Aaron Nemoyten: Hey, welcome to Make Games Drink Coffee. My name is Aaron Neimoitin. This is part two of my interview with Dez Gale, an indie game developer, producer, and currently also partner relations manager with Unity. In this episode, we’ll discuss Netflix’s game strategy and how other big tech companies have tried to get into gaming, as well as so-called transmedia IPs like Quantum Break and adaptations like The Last of Us and Fallout. What’s really cool is that Dez is putting his money where his mouth is on this stuff, building his own transmedia IP for his indie studio Alter Gene. That’s spelled G-E-N-E. Also, I’m pretty sure this episode of this podcast is the only time in my life I’ll have a reason to say the word bandersnatches. All right, let’s do the intro music. So you mentioned in your notes to me that ⁓ one of hot takes was that ⁓ you’d to be in charge of the streaming company’s portfolio. ⁓ And I think ⁓ that’s such an interesting topic because… I feel like if you ask most developers what should Netflix do, I think a lot of people are gonna kinda throw their arms up and be like, well they tried a bunch of stuff and they laid off a bunch of studios and I don’t know what’s working and we don’t know the data and I don’t know, I don’t have an answer. So with that in mind, I would like to know what your answer is, cause I’m really curious, cause you must have thought about this a lot.

Des Gayle: First of all, you’ve got, obviously they’ve got the user base, incredible numbers. And I definitely think that over and up with them is someone who’ll play video games. Then we’ve got the IP side of things. There’s some amazing adaptations that have gone to TV land and that’s the hook, right? Someone sees Last Fast or Fallout or Castlevania. I this is amazing. How can I consume more of this content? with Fallout, like there is a ⁓ step between watching something on TV and playing Fallout 4, right? So that content needs to be, ⁓ I call it TV appropriate, which is a slower experience. ⁓ Maybe something like the dispatch or telltale stuff ⁓ you know, walking simulators, like there’s a step to go between that.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yep.

Des Gayle: with a remote control to a controller that no one’s seen before with 16 buttons on it, right? that was always my angle. Like, hey, let’s do some of these experiences ⁓ Netflix. ⁓ They tried with the two joint adventure type stuff. And it’s just like, okay, if you’re from TV land, that’s not gonna fly. If you’re from video game land, that’s not gonna fly. Like, I don’t know who ⁓ is for. ⁓ then ⁓ mobile games.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah. ⁓

Des Gayle: I don’t know if you, in the early days, if you ever tried it out, but when you open Netflix app on your phone, video games weren’t even above the fold. They were like two or three swipes down. And you’re like, okay, great, no worries. And then the experience of getting a game on your phone was horrendous. You’d get it on Netflix, you get taken to whatever store it’s on, then you come back to Netflix and you’re just like.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah ⁓

Des Gayle: that experience is not good. Netflix do a recommendation engine. At no point did they say, hey, you just watched Street Fighter. Did you know there’s a Street Fighter games? Like, ⁓ and the thing is, it’s…

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah ⁓

Des Gayle: It’s all owned, like it’s all their own stuff. Like, come on guys, like just connect the dots. It’s super easy. ⁓ So yeah, you know, all those things are a pain. And then again, it’s budget. And I’m not gonna pick on Netflix. I’m gonna pick on Google and Stadia as well. like, think they fundamentally misunderstood gamers, right? So if I’m at home, I’m gonna use the fastest, simplest connection I’ve got. I’ve got an Xbox, I’ve got a PlayStation. If I’m gonna play Ubisoft game, it’s gonna be on one of those. I’m not gonna stream it ⁓ to my TV. Like the box is there connected to it. No latency, nothing. ⁓ ⁓ So just that purchase or that option is just like, that’s wrong. I would have went to mobile devs and be like, hey, do any of you have any interest in like graduating to PC or big screen? Cause we give you a bit of money. You can make a flat screen experience for us. Probably give you an exclusivity period and then you can whack it on steam, right? Like that de-risk it for the dev, gives them a new platform slash revenue stream ⁓ bridges the gap to obviously the big ticket to the big show on steam.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yep.

Des Gayle: the thing I’m smart, but I’m not uniquely smart. There are people that could pay double what I do who could easily have done this. It just makes me sad. Like, no, actually to be romantic about it, I hope that they did say these options. And then it’s like, you know, someone above them is just like, no, we should do this. So yeah, I’m being nice. I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt. And these check sizes were ridiculous. It’s just like, that game already exists. The effort to get it on your ⁓ ecosystem is not that check size, right? Like that check size is make a game from scratch size.

Aaron Nemoyten: ⁓ Right

Des Gayle: they could have went to three territories, right? Like, you the Americas, Europe, APAC, picked 20 developers in each unit and then got 60 awesome games, right? ⁓ Potentially awesome games, but ⁓ for a fraction of the price. yeah, ⁓ it hurts a lot I’m just ⁓ man, this is such a simple, like there’s no money. There’s loads of devs. problem almost solved. And then let me come back to Netflix is they’re everywhere, right? And I think, I don’t think I know, if you’ve got Western content, that doesn’t, it’s not always gonna serve everyone globally, right? So you need to, you should go to the market. And they know this from TV and film. They know it. I’d love to see them. know, go to Africa, go to Asia and just be like, hey, make us some local content. Like there’s 300 million eyeballs that we think could possibly look at this content. And we think this is the value that we can attribute to that. So go and make something cool. me sad.

Aaron Nemoyten: You’ve brought up many potentially like interesting avenues for discussion. ⁓ So I think, for example, I would imagine that the reason that Netflix failed to promote games ⁓ further up on various homepages as they present to users is probably just a matter of company structure and incentives and that.

Des Gayle: Mm.

Aaron Nemoyten: The person who would have wanted them to do that was not on the team that does the homepage stuff. And the team that does the homepage stuff was probably like, well, yeah, we measured all these things against our priorities and our metrics and our projections. And we just determined that we cannot increase engagement by our goals by directing people to games because… the number of people that are gonna go to them is a lot smaller than the people who might watch the next episode of some series that they started or a spin-off or, you know, whatever, some new reality show that we came up with. A lot of companies nowadays, tech companies, based on what I’ve heard from people that work at them and people who have worked at them, basically things are breaking down because incentives are misaligned and there are a lot of people that are looking out for their own KPIs, for their careers, for their own promotions, ⁓ their own titles, for their own fiefdoms and empires. ⁓ that is at the expense ⁓ potentially new and interesting things for consumers. And it also gives us the sort of local maximization problem where people are trying to boost their KPIs as much as possible and they’re doing it sort of without imagination. And so they’re getting the best out of the systems and the concepts that they already have available without trying anything dramatically new because that’s actually riskier. And if even though the upside might be much potentially higher, the downside is also potentially a lot worse. as well. So why bother, right? You can get your salary, you get your bonus, you get your stock options, you get your promotion, and then you move on and then you, you know, become like Tim Ferriss and retire early and travel the world, whatever, you know, whatever podcasts are listening to. You get what I’m saying.

Des Gayle: Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ man, yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s definitely a case of that, right? ⁓ And I think, ⁓ just in a couple of places I’ve been, like no one wants to be the one that A picks the stinker. And like, good games fail all the time. just the world we’re in. So you’ve already got that. So do you want to be the one that does pick the one that doesn’t really conform to general like company strategy? No, you don’t. You don’t really like because most of these companies you don’t really survive a mistake. I would be the person to be like, look, we played it straight on these eight. I think we should take a punt on these two. And I think that’s reasonable. again, there’s no such thing as a safe bet, but like, look, these eight are gonna do these numbers. So if these do terrible, we still hit KPI one instead of five, right? It’s not a complete failure. And plus we’ve done some good, which I think a lot of people just think companies forget like. you should do good. It’s like money’s amazing, obviously, you’ve got to keep the lights on, but have a couple of opportunities to do some good. And every so often you are gonna home run, right? be great if they were all base hits, but every so often you’re gonna get a home run. And I think you don’t do that without some level of risk. when they’re taking these risks, sometimes they don’t take the risk a new team. They don’t go all the way. They just say, ⁓ hey, ⁓ you were successful doing this thing. We want you to have a go during this next thing, which is like, they think it’s safe, but like that’s even riskier because, okay, well, we’re really good at making these things. We’ve never made this thing before. That’s the same risk as using a team that’s not made a successful game before. Like it doesn’t work.

Aaron Nemoyten: One last thing I wanted to ask about in regards to streaming and what streamers should do was you mentioned that something like, I think you were talking about Bandersnatch, the Black Mirror, choose your own adventure thing. It’s interactive, so it’s not for all the people that are gonna watch the non-interactive TV show, because they don’t necessarily wanna engage like that. But it’s also a choose your own adventure TV show, so it’s not necessarily the right thing for a gamer target audience, so to speak. So then, who is it for? I also wanna note that… Netflix’s production costs, like their standards for how much money they’re willing to spend on one of their headliner shows are ridiculously high. You could make a bunch of games for what they spent on the last season of Stranger Things, right? But you mentioned Fallout and I started thinking about, you know, the

Des Gayle: Hahaha. Right there.

Aaron Nemoyten: total combined cost of every cut scene in a Fallout game besides the intro and you know a few choice expensive ones, they’re probably spending a couple hundred thousand dollars to do all of that work, right? Like it’s just a lot of people talking and they gotta record it and then the lip syncing animation is automatic and there’s not much else going on. So I’m wondering If maybe we’re overestimating what is actually required to give people a satisfying interactive experience, indie games are getting by on a much smaller budget. Why not do that on something that’s like a Netflix tie-in, for example? And you could do Bandersnatch for one one hundredth the cost, or you could do a hundred Bandersnatches, you know, for different cultures and for different shows and for different IPs.

Des Gayle: Yeah, no, I don’t have a good reason not to, right? I think maybe if they looked at it from a… just gonna say like a fandom perspective, you know? ⁓ And not like a Netflix perspective. Cause I think that’s a struggle, right? Like obviously that’s the goal, get more people subscriptions doing that, right? But I think if that becomes the secondary goal and you’re all about expanding the fandom, but I think eventually that will come. And like I said, those experiences can be anything. and it’s not really about creativity, like between D and AAA, like it’s not really about that, but it is about how deep they want to go into the law and how much they love it, right? I mean, this isn’t a Netflix property, but like, I step aside to The Last of Us for a little bit, obviously they did the right thing by having people who worked on the game in the show, like running the show, like no brainer, that’s really cool. So, but the one thing I loved about it is it wasn’t one-to-one, right? They knew that this has to be for a linear audience and it has to work like that. If you’re coming from, along with from video games, there’s stuff you’re gonna like, ⁓ yeah, cool, like that’s cool, that, ⁓ that’s different. And at that point, the game fans are in two camps, right? One is the misinformed camp. Oh my God, I can’t believe they changed that from the game. Oh, so terrible, what a crazy decision. And then you’ve got the other side, which is like, oh, that’s an interesting choice. I’d love to know why they did that. Or I get why they did So there’s definitely that. So I think it’s definitely all about how deep they are into the fandom. And even going the other way, Also Netflix probably, ⁓ God, Bridgerton, I guess. There’s a certain type of game where that would work. And ⁓ you need to be, you have to be part of the fandom, but you definitely need to know who the fandom is. ⁓ And then you’ll make something that’s appropriate for them, right? to be super generalistic, right? Like I would say, okay, cool. That audience is my wife. She can play video games, but she can’t play. ⁓ twitchy video games. it definitely needs to be a slow paced experience. And then you think about the interactions. Okay, cool. Do we need a controller or can we get away with a couple of buttons on the phone or the Holy grail, but the remote control, right? Like that would be amazing. And I get just, I’m just gonna shout out, but shout out to Nintendo for figuring that out with the Wii. Like it’s absolutely genius, genius move.

Aaron Nemoyten: Mm-hmm.

Des Gayle: So yeah, they need to be a bit more wee about it, right? Like they know how to use the remote and they don’t need to learn something new. They just need to interact with the content you put with them on the screen. And I guess fiscally, so I was running a big company, I wouldn’t want my all-star squad getting paid 300 grand a year working on this prototype for something that I’m not sure is gonna work. Would I outsource that to an indie team that costs maybe 100 grand full stop? Yeah, man, Could you get the upside and not the downside? that the question.

Aaron Nemoyten: Think so? Yeah. So according to these notes, you are ⁓ seriously quote unquote looking at transmedia. I personally love the of transmedia IP. I think it’s often been done poorly where you have a company saying we’re gonna make this triple A game and also debut season one of a very expensive TV show. ⁓ And ⁓ when they do those two things at the time, never works. ⁓ So. ⁓ What’s your what are your thoughts?

Des Gayle: ⁓ I, yeah, definitely that. ⁓ So this goes back to ⁓ the discoverability thing. And it’s kind of a really odd way of me thinking, okay, how do we diversify eyeballs? ⁓ then I can’t remember exactly when this was, but Remedy did a game called Quantum Break, where ⁓ one of the best time.

Aaron Nemoyten: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Des Gayle: loop stories written. And they did a live action TV show, which again, valid attempt, really, really cool. wasn’t like really great production values, but then there was just no, like, how do you sync something with, okay, we sold a game in all these territories and like appointment television or even back at that point, just wasn’t a thing anymore, right? Like that’s been blown out the window. So that was a component. ⁓ I really, they should have, I mean, should have, doesn’t matter, can’t go back in time, like, it would have been great if they were like, okay, you know what? It’s gonna be on ⁓ YouTube or whatever. This is the release cadence. ⁓ We’ll give you one or two weeks between so you can catch up in video game land. they made a really good decision actually to not like if you don’t watch any TV stuff the game still works Which is a brilliant brilliant decision And then ⁓ I they did bundle it with the game but obviously because video content but the download size was huge like you know Call of Duty now that things are 100 gig I think maybe back then it was like maybe 50

Aaron Nemoyten: ⁓

Des Gayle: I love that. Obviously they haven’t done it since. So it’s obviously super expensive. And I think even back then, that’s right. They took advantage of Xbox’s strategy of being like the center of entertainment, which is a whole other discussion. So yeah, I loved that. It was a valiant attempt. And then specifically for me, games are expensive to make. So I was like, okay, I wanna tell stories. What’s a cheaper way for me to tell stories? And then about four or five years ago, I decided to make a comic book. And the reason for that is, one weekend I up with this, I think, very cool for a game. left it for a bit, came back midweek and I was just like, wow, this is a lot of stuff. I shared it with a writer friend and he was just like, dude, you’ve got like five distinct things here. So I’m like, okay, cool. So I worked it down a little bit and I was like, okay, great. What formats would fit these? ⁓ Three of them are games, one’s a comic book and another one is a, well, in some version of future, animated feature.

Aaron Nemoyten: Nice.

Des Gayle: And then ⁓ one thing I was very cognizant of like the Marvel stuff, right? Like. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is great if you consume all the content. And then obviously when they started rolling TV into that, that caused another level of problem because TV and film fans are not one and the same. You’ve got like this, know, Venn diagram thing. So I had friends who were just like, they’d watch the film, like, what, what happened? It’s like, ah, yeah, you had to watch this TV show. Which feels like homework and it’s not fair. So I was definitely cognizant of that. So each like entry into the project universe, if you consume it by itself, you’re like, okay, cool, I enjoyed that, that was awesome. But if you’re a super fan and consume it all, you’ll be playing game three and be like, ⁓ shit, that’s the guy from the comic book. And you’d be like, ⁓ this is really cool. the comic book was, easy to write initially. because it’s a little bit of story that wouldn’t fit into a game. I just couldn’t find a spot for it. So I was like, it’s on the cutting room floor. So yeah, now with the comic book, it’s like, okay, great. If you’re playing the game and you’ve read the comic book, you understand why a character is acting a certain way towards you. if you don’t know about the comic book, you’d just be like, ⁓ that’s, she’s a bit grumpy ⁓ then carry on with your day. so like with the eyeballs, like for me, I wanna find more people like me and ⁓ I would love it. if I can pull someone from comic book land or from animated feature land and like the first game they play is one of us. Like that for me, like expanding like the audience is it’s like catnip, I think that’s amazing. There’s so many games I would love to play again for the first time and just, yeah, just open a whole new world of experiences. And then ⁓ the marketing of it, It’s just having like more touch points, right? Like, There’s comic book there’s a film, there’s a game. Like there’s multiple entry points into the Altered Gene wallet essentially. and also, I like ⁓ the formats because they let you tell stories in different ways. And I, ⁓ know, as we kind of on with the IP things before, like some stories you want to tell don’t fit like the medium you’re most experienced in. And… ⁓ given the work we’ve done already, I’m really happy where the scripts are for each thing. I’m like, okay, you know what? This makes sense. I’m trying to, yeah, I can’t really think of good example where I’ve watched a film, ⁓ this should be a book. But kind of what we had when we looking at it. And ⁓ yeah, just, and also even family-wise, ⁓ my wife her family don’t really care about video games. ⁓ They definitely don’t care about comic books. they do like films. So eventually if I get to make a film, that’s just gonna engage there and was like, oh, that’s what he does in his basement all day. Yeah, I’m definitely not gonna convert him into a game anytime soon, but yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten: You never know, I mean there’s a lot of people that just start picking something up on their phone and you know, don’t consider themselves gamers, but that’s what’s happened.

Des Gayle: ⁓ yeah, that’s definitely her.