a lot of pressure to go and play big important video games that are you know i don't know the video game canon uh because hey this is my job if i'm gonna be a critic what what does it mean if i haven't played every zelda and then i got over it and now i just play older games that i think are interesting and excite me and feel like they are worth my personal time and like nobody else's when i when i do the backlog at this point i'm doing it for me um because i've played so many video games that the idea that i'm like somehow accountable to have played every final fantasy is just silly like that that's not helping me also just being real with myself professionally like i'm not a critic most of the time, you know, most of my life is being a manager. And like, that's a lot of stress.

And it requires a different skill set. So when I'm not doing that, I do want to go play Yakuza Zero. Because yeah, it's either that or being a parent. And neither of those are like super easy. So yeah, there's sometimes overlap. You know, i recently tried to play final fantasy 6 the pixel remaster and that lasted for about an hour um is that the one with the mechs it starts with max yeah and it looks great it looks great it sounds great the story is killer and then every five seconds you're thrown into a random battle yeah and there's like a fast forward button and even with that it's like well great now i just get to watch random battles and fast forward like no no thank you i'm good yeah um so yes and then i go back into yakuza zero and i break some people's

noses because they were preventing a father from spending time with his child which is a great side mission and i think i've only played one yakuza game so far and it was i don't know what it was called five maybe i don't know sure but it was very silly and lighthearted which i was not expecting is that does that run through all of the yakuza games for the most part i i mean especially yakuza zero which is to one i recommend everybody start with um yeah they're just good or not well silent when i say good i don't mean like oh the game's good i mean they're about their protagonists are good people they like want to do right by the world and they just seem to like roam through this neighborhood waiting for people in need of help like uh a dude is

wanting to propose to his girlfriend with a crossword puzzle but he's super annoying and she's like really exhausted and doesn't want to have to do the puzzle so you are like hey let's go into this restaurant and i will help you finish that crossword puzzle together and then when she goes to the bathroom you like talk to him about like why he's getting married and try to help him with his romance it doesn't seem like all the games have like a very human a humanistic basis to them where they like even though they have fighting in them and stuff like that the core objective is like telling very human stories about people yeah like last night i played a side mission where it's like, I don't know,

probably like late teens, early 20 something dude who is wearing a varsity jacket. That's like for a rival sports team. And the jacket in Japanese says something like, come and fight me. And he's like, I just want to be able to cross this bridge into my, you know,

to this other neighborhood wearing my jacket with pride without getting like the absolute shit beat out of me and you're like just take the jacket off he's like no i just you know the jacket means a lot to me so then you like just kind of escort him across it's an escort mission across like 20 feet but he walks as slow as humanly possible as you beat the shit out of like i don't know 20 people so that you can walk to the other side and then he's like thank you and then he just turns around and goes home the reasons for fighting in this game are like so so silly it's much more interested in the story it has to tell um it rules the setting is pretty cool too right takes place in tokyo yeah it takes place and i'm

trying to remember the name of the neighborhood uh i'll look it up but the the first i believe six games or i guess seven with zero all take place in the same neighborhood and the neighborhood like looks different based on the time so So 0 is in the 80s. And then I think 6 is modern day. And then I think the most recent game, which switches to, what is it? Where you like, a classic RPG battling system. You're selecting your attacks. Oh, I think that's the one that I played.

Yeah, which is also great. I think that one's set in sapro so i don't know i don't know which neighborhood that one is but i believe that's a different setting for the first time um but yeah it's i mean it's kind of wild playing through a series where it is the same place and you're just seeing it through different technology and different time periods and like a lot of zero in the 80s is about the gentrification of that place so it looks very different than how it ends up looking in later games because that area does gentrify historically in the real world so then it has to in the game too yeah yeah it's very cool yeah the entire story

of zero is about like a plot of land that the yakuza and like real estate developers are fighting over because it will kind of give them the keys to like gentrify the entire neighborhood i'm trying to think of like a another game that does that where you're constantly i guess zelda to some extent because they're always like going to familiar locations over and over again but not to the point of like oh this is literally the same spot yeah yeah no i i can't think of anything like that zelda i mean breath of wild hints at that where there's like or wind waker as well does yeah like it's like oh pieces from old games are here in the rubble um but yeah i mean it i

think it's like shinmu is the clear inspiration for yakuza and i think that's that's probably it tina what what like is there a game either that you're playing or that you're just like this is what i have to play when you know years from now decades from now you have the time to do it oh god um the last time i felt that way was when the latest halo came out and i managed to play multiplayer for a good couple weeks but it's weird uh you know when you're working on shooters you kind of like i dabble with fortnite every now and then which is insane to me because every time i start that game it's completely different from what i remember yeah like they don't even have building in it anymore so live games are

just like a whole new beast of whatever you expect the game to be when you go back to it it's probably going to be a lot different than you think which is funny you say that because you worked on a live game in apex legends yeah but it but that was i think a lot more stable than what fortnite does yeah i think team size has a lot to do with that too um you know on apex there was only i think 130 of us when the game launched internally um and i don't even know how big that team is now to keep up with what they do. I was going to say, that's so small. But I stuck around for like five seasons after that game launched, and it was pretty intense. When you ship a live game, your ship date becomes a few years,

and it dwindles down to maybe a couple months, if that. So you constantly feel like you're just micro dosing yourself with like launching a new game and and the stress and the anxiety of that and it's like well they like it i don't know um but yeah life games are just i don't know it kind of it kind of gets you to in a good place like production wise because you start getting smarter hopefully about how you track things how you work with people it kind of makes you uh cut out the the bs tasks of like going around with a clipboard and asking people what did you do today because you don't really have time for that anymore yeah uh was there anything outside of Halo? I assume Halo was a thing that was predominantly for work.

Yeah. Was there like a must-play fun thing? I played Among Us. I like that. I love that you can play on an iPad. It made it easy for me to just socialize with friends during COVID. Like, that was really cool. But no, I don't know.

It's weird for me i i only dabble in games maybe once every other month now because of the kid um yeah but you know i'm playing my game at work every day and then sometimes i'll start like i don't know destiny or something at work or borderlands i don't know like whatever the team wants to check out so i don't know, Destiny or something at work, or Borderlands, I don't know, like whatever the team wants to check out. So I don't really feel completely disconnected. I do from other genres, just because I don't have the free time to jump into them as much as I'd like. Yeah, that makes sense. I, you know, I would imagine that even with other genres, there could potentially be stuff that you could like oh this would be an interesting feature something

like that but you'd have to cull through so many before you would find something that oh this would apply to like a shooter or something like that yeah um i i think the thing that uh i don't know if you guys are familiar with jason west the guy who co-founded Infinity Ward. Sure. Everyone that I worked with that worked with him said that he encouraged people to play the most popular thing or watch the most popular thing just to understand what the mass appeal was. So there's always that in the back of my head. Like if, you know, Elden Ring comes to mind, I haven't played it yet, but I want to because everyone's talking about it.

And that guy, what's his name? Let Me Solo Her. Oh, yeah, sure. I would love to meet him one day in game. So, yeah, there's things like that that I've jotted down in the back of my head. But I also have a list of franchises that i feel extremely guilty for never playing for odd reasons that i want to eventually touch like uh zelda oh sure you've never played any of them no so what my mom bless her heart uh she thought that they were like a cult dangerous game so she never let me touch it or play it in the house or

anything and for the longest time i was like what is this i don't know my mom says it's bad um which is insane right like i don't know well it's also funny because you ended up doing playing like call duty like all shooter games which are i think more traditionally parents freak out about. She handed me Mortal Kombat. I'm not joking. So I don't know what that disconnect was. Yeah, wow. This explains so much about your taste in video games. I loved it.

I feel like, you know, we did a podcast for however many years, and this could have just helped me understand so much right away of what you're looking for. Go back to the beginning. You're like, why do I like understand so much right away of what you're looking for go back to the beginning you're like why do i like violence so much uh maybe because the first thing i ever did in a video game was rip someone's spine out yeah yeah that was crazy i don't i don't know why she let me play that um skyrim i felt bad about too just because it followed me on every platform for a while. Yeah. I was like, I'll play it.

And then, you know, it'd come out on the new thing. I'm like, yeah, I'll play it. And then I don't know why I never got to it. I have that same thing with Skyrim where I've only played a few hours of it here and there. Because it's just not the type of game that personally interests me. not the type of game that personally interests me. But yet you like download it on a new platform and then you see it next to all these other interesting new games that people are talking about.

Yeah. It's like, yeah, I could play that. Or I could play Elden Ring. Yeah, the new thing. Yeah. Or I could play Yakuza, you know, the greatest, sweetest ode to the joy of humanity like that's that's what i want when a game is that popular it feels like ubiquitous or universal and it's like easy to

forget yeah some people just don't like that type of game like wow like you know i'm sure like maybe 60 of people in the world are huge fans of it. There's still a percentage that just, like, aren't. And that's, like, chill. I wanted to say that the greatest thing that's ever happened to my backlog is the Steam Deck. Yes. Which I genuinely feel bad about constantly bringing up because it's, I think, mentioned probably in every episode of The Besties since it arrived in my house but because yeah i feel bad just because there are so few in the wild there's i want to say like i don't know 60,000 of

them in total out there it seems like but more and more are shipping every day but because since the uh steam deck arrived uh i remember i was talking about hey what are some games that i would play once it actually shows up and i gave some examples but i was a little bit worried that maybe i wouldn't have the time or the interest to go back to playing playing an old game but since it arrived i have definitely been using it for that and most recently just finished outer wilds which is a game that is one of the greatest games I've ever played unquestionably an incredible incredible game and I'm so so happy that I was finally

able to play it on a very cool platform for it actually I don't know if you guys have experience with that game at all but it's the best. The Steam Deck feels like it changed my like video game life. Yeah.

Which I don't know. It feels hyperbolic. But I think of the stuff that I've played just in the past few months since it's come out. I mean, Yakuza being a perfect example. I didn't realize how many games I've really wanted to get into that I just couldn't because the time investment that would be required to sit in front of a computer, especially with having a kid.

I mean, Tina, I think the Steam Deck, you would love it so much. Are there any in the office? Have you seen any of them? No, so we don't have any in the office, but we all ordered them. I believe my coworkerworker got one but i haven't looked at his yet but um yeah i'm still waiting on mine i think i get mine in december

or something oh yeah one of the later arrivals i mean it's dynamite it's great it's exactly like you know we all had that moment when whenever an indie game that we wanted to play on switch was announced or something like that uh you know you'd have to wait an extra year for it to actually come to switch and now all of those games are just like there and all the games that i already owned on steam are there um so it is kind of a game changer for me uh and so yeah outer wilds was just like such a special experience. Man, Tina, you haven't played it, right? It's one of those games that like would be the opposite of useful for you because there is no analog to really any other game maybe ever. It's just like a totally different kind of thing

that so few other games have even attempted um the only other games that like spring to mind are like a little bit the witness and a little bit uh a more recent game which was the forgotten city which we talked about on besties a while back uh doing like the time loop thing but wow uh really spectacular and i i don't even know how to talk about it because uh everyone should really strive to to play it and um figure it out for themselves because it's similar to tunic like one of the most satisfying experiences i've had playing a game and not looking anything up and just sort of piecing it together um it's been sick i yeah and then i think the next game for my backlog is probably dark souls 2 which is a dark souls game i never played i played them all except for that one did you

skip it just because you were like i'm a cool kid it was just a time thing i remember when we were talking about it i actually think it well i didn't fully skip it i remember playing a few hours when it first came out and i actually think it jokingly won besties uh that year because new york giraffe stepped in to vote for it but it i just like it was before the souls franchise has had clicked for me like before i had really gotten into dark souls one so i didn't really fully understand the draw or why people loved it and now that i get it like i've played every, you know, Elden Ring and all the Souls games and Bloodborne. I like just want more of that. And it is more of that.

I know it's not like the best of more of that, but it's I'm sure very good. And I know you like it. Oh, yeah. I mean, I love it. I feel like I have a i don't know a nostalgia or a special connection with it it came out when i was at maddie thorson's house um and like the creator of celeste and towerfall and a ton of game developers lived in this house wasn't just maddie and to be in a room with just some of the smartest indie developers i've ever

met and see them explaining like what works in that game and like what's exciting about it kind of in real time as they were playing it for the first time oh that's cool it was just so cool yeah uh it was just like kind of kismet and that i was there for the launch of tower fall for a story i was doing um but because that i yeah i think it just has like kind of a special place in my heart it's it's funny i i've done one episode of the eight four podcast which is recorded in japan very talented team out there uh and i was visiting for tgs and i appeared on a one of their episodes and i remember them talking about dark souls and I remember them talking about Dark Souls, and I remember them talking about how amazing it is

and how great it is, and I remember me jumping in and being like, yeah, but it's like slow, and like everything you want to do, you have like the sword takes forever to swing. I just don't get it. And so like if you want to scrub back and find that episode,

you can hear me sounding like an asshole, but now I get it. Yeah, yeah. Tina, for you with your backlog, back and find that episode you can hear me sounding like an asshole but now i get it yeah yeah tina for you with your backlog i mean do you feel with like living games and especially since you know they're kind of a part of your life i mean call of duty before that was even a thing with the way it did it's like dlc rollouts and everything do you feel it like one working on that stuff to having to study it for work that it kind of reduces the number of games in general that you get to play because they eat

just so much time it definitely does when your game's about to ship that particular year because you're just you know focused completely on getting the game done so there isn't much time in the day for anything else really um you know and that's a part of like the whole crunch culture that people talk about um yeah i was just thinking back to when demon souls 2 came out and that was in 2014 which was i think the ship year for infinite warfare and uh i remember wanting to play it but just did not realize you know that january to december happened it felt like it felt like a jumanji you know a moment where you're robin williams and you're like what year is it like what happened oh my god it's crazy uh i think we're going to

talk a little bit about uh your experience uh in bit. Sure. But anything else you all wanted to mention, our current backlogs, anything else you are looking forward to playing? I mean, Final Fantasy VII Remake is up there. People have been asking us to play, is that Deep Rock Galactic? Oh, Deep Rock Galactic. Oh, I've played that. That's fun.

Yeah? Oh, my gosh. Tina gosh you're tina you're gonna make our audience so mad because they have been asking us to play this for like i don't know two years and you come and you're like yeah you know i played this and that but not a lot you know making time where i can oh i've also played the game that you should have played i put hours into that game uh it's like it's a co-op game so you know it's multiplayer so yeah it's it was i had an excuse to play it oh damn okay should we play it yeah i guess we'll play it at one point okay i mean yeah it's gonna be a slower year so i think maybe on a resties we'll we'll jump into

deep rock yeah i mean it's charming like there's four It's funny. So there's a hub before you start the mission that you're going on. And there's a bar at the hub. And I learned through being a jerk that if you drink enough beers, you get really drunk before a mission. You're like screens a little bit distorted and everything's like moving around weird. And that's fun. I don't know. It's just a silly game. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds dope. I've seen video of it it does look very good uh should we should we learn about how the video game bread is made oh my god what is what is the video game bread coming

coming coming at you right after this break okay tina yeah so you're gonna sort of uh be the star of this segment because obviously chris point and i have only covered the video game industry we have not uh worked in it and i think we have i i will say i have a lot of questions specifically about like the day-to-day especially in the role that you're in which is a producer now a lead producer yeah and how producers sort of fit in to you know i think the traditional people know obviously the artists and the designers and stuff like that but how our producer sort of makes all that glue kind of work and maybe you could start like early in the process obviously you y'all are working on a game that you can't speak about the actual game but it's still relatively early in development um how does it start like early on

in a project um so one person or many persons have a general idea for a game and it's sort of written down on paper we call it paper design so they have this high level goal that they want to hit either for story setting uh gameplay mechanics um you know it's kind of like everything anything's possible at that point um well let me ask you for as a specific example do you know like what the high level goal would be for like an apex for example a funny story about that uh we were working on another game that people wanted and then we pivoted to apex legends i think a couple months while i was on the project so there's that oh also i'm not beholden to any uh publisher or pr person i'm kind of like uh independent right now because i work at gravity

well and we're not owned by anybody so ask me anything uh how did that feel getting moved off of that project um i was a little nervous at first but uh when our leadership came to us and said look like there's no one really competing with fortnight everyone's telling us we're crazy we gotta fucking do this like we all agreed like yeah we gotta fucking do this i mean there was a little bit of like a little bit of fear in the back of our heads because we're a super small team but um i think the more we played it the more fun we had and play testing is really key in game development because, especially multiplayer, like when you're playing as a group of friends and it feels like a LAN party and you're enjoying yourselves, you know that you have something good on your hands. Was it as simple as like it started out as like, hey, we know there's a need for, you know, a Fortnite competitor that's like an actual first person shooter with like titanfall

mechanics like um so the the core set of game devs that worked on apex and titanfall and call it and started call of duty um they have a particular method that's very different from other game studios that i've seen in terms of developing games. And that is prototyping in very small doses and very quickly. So nothing's polished and ready for people to view outside of the office, but at least you get to physically hold the controller, play something you think might be interesting, and then we decide if it's worth pursuing or not. So a designer prototyped what became Apex Legends and he asked us to playtest it for multiplayer. And then we realized that it was a lot more fun than we expected.

At the time, I think all Battle Royales were in beta, which meant that they weren't polished. They didn't really feel good all the time because, you know, they're still in development. Um, so there was definitely a window for shipping something that was done, you know, in, in the sense that there's not going to be some like huge janky bugs impacting your, uh, experience. Yeah, it, it did seem like it came out actually pretty smoothly i remember first hearing about it and being like oh that's an interesting job free to play uh titanfall that's an interesting choice and then realizing very quickly the second we put our hands on it that it was oh this is like a very different thing i guess working on that game where was your

focus specifically as part of the like development cycle uh so i joined as a uh single player producer but then became when even the game uh that we were shipping changed and see how that's a problem yeah uh i became just like a general producer. There was three of us. It was me and two associate producers. And I ended up producing everything but environment, art, and art outsourcing, and then design day to day. But I mostly worked with nearly every dev at one point for Apex. Wow.

Yeah. And when you say producing, sorry to like boil it down is it a like you know you obviously know what the goals of the project are right you need you know x y and z done at a certain time or you know what you're working towards is it a matter of like project management and also just like checking in with people and making sure people are on target? Like how does that sort of work out? Yeah. So it's a bit of project management and scheduling. Um, it feels like Tetris on that side because, you know, even though something may

take a day for somebody, uh, the person that's after them may need it, you know, much sooner or later than anticipated. So you kind of try to line up the tasks on every department so that there's a clean start and finish date and handoff point. So we don't want to hand something off and then have it just sitting there for like weeks or months. You want to make sure that it's fresh and that people play test it and that we're continually changing things as needed. So on the project management side, yeah, that was a little bit like a game in itself. But there's also a very human element to production.

I like to tell people that I'm sort of like a wedding planner for game devs, where they come to me and tell me what their like dream, you know, feature is or whatever they want in the game. And then I let them know what departments are going to be needed to get it done uh i work with the leads of those departments to see who will be doing the work and then i kind of like make sure that it all happens for them um i think that's the the high level gist of what a what i do as production and i guess the question is are there also like meetings directly between members that like you're not aware of and end up like screwing up that entire process um those are kind of uh yeah they're like an artist and a designer meet in the background yeah no we're gonna do this shit yeah we call those the like water cooler moments

where you're in a hallway and then they just decide oh this would be fucking cool and then they run with it um yeah uh that happens sometimes but uh for that team you definitely don't want to stop that process because that's where like some of the secret sauce comes from is in those in those moments sparks of inspiration so um the team got really good about just letting me know if any of that happened. And I also had weekly meetings with all the leads of each department, like code, design, art, animation, just to make sure that we were on top of anything. And then to let I let them know if I heard of any of those changes myself. Because in a huge team like Call of Duty, or even, you know, like a God of War, it's possible that one of those sparks in conversation happened. But another, you know, audio could be still working on that feature that you guys decided

to pivot on. And then it's a waste of work, right? So as a producer, you want to try to make sure that doesn't happen yeah it seems like you know the big areas that i always get sort of mind blown regarding the games industry is obviously there are a lot of departments and game development can last a very long time it seems like certain departments would i guess struggle to fill certain parts of that game development process with stuff like just narrative, for example. So the narrative department in a single-player game or even a multiplayer game, I would imagine you hit these points where they just have filled in what the next year of narrative is going to be.

And they could certainly start working on the year in front of them or the year ahead of that. But I would imagine at a certain point they kind of run out so what do you do with the narrative department yeah when they're twiddling their thumbs um yeah that does happen sometimes with departments um when that happens we or at least i i've encouraged them to continue being in those meetings being present during play tests because there is the high chance, especially in a multiplayer game, that whatever we change or adjust, that could significantly impact narrative in some way if they wanted it to. So, I mean, the more information each developer has, the better, because then they make sound decisions when they're working on their thing um so we always try to keep people included even if they don't have work in front of them

yeah have you ever like let's use a narrative department as an example like hey it's a little bit of a slow time for them i'm just gonna give them a blank spreadsheet and tell them to write 5 000 barks and then and like they're not actually for anything but like i'm gonna tell them to write 5,000 barks. Good. And then, and, like, they're not actually for anything, but, like, I'm going to tell them we need it by Friday. What is a bark, Chris Plant? Explain what that is. A bark, correct me if I'm wrong here, Tina, a bark is, like, when it's like, hey, hey, you,

hey, you over there, hey, guy. Like, just, like, the generic lines that, like, you have to have a gajillion of them. General chatter. Yes. Yes. Yeah. You could do that. But I think what makes,

I think what makes the game is that this group of devs, now that they're all kind of scattered to the window, but what makes them special is that they accept and encourage feedback from every part of the studio, no matter what you do. And then they take that seriously. So even if you don't have like, you know, a thousand lines to write, they want you to play the game and spend all of your time playing the game and giving feedback. That's cool. Yeah. So there's always something to do. How has it been different being independent versus like, you know, being at these other at these other studios, Sony and Respawn?

It's kind of wild. You've been at Activision, EA, and Sony. And by proxy, I guess Microsoft through Activision now. Yeah. It's interesting. It's interesting. At Infinity Ward, they allowed you to expand outside of your day-to-day responsibilities with whatever you could get done, just do it attitude because the COD deadline can't move. Right. um you know because of that um and i felt like i learned a lot uh while i was there at a respawn there was a little bit more of like well you're a producer we don't really know what you do but

we know you're important so show us what you got and that was cool uh because the team is really lean they like to i think titanfall was made with like 80 people yes the cod 4 was made with like 80 people. Yeah. The COD 4 was made with like 60, 70 people. So they love running lean. And then on God of War, my God, that studio, Santa Monica Studios was like 350 people internal, I think. Yeah, they're enormous. I was one of 40-something producers. And you came into that, the game was already in production when you

joined is that right or was it still early um yeah it was already in production i think i would say it was like a year maybe a year and a half in maybe and is that like harder for you like to sort of jump into something that's already in the works or easier um it Uh, I would say it's easier on the project management side only because everyone knows what they're doing. They know what they need to do to get the game done. So it's a matter of figuring out time and dealing with the human element of like, whether someone feels inspired to work that day, or if they're feeling a little bit sad and trying to like encourage them to do their best. When you're at the start of a project like I am now, there is no real serious deadline ahead of you other than let's just figure out what we want to do. So there's less stress in the sense that, you know, you have to ship something soon soon but there's also a little bit of a more

terrifying moment in the back of your head you're like oh god what are we doing and is it going to be good uh so yeah there's like ebbs and flows to it um well it is funny you mentioned that because i know you guys already secured a publisher that's correct yeah uh a north american uh large north american publishers but you're on the website i would imagine a large so many of them i would imagine a large north american publisher would be a little bit terrified to hear somebody say that like if they don't necessarily i mean i would imagine they certainly have a vague timeline of when to expect a game but like yeah you know the idea of partnering with someone that is still very early in the development process, but I guess they're sort of relying on the idea that these are all folks. Everyone on the team, it seems like, is a veteran of the games industry and has worked in quite a number of projects.

Yeah, when a publisher like this invests in you that early, they're invested more in the talent and the talent you can attract rather than the game idea you have in the moment I know that my studio heads are unique in the sense that they got funding without having a playable demo which most game studios have in their hands when they get a deal yeah so what they had was a powerpoint you know in a in a dream and they said this is what we think we want to do but we probably will change it and then they said okay so first thing the game's gonna kick ass second thing a billion dollars it's gonna be good and they're like yeah that that sounds good yeah they're like this is awesome no yeah i mean, is it true that, like, I don't know. I feel like one of those things I hear a lot in interviewing game devs is, like, yeah, the game really doesn't come together until, like, the final two months.

Or, like, it doesn't feel like it's going to be the thing that you want it to be. Like, it still feels janky and messy and gross until, like, really very close to release. Is that your experience tina uh yes and no it depends on the feature or the the i've never experienced that for a game as a whole really um it was always like this one thing seems off because we don't have everything we need for it yet to to play it um but the team that i worked with uh on apex um they like to work in what they call action blocks there's a gdc talk that people can watch for free um if they look up action blocks for titanfall um but it goes back to the way they like to prototype something very rapidly and you know it's nothing polished or anything that you would want to show to people outside of game dev.

But it definitely gives you a sense of like, this is what we want the player to experience. And here's how we're going to do it. So yeah, hopefully I answered your question. Yeah, I think that's spot on. I mean, any last words, any lessons learned from the world of game development that our listeners can apply to their life that has nothing to do with video games uh production is a great way to dabble in everything that game development has to offer um and you can if if the devs are kind and trust, you can even support them and get some of that work done

too with the tools that they have at their disposal. Uh, so I think it's a great way to figure out what you want to do if you don't really know what, uh, you want to do in game development, but also, uh, if you love the social aspect of talking to people day to day and trying to help them feel inspired to do the things that they got to do um you know that i think production is like a good a good job for people that are extrovert i love it that's awesome fresh should we talk about our honorable mentions yeah let's do it um so tina while we're giving ours you can think if there's anything that springs to mind but uh this is a place you can talk about a game you might be playing you really like or a TV show or a movie you've seen or a book you've read or really anything that you would recommend to people.

So I'm going to very briefly recommend mine, which is Stray. And the reason I'm being very brief about it is because we're going to do a full episode of the Resties this coming Tuesday about St about stray which is the game that stars a cat and the cat is great um i'm not going to say much more than that but if you like cats holy cow there has never been a more cat centric game than stray um so that that is mine uh highly recommend it uh mine is the rehearsal the new n Nathan Fielder show on HBO Max. And it's just the best. I liked Nathan For You, his previous show on Comedy Central, but it felt like it was always kind of working itself out. Some episodes were cringier than others. Some episodes were kind of meaner than others.

The whole premise of that one was he wanted to help business owners revive their businesses in a variety of ways. One of my favorite ones is a haunted house was not scary enough. So the way that he made the haunted house scarier was basically by keeping it the same. But then when the people came out telling them that while going through the house, they had been scraped by a piece of metal and infected with a fatal disease and then making them go to the hospital this show is you know I'm not going to say anything more about it

yeah I don't even know how to pitch this show and not sort of I wouldn't want to and I'm not a big spoilers person I mean you like spoiling things accidentally. So that is true. That's true. I've gotten better.

You've helped me. Somewhat better, yes. Yeah, I really think you should just watch it. It's not for everybody. But I think the people that do click with it are going to really, really, really click with it. And if you happen to be a fan of How To with John Wilson, although it is not at all similar to that,

it is a similar creative team and at times a similar tone. So keep that in mind. Tina, anything spring to mind? Severance, but I'm pretty sure you guys have talked about it. Oh, I don't think we have. How do we recommend? I don't think we have. I've not seen it, but I've heard it's terrific.

It's a science fiction, psychological thriller drama. It's kind of creepy, scary in a way, but it starts off a little slow because someone's going into work and it feels very mundane. The setting feels mundane. Christopher Walken's in it, which makes it awesome from the jump,

but I don't want to spoil what happens in the show. It just, it takes a turn and, uh, it definitely draws you in. Cause you're asking yourself like, what is happening? I think it kind of made me feel, uh, engaged in the same way. Um, oh, lost. Oh, sure. That got everyone tuning in cause they wanted to see what was happening um it i felt

as engaged as uh watching severance trying to figure out what's happening yeah it's really good that's cool yeah it is on apple tv plus i believe yep it has been on my must watch list for a while i just haven't had the chance yet so that's that is a good reminder fresh take us home country road okay uh i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts well actually before i do that i want to thank tina so much for joining us tina where can people find you on twitter it's t-e-a-n-a-h tina on twitter uh and uh she is working for gravity well games they've got a game coming out sometime in the future.

Yeah. Play God of War Ragnarok. You might like it. Oh, yeah, she worked on God of War Ragnarok, which hasn't come out, but comes out, I believe, they announced the release date is November, I want to say. Yep. Very exciting. I'm super pumped.

Thanking the following people for writing reviews. Not my ads. Sam from Klee. I assume that's Cleveland. Fock, F-A-q-h 1977 just wanted to spell that out for argument's sake and the southwest man smoocher smoosher sorry smoosher uh thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts thank you to everyone else for writing reviews and sharing the show and talking about it. That's going to do it.

Plant, do you want to recap any of the games we talked about? I mean, yeah, we talked about Yakuza. We talked about Skyrim, Outer Wilds. Skyrim, Outer Wilds, Final Fantasy VII. Tina didn't play Zelda. Tina didn't play Zelda. We talked about a lot. Apex Legends.

Yeah, we covered a lot of ground. I'll be real, the most interesting part of this episode was Tina explaining how the video game industry worked. I am 100% more educated than I was coming into this interview. There's so much more. There's so much more. I'll be on Twitter if you have any questions. That's awesome. People

should reach out to Tina on Twitter. That is a dangerous proposition you just made also be nice also be nice no i i was a i represent a cod there's nothing that can scare me anymore that is true talk about uh crucible uh yeah you definitely survived the worst of it crucible that's destiny oh my god next week i think we're gonna try to convince justin to play a racing game maybe uh in the because we i really want to play the forza hot wheels dlc that just came out and it sounds pretty sick but i know he's a little grumpy about that uh we'll see if we have griffin available i know he's moving but uh uh certainly uh justin will be back from tour so uh that's gonna do it for the besties for

tina and chris i am russ frushtick thanks for listening to the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!