Transcript

Monica Fan (00:00)
like a warning to everyone listening, if you go on like a Tinder, like a date with a guy who claim he can take you on like a plane or a boat ride, definitely check their credential. Don’t just get on it and hope they actually know how to sail a boat because that’s what I did. Turns out the guy didn’t know how to sail a

Aaron Nemoyten (00:30)
Hey, my name is Aaron and this is make games drink coffee, a podcast featuring interviews with game developers about their jobs, their hobbies and whatever they find interesting. How about that cold intro though?

My guest today is Monica Phan.

Monica has had a very interesting journey to being a game developer and since becoming a game developer. Monica didn’t mention it, but their credits include working on Modern Warfare 3, the remake at Pipeworks, and also working on AAA stuff that’s still under NDA, because that’s the nature of the business. I am really excited about today’s episode. We had…

An amazing conversation. It was so long actually that I’m going to do my first two parter. I’ve known Monica for a few years now and we tend to like meet up at GDC and chat for an hour or two and then basically not talk for an entire year except occasionally if we see each other on the games industry gathering zoom meetup group, which is monthly. So we had a lot to talk about and I just got to say Monica has a different perspective on.

just about everything in the game industry than what you would normally hear. And it’s really refreshing and I’m really excited for you to hear it. All right, let’s get to it.

Monica Fan (01:51)
Hello, I’m Monica Fan. I am a game designer. I actually met Aaron during my first game design job where Aaron is the one hiring me for my first ever game design job and I’m forever in debt ⁓ these days I work at Pipeworks where I do lot of like co-dev. Now they call external development, which basically means we get hired by companies to help them like designing features and content.

while also like have the company decide like creative direction and stuff. But before I was in game, I was a child actor. I’ve been like involved in a lot different type of media. I used to work at PBS and even when I was younger, I used to work as a newspaper journalist. Back in the day when newspaper was a thing, when people actually go to buy paper to read news.

But otherwise I like theater, I like film, I like weird games, weird movies. I will consider myself like a eccentric creative goblin.

Aaron Nemoyten (02:54)
Yeah

so sort of figuring out what questions to ask for a podcast, like often it starts with career or how’d you get started? And I was thinking about.

Your origin story is so weird and crazy that you should be a supervillain. So I thought maybe you’d want to talk about that a bit.

Monica Fan (03:17)
Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot of people was like, oh, he’s actually secret super villains. I basically I started making game like looking back, it’s like when I was a kid, was like a kid, grew up in a really like strictly communism, like military environment

my grandma’s generation have went through genocide, And my parents, their generation had went through like culture revolution, which is also like a really chaotic. So when I was a kid, my parents basically, they don’t really know how to have like a regular childhood and they don’t really know how to raise kids. I got sent into like a military school.

Aaron Nemoyten (03:41)
Yeah.

Monica Fan (03:58)
ever since I was like three and then I was there until like 15. my whole childhood until I was like 18, I wasn’t allowed to play video game. I remember Plants vs. Zombie was really big and I played Plants vs. Zombie once and my mom was so distraught.

she was convinced that I’d have given up my life. It’s basically the same reaction American parents will have if they find out their kids are doing meth I guess, ⁓ except I was playing Plants vs. on one hand, it’s like, I’m aware video game is a popular thing because I have like friends, I like, have like classmates and stuff, they are allowed to play game. But on the other hand, it’s like, it’s a very foreign idea.

But the part that really, I think the part you were talking about, the part that really makes me decide to become a game designer I was 21, I went on the worst ever Tinder date.

like a warning to everyone listening, if you go on like a Tinder, like a date with a guy who claim he can take you on like a plane or a boat ride, definitely check their credential. Don’t just get on it and hope they actually know how to sail a boat because that’s what I did. Turns out the guy didn’t know how to sail a

So,

The mast of the boat falls directly on my head. And my head just cracked open. Basically as a result, I had to bed rest for a whole year because I couldn’t,

like stand, sit up and I couldn’t like, have no hand-eye coordination. I was dizzy most of the time. I was very nauseous and I think I was sleeping like 20 hours a day, but I was also by myself as an international students. And I didn’t tell my parents because I, I, I couldn’t tell my parents that I went on like a date with a guy I met on dating app and it just happened.

Aaron Nemoyten (05:52)
Yeah.

Monica Fan (05:56)
So because like I was really worried that my parents were like, just like, live, like taking me back to China, it’ll never let me like come back again.

And so I was like good enough that I’m not actually puking blood.

but I wasn’t good enough where I can go about my daily life. I couldn’t watch movie. Like I couldn’t read because of course, like my brain, I couldn’t focus and I couldn’t watch movie because it’s so

dizzy. So like anything like motion, it gets me so sick. So I couldn’t watch movie and I was like, okay, video game is the thing people do. And I need to do something instead of just like looking at my ceiling every day. But on the other hand my whole life I’ve been told video game is the thing that gonna like make my brain rot. I’m gonna ruin my life. And then I had a concussion and my brain was actually broken. So and

Also, because of what I’ve been told, I was very aware there’s a chance that I may drop dead. So I was like, okay, if I drop dead tomorrow, I want to at least try this video game. It’s kind of like the same idea. like if you’re on death by, probably just try every drug you can find because what do you loss, right? Like, and that’s like my mentality is I’m just going to try video game. If it’s ruining my life, it’s not going to be worse than what I’m having right now.

Aaron Nemoyten (07:02)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Monica Fan (07:12)
So I

tried video game and luckily video game actually turns out to be a very good way to help me regain like hand-eye coordination. also when you’re like, I went from like where to be fair, I wasn’t doing that good, but I was feeling really good about my life to like just very isolated. And so I lost everything. like the fact that video game, every time you have a little achievement, they’ll just have a pop-up be like, good job.

It’s like, it’s exactly what I needed, especially a girl who was Asian ’cause I have never had so much positive reinforcement up until that life. So to be like video game is just like the most magical. Like it’s, it’s what I imagine mushroom is what I imagine, like the best drugs possible. Like it’s just like, ⁓ they keep telling me how great I am. And also like I can like.

I couldn’t do all the stuff. couldn’t go outside. couldn’t like, you know, cook and stuff, but I can cook a video game. So I feel like I’m doing a lot and I feel like I’m achieving things in life despite I didn’t have a lot of like external like stuff I can achieve. So that’s actually what got me into like playing video game.

And I remember like most my game education, even when I later went to grad school,

I remember most of my cohort are people who’s like, yeah, I wanted to make game my whole life. I played game when I was a kid and I always know this is what I want to do versus to me, it’s like, I didn’t know video game. I didn’t know you can like get paid making video game. didn’t know like video game is a career. I just thought the like, because I always see video game as the same level is like being a drug dealer.

in my last job, like I have a co-worker who was like, yeah, game designer is kind of like drug dealer. You’re basically just like, you know, giving people dopamine. And I think about that a lot is like, I feel very fortunate to like actually have a career where I do basically the equivalency of being a drug dealer, but actually have a legit career.

Aaron Nemoyten (09:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, it’s, as far as ⁓ being a dopamine slinger goes, it’s better than sports betting.

Monica Fan (09:24)
Yes.

My mom, think she has a gaming addiction now, but she is so unaware about like these type of like chance-based like gambling mechanics because she was raised in like if anything labeled as a video game, she would never touch, but then she would like, you know, go to the wheel spinning in WeChat and do that for three hours. And you just see the impact of like video game mechanics on

boomers who are totally defenseless against D2D’s type of design. And it’s really, it’s shocking. It’s a weird time we’re living. Yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten (10:09)
It’s very weird.

a lot of discussion right now about social media and how it’s sort of engineered for addiction and.

smartphones and notifications and all these things where they’ve been sort of hacked down into the purest form of how can we get people to keep engaging all the time.

And will we look back on that in the future as being the equivalent of cigarettes and having an industry that did the studies and knew what they were doing and knew that it was addicting and knew that they were targeting kids with something addicting and just went ahead and did it anyway because it would make them more money. And are we going to feel collectively stupid for having let them do that? Probably is my, my thought.

Monica Fan (10:53)
you probably heard about Netflix is doing the second screen thing and they’re doing the thing where all their movies are designed for you to watch it while you’re also doing something on your phone. So that’s why a lot of Netflix shows, they have so much exposition. have like, so I am blah, blah. My age is blah, blah, blah. This is what I do because they know any hidden context player.

like viewers are not going to have like enough engagement to catch it. But on the other hand, they are also like pushing for video game that you can play while you watch TV

So we have a lot of like Monopoly Go, we have a lot of like roguelike game where you can play while also watching TV. And I wonder how, how much this will go

Growing up, always be like, oh yeah, I’m the most ADHD. Like I can multitask a lot better than others. But I think we are at the point where it’s a little bit too much.

And I wonder if this is going to become a bigger issue. Or maybe that’s why sports gambling is so big or gambling in general is so big because it’s like, it’s an entertainment dopamine thing, but it doesn’t require the amount of emotional, intelligent investment as a video game or TV. ⁓

Aaron Nemoyten (12:12)
Yeah,

I always wonder about the difference between things that are pulling an audience away and sort of stealing them from something that they like to give them something that’s worse versus is this the thing that they actually really wanted the whole time and they just couldn’t get it? And I think about that, you know, people talk about AI slop, for example, they talk about the

videos that could be generated on the open AI app as being slop and it’s so terrible. And I think like, yes, I agree. But also I wonder if there’s a secret fear in there that there is some percentage of the audience that does not care, that just wants to be entertained so quickly and so much on the surface that they’ve actually always wanted something that is literal slop, like visually that just, it’s just stimulation, right?

⁓ you know, it’s just like turning on a strobe light and staring at it. Is that just what people want? And I don’t mean all people. just. Well.

Monica Fan (13:16)
mean, that’s what babies want. Like that’s

what babies love. Like a lot of child in the day may just like lights, sound. But I think the reason, what you’re like, find it really interesting because like now AI is really big, but before it’s NFT and both of this, especially AI, think, ⁓ I don’t know if it’s like what user want to watch, but I think that’s what the creator want because when I growing up,

I remember one of my core experiences when I was like seven and six, I was doing really bad in school. And like, I’m always, I’m still really bad at math and science. And my mom was like, you need to get good at math and science because that’s how you like be able to get a job. And I was like, but, but I want to be creative. I want to work in entertainment. And the thing was like at the time I haven’t displayed

any symptoms that will show that I’m a child genius, that I can grow up to be a genius artist. And also now nobody in my family are artists. Nobody in my family are creative. So it’s like, it’s this culture is like, don’t have, you need to have the talent. And which like later I went to art school and I can tell you that’s definitely not the truth. And like, you don’t need to have, you don’t need to bore with talent to have a career in like creative field.

But that’s the culture we were raised.

So I think a lot of people, I know a lot of people, they were like, I would love to draw, but I don’t have the talent. Or I would love to act, but I don’t have the talent. So they always feel very envious because I feel human has this innate desire to be creative. Human, one thing we learned is every time you have an online space, they’re going to have an art gallery.

It doesn’t have any utility reason, people, human has this desire to create, but we have a culture where we basically, you don’t have the permission to live a creative life until unless you already proven you are talented and gifted and have the ability to be creative. So like, if you are a 40 year old,

wake up from your like investment banking job and you decide this is not what you want to do. You really want to be a filmmaker. Everyone be like, ⁓ just do this as a hobby. Like give up. Like it’s useless. It’s a waste of time. And so AI fulfilled this like need is like suddenly you can be a filmmaker. You don’t need to learn the craft of making film. You don’t even need to learn how to make, how to operate a camera.

or how to do composition, you can just put in a prompt and suddenly you’re a filmmaker. And I think this is what’s like the same with AI art and AI music. for me, it’s like, I, I’m not a music, music person. Like I didn’t grow up with any music education. Like I love music. I love K-pop. I, I dance, but like, I would never consider myself as a musician. would never

offer to write music for like a game or film I work on. But suddenly I have a source where I can, me doing what I could do, which is typing text in a prompt. I can be a musician. I can fulfill the fantasy of being a musician without actually learn the music theory and how to write good music. And I think AI is fulfilling the people’s creative dream. Whether

Like we have data, like the Sora TikTok app, nobody is on it. People are not engaging in it. Like there is an audience, but there, like there is an audience in the way that people who just love watching those videos, but there is a lot of audience in the way that people who dream about making film, making clip, but never feel like they have the talent and the permission to do

so.

Aaron Nemoyten (17:48)
Yeah, I think.

Monica Fan (17:48)
And the same

with UGC, those ⁓ Roblox and user generation modding is kind of like a rudimentary game version of like, feel like you want to make game, but you don’t feel like you have the ability to do so.

Aaron Nemoyten (18:03)
Yeah, although Roblox has a pretty impressive editor and, a huge ecosystem of assets and, people get pretty creative with it. I think their market is mostly limited by the habits that they’ve trained their consumers into, right? Like if you, so I interviewed for a job at Roblox and

Monica Fan (18:19)
Yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten (18:25)
I played a bunch of Roblox for the few weeks while I was still actively interviewing. And the tough thing is that the games that are popular had, you know, converged into a certain number of tropes and things that work for getting a bunch of kids.

to just jump into a game, immediately understand it and like run around and do stuff together. And that narrows what you can do game design wise, especially when they’ve all been trained on certain conventions.

Monica Fan (18:56)
Yes. And we are seeing the type of Roblox design happening in Steam game and happening in like the kids from Roblox. remember going to my partner’s family for Christmas and he’s like 16 year sister is just playing this game called like Supermarket Simulator, which is basically like a Roblox game, but like outside of Roblox. So they are bringing out those habit expectations.

Aaron Nemoyten (19:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Monica Fan (19:21)
in like out of like Roblox out of those stuff. So like the design game design convention is coming out out of like, yes, they’re not in Roblox, but they are still playing Roblox type I find that to be very interesting because I’ve had so many conversations. think last GDC is like, how do we get kids to graduate out of Roblox to like good game? It’s like, yes, they’re graduating out of Roblox. They’re just not graduating out of Roblox to AAA.

They’re graduating out of Roblox to Roblox-like game outside the Roblox ecosystem.

Aaron Nemoyten (19:53)
in all, think that’s pretty good news because the industry has sort of been built on teenage boy power fantasy stuff. And not that that’s a terrible thing, right? Like I’m playing Doom the Dark Ages right now and it rules, I love it. But that’s not for everyone. And the fact that we can make ⁓ a fun experience, because it’s a game and that’s what we’re here for, with way less effort.

than we necessarily need to. Things don’t need to be realistic or super detailed or whatever. We don’t need 10 minute cut scenes. Like we don’t actually need all that stuff to make a good and interesting game experience. And Roblox is kind of doing what Flash did in some ways, which is it gives this whole generation like just jump in, play a bunch of games. They’re simple, they’re limited by the tools, but they’re also.

Monica Fan (20:36)
Yeah!

Aaron Nemoyten (20:44)
creative and interesting and they’re doing things with those constraints that probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise because When people don’t have those constraints they try to mimic the other games that are much more expensive and instead they’re just starting with like well What can we do with these tools?

Monica Fan (20:59)
I would argue game industry is an elder millennials teenage boy fantasy. Because that’s not a teenage boy fantasy of current generation like teenage boy. Like I used to teach high schooler, their fantasy is not doomed.

Aaron Nemoyten (21:05)
Yeah.

Monica Fan (21:14)
Their fantasy is not Halo. Their fantasy is Fortnite. Back like five years ago, when I teach high school and like now they have different fantasy. like a lot of fantasy is anime and stuff. But even I remember when I was like, started like making gaming like 2018, I remember this feeling is like I’m making game for the fantasy of like older men in the studio. And like this is the other like

I think misconception is video game industry is not all young people these days, especially look at AAA. They’re mostly people in their 50s and 40s and older. but those people, are still like, and a lot of those people are not design directors, they’re executive, they’re the like decision makers. And they are making the game based on the fantasy they had when they were a teenager.

The target audience is other old men like them because the current teenagers are not into those types of fantasy. so like we have this like very interesting is like I have working on multiple game where the rating is like 13 the fantasy is so 80s.

Aaron Nemoyten (22:25)
Yeah.

Monica Fan (22:26)
like the inspiration is still from like 80s, 90s, 2000s blockbuster, like Hollywood movie. we are still have so much confidence that the current teenager would have the same fantasy as the one like 30 years ago, which currently is not the truth.

Aaron Nemoyten (22:42)
think there’s also, there’s the question of the psychology of the fantasy versus the aesthetics of the fantasy, right? Like

If a teenage boy wants a power fantasy of some kind that may sort of psychologically resemble the ones that they’ve had for decades in video may not necessarily look the same because the media they’re consuming has shifted. yeah, anime is much more popular now than it was before. And because the…

Eastern countries have been taking animation as a medium much more seriously for much longer. There’s a much deeper well of like emotionally interesting stuff for people to go to once they decide that they’re into it, right?

Monica Fan (23:23)
Yeah, that’s like really interesting. You’re right. It’s like we are seeing this like rise of “manosphere” and “alpha male.” It’s just like return of the power fantasy, this like cultural fantasy. But on the other hand, we like Heated Rivalry is really big and it’s like huge amount women. the reason is like I saw it was like grew up in a lot of yauti culture. The reason like Heated Rivalry and these type of stuff is big is because

For women, the fantasy is men have emotion. Men are able to be vulnerable and in touch with their own emotion. And that’s fantasy because that’s the type of fantasy is like you don’t see in real life. You don’t even see in like heterosexual And I feel like that’s like a really interesting because so much video game is about power up, level up more and more. And that’s why sports gambling is big.

because the fantasy of you can become rich, And we live in a society where the more money you have, the more power you have. And that’s the fantasy. But like this, I wouldn’t even say that’s a teenage boy fantasy. I think that’s just capitalism fantasy. Like capitalism is about the bigger number you have, the more powerful you are. And I wouldn’t even say it’s a fantasy, it’s a reality. Like I guess the fantasy is you could be that big number one person,

Aaron Nemoyten (24:35)
Yeah.

Monica Fan (24:45)
but on the other hand, a lot of those fantasy get into question when you start to open up to like multiplayer, because so much of a single player fantasy is you go up to the top of your world and now you are in a multiplayer. Not everyone can be the best in the game. Someone has to be the best or someone has to be the loser.

Aaron Nemoyten (24:56)
Mm-hmm.

Monica Fan (25:10)
And now you have the question is, so what is the fantasy? Is the fantasy just like fighting to be the best and staying the best? But that would be one person’s fantasy. And, what about the rest of the player? Why are they there?

Aaron Nemoyten (25:24)
Yeah, you get to be

an extra in someone else’s story.

Monica Fan (25:28)
Yeah, that’s called real life. That’s my daily life. I don’t need to play a video game to be an extra of someone else story. I can just wake up and go outside.

Aaron Nemoyten (25:38)
you sent this to me in your notes before the interview as well that what you said was basically what the industry builds is dictated by men who never grew up and.

on the one hand, my taste is pretty normie for my demographic, like my taste in movies, my taste in video games. I really like stuff that is weird and off the beaten path as well, but My favorites are unsurprising.

to a lot of people, right? Like my top movies on Letterboxd are ⁓ Fight Club, Vertigo, The Incredibles, Brazil. Those are all movies about white guys who make their own lives miserable for whatever reason. But I do like super weird stuff and unusual stuff. And I think that there is something really important about giving people that don’t have

that sort of mainstream taste stuff that interests them and that they can get passionate about. And I think that it is a big problem when you have an industry run by people that think that their taste is, it’s not only what’s popular, like obviously it’s popular enough because they’re doing okay, but to think that that’s the only thing that could be popular is the real problem. And, you know, every time GDC rolls around and there are the independent game awards,

and there are a bunch of games that did really well that nobody would have expected to have done well a few years ago. It always makes me a little bit angry that who gets funding is sort of dictated by often people that are stuck in their own taste and that can’t step outside of that and think, wow, maybe there’s a lot of people who would like to see this story told.

Monica Fan (27:24)
I want to clarify, I’m not saying like, men working with her game are like childish. To me, when I say growing up, I’m more thinking about the soul searching, like, because like, for me, as someone who’s non binary, who’s Asian, who’s autistic.

I had to force to do a lot of figure out who I am and what I am. like, I had one sort of different phase of my life where I’m desperate to fit in I’m desperate to be one of the boys. I’m desperate to be a neurotypical person. ⁓ I’m desperate to just be straight and like be perfect, like mentally healthy, but it didn’t happen. so like a lot of people with marginalized identity, you have to do a lot of soul searching. You have to do a lot of

Just figure out who you are, what makes you happy, what is okay with you, and what is And to question, it’s a lot of question, what are you taking for granted? Question the stuff, the value you were taught by your parents. Question the value the school has told you. Question the value. I were growing up in the way as the people I…

they want with me, I will be a lawyer by now and I will have like three kids. the reason I am not there is because I try to pursue those paths and I up become very unhappy. And I it’s hard to be a creative if you don’t know who you are. If you don’t constantly ask yourself what matters to you and what’s your role in this

big or messy world. And I think that’s like one thing which like a lot of people in the game leadership are heterosexual, like male, like white male where they have been living in a relatively comfortable where they are the leader. are like there isn’t anything to trigger them to re-evaluate everything they know about their life. And talk about like IGF, like when the

grant the game that wins everything last year to consume me. It’s a game about eating disorder. It’s a game about being Asian. It’s a game about when your existence is being like, is different from the expectation. It’s a game about fighting against the world and fighting against what the world wants you to be. And I think fundamentally that’s what art is about.

which is like ironic is like a lot of fantasy. The reason a lot of video game are banned in authoritarian country is because video game fundamentally, other than the power fantasy is about rise above the world is about. Like the world says you can never achieve anything. And you said, no, and you do it anyway. It’s about like every game, most game there is an authority figure that is a big white.

big baddies and it’s about you go against it and you like go against the odds. That’s not how the game industry is. And like, this is not exclusive to the game. This happens to like Hollywood too. It’s like they’re telling the story of underdog, but the people who tell the story themselves are almost never the underdog.

There are the people who come with those privilege, come with those comfort, but they are trying to tell the story of underdog. But on the other hand, if you are like some person who may consume your Despacito, ⁓ the Despalote, it’s like, how do you even get yourself a seat in those room without an award by IGF already?

Aaron Nemoyten (30:56)
Das Palote, Das Pesita. That’s good switch. ⁓

Monica Fan (31:10)
How do you even get people to hear you in a GDC party? when I was a student, I talked to a lot of game developers I could access to. I was like, how do you get in the game industry? So many of them tell me a story about them drinking in a bar. And then someone was like, kids, you look like me when I was younger. Do you want to join us? That’s not.

That’s an experience I can never relate. That would never happen to me. I can sit in that bar for like hours and years. Nobody will ever be like, you remind me of myself when I was younger. So.

Every person with marginalized identity, if they’re still in game, they fight for to be there. And, and I think that’s the interesting thing is we have a structure where we, you almost have to be one of the privileged people to rise above. but in order to tell story, all the type of story we tell is the story of underdog, the story of like going against the odds, the story about

failure a hundred times and success once.

Aaron Nemoyten (32:13)
I think there’s something possibly really interesting, like psychologically going on in the phenomenon you just described

I wonder if there’s an element to the fact that the people telling the underdog stories are privileged people that they still have the feeling of being underdogs

most people are not born with an absolute sense of purpose and confidence and they still may have worked hard in some way to get to a position of power and they may still feel like underdogs in some way and not doing that, that soul searching and still being in a position of power means you can live with that contradiction.

and still think that like, I gotta tell the story of fighting the system and not look around and be like, wait, I am the system.

Monica Fan (33:05)
agree. And I think I would always argue if you especially like, if you live in a Bay Area, if you’re working game, you are almost always the underdog in the greater tech world. Like my partner works in tech and like, have, like dabbled into like the startup founder, like the tech startup world. And you definitely feel like an underdog if you do video game. Well, first of all, we get we’ll make so much less money compared to like,

Aaron Nemoyten (33:18)
That’s true.

Monica Fan (33:35)
you know, if you work for like a tech company, But on the other hand, it’s like, you go to a party and you see like all the bro wear Patagonia and all the bro was talking about like the, the stem cell therapy, the brain chip, like brain interaction, the disrupt the market. And they were like, what do you do? Like, I make video games.

I think, especially in the startup, the tech world, making content,

is almost always the underdog compared to people who make platform. Like no matter how successful your game is, you will never become Valve and I think that’s the difference is like you feel like an underdog because how you in relation to the structure of the society or you feel like an underdog because your your existence as human.

in relation to other human around you.