Transcript

Aaron Nemoyten (00:00)
This is part two of my interview with Lindsay Barnett from Playground Productions and James Deighan from Mega Cat Studios. Lindsay and James’s companies are working together to revive the backyard sports games with six re-released games from between 1997 and 2002 and an original modern take on backyard baseball as

We got into a lot of the specific details about the games themselves in the last episode. So for this episode, we’ll be getting into some tangents about getting involved in short for Music and Gaming Festival, Lindsay’s research project for her master’s degree in education, how the prospect of being watched affects the books we might read and the games we might play, and what dream projects might be in the future for both of my guests. James’s answer to this question is, quite frankly, an amazing game pitch.

and I hope he gets to make it someday.

Okay, let’s get to part two.

Aaron Nemoyten (01:01)
speaking of passion, there’s a whole section on the MegaCat website about.

Game preservation, you’re involved with MagFest, you guys are working with a company to make actual game cartridges. How do you balance all of this sort of community involvement stuff? I don’t know if you’d call it, you know, sort of extracurricular activities with the business obligations that you have of running a studio. How do you find time for all of this?

James Deighan (01:26)
Yeah, that’s a tricky one. I feel like some of these things, I use MagFest as an example. I think we’re one of the only departmental volunteers that have done it for a decade. And if you’re not familiar with what MagFest is, it’s like a, there’s an indie video game showcase and a lot of the more prestigious showcases, it’s cost a lot of money to get into. And MagFest has a policy where if the game is great and the judges curate the game, there’s no cost to the indies. And, you know, there’s a…

huge community in the magfest team really intent around intended to just kind of protect the magfest pillars and you know i think that the folks who’ve been there the longest probably almost care the most too because they watch it grow from like a chiptune showcase and music to this event that draws you know hundreds of thousands of people every so many years and it completely 24-hour action and that’s where we met some my core team members it’s where we met our creative director Nate Flynn and

A lot of our team members that would come there, you see someone lug a 50 pound CRT, you know, through a giant building to showcase the game. They’re probably a candidate to work here because they have a real love, a real love for it, you have a few things that we put a lot of time into. One of them is Unity Pittsburgh. So we run the Unity user group here in our city, which helps all the students and people that want to join the industry, get access to the tools and the technology and just understand, hey,

You can follow your dreams. can do this. It’s not, it’s different on the East coast. I think a little bit, there’s not a ton of game companies here in Pittsburgh. There’s, there’s, there’s like two notable ones with mega cat and Schell And I think that’s like part of our mission, you know, ⁓ let people know they can follow their dreams and you can do games as a career. And then, you know, obviously we have things like the indie retro showcases that travel, which include magfest. And this goes back to the kind of culture question. We think about the mega cat mission and we have this thing called the principles of caddiness on our website, on our wall, on our stuff.

I think those things really resonate with the team because that’s part of the reward of working at MegaCat is we get to also drive this mission that we all believe in. And we have to make sure that we’re disciplined with how we’re managing our time for it. Cause it’s easy to get lost in the sauce. We’re just spending days and weeks and months and every department has some sort of 80-20 rule. And we have these front-room activity things that those are on track and all the other stuff ends up being partially unlocked. And I’ve never had a case where the teams

didn’t want to compete on who’s coming to PAX and who’s doing the showcase and whatnot. So they’re kind of part of our retention strategy too. Also unintentionally, like the team just loves doing team stuff together. I’m quite blessed that on any given day in my random channel on Slack, it’s the team doing team stuff on the weekend outside of work because they just love working with each other. And it just, one of my favorite things actually about MegaCAD is that there’s so much shared values and shared interests. It’s easy for them to get along in and outside of work.

You know, I think for many of us, you know, those first couple of jobs in the games industry is really, really tricky to navigate and really hard to uphill climb and establish credibility and get into a role you’re satisfied with. So all these little things we do with showcases and mentorship and lunch and learns and whatnot, they’re easy for people to get behind because they have flashbacks of their first, you know, the first month, their first week, their first games company before they came to MegaCat

Aaron Nemoyten (04:48)
it’s so important to have that sense of community and that

There’s always a risk if you’re working at a studio that doesn’t sort of value the happiness of the team quite as much because then you can get, you can get really attached to your coworkers, but people start, you know, spreading out as soon as they can get jobs elsewhere. if you’re in a place where people would just like be happy to stay there, then that all, you know, it makes more sense.

James Deighan (05:11)
There’s a book called Choose Your Enemies Wisely. And it talks about making great company culture and having shared dreams and shared wishes and shared like, here’s the mission, here’s what we’re about, here’s what we’re up against. And how do we find the right motivators and how do we find ways? And one of the things that really resonated with me in that book, because I read a lot about just kind of how to make effective teams and how to make these things operate. And so much of that talks about how the

your best competitive advantage for retention is also creating these ceremonies and creating this place where people love it so much because of the intangibles, but they can’t imagine going anywhere else. And that’s one of the things that I think about a lot. And it’s definitely part of how we’ve infused MegaCat with all these, we’ll say like unique initiatives, you know, because when I see things that are driving the principles of cattiness forward, that are also like really exciting and compelling to the team.

It’s a natural obligation for me to find a way to fit them in somewhere into the puzzle, as long as we’re not doing it in a way that just destroys any possibility of a P &L working. Because I think when you make the decision to work at a company like a MegaCAD versus an EA, there has to be a mission reason. Because you’re not doing it for the paycheck. We’re choosing projects sometimes based on a love for the projects, not because it’s the biggest ticket. And as you know with game companies,

You’re either an ex-dev studio or you work on success and royalties and there’s sometimes projects where that’s not even part of the equation for us. We got to just get in it and believe in it and love it. So it’s, it’s definitely part of ⁓ how we function like this. Cause I’ve been part of studios pre-MegaCat when I was making games where people aren’t into doing it. They clock out and they’re done and there’s not a desire. They’re working on projects that are not exciting and they don’t know how to find the fun. They don’t want to find the fun. They just want to ship it. And that’s like, that’s not the dream. That’s not why we were inspired to.

do this as adults and make games. Like it’s exactly in conflict with what 10 year old James would want 40 year old James to do.

But the industry is as wild as it is right now. ⁓ I think every day about how much gratitude I have for the fact that we have clients that when they work with us, they never want to not work with us again. And we have so many clients like that that we get to be choosy. I’m watching my colleagues every month still. When I was at PAX, I was really enjoying myself because I watching fans just explode for Backyard.

And we also were showcasing on the other side of the booth, the God of War Sons of Sparta booth, which the fans were going crazy for. And I thought, man, this is such a fun and fulfilling moment for the team because there’s nothing like watching players just like gush for your work. And as I’m there, I was just getting so many text messages from all the layoffs that happened at some of the first parties. And I was thinking, this is such a strange time in the industry and at MegaCAD. And I cannot wait for the…

contraction to stabilize from the AI and the all the first parties and the third parties. It’s like, I think about it every day. It’s sometimes it keeps me up because to your point, like we have to make sure we’re planning and anticipating a few steps ahead, but I’m not sure if anyone really can right now. And we’re just really lucky that we’ve had such a continued level of people showing up for our titles and the whole fan driven fandom product design working. But, know, it’s, it’s always on my mind though that

You know, we shouldn’t ever get comfortable and we have to, you know, really, really stay in it to win it.

Aaron Nemoyten (08:41)
This is like way left field, but ⁓ Lindsay, I wanted to ask you about your master’s project.

So to get your teaching degree, it’s a master’s degree and you studied how digital readers impact early elementary students reading and comprehension skills. And I saw recently that ⁓ it was somebody giving a talk, think about, ⁓ I think it was a Ted talk.

Lindsay Barnett (08:47)
Yeah.

That’s right.

Aaron Nemoyten (09:06)
about the sort of change in educational attainment over time over the last decade or so. And they were drawing the conclusion basically that when screens had replaced a bunch of ⁓ worksheets and books and stuff in classes that it was a net negative because we are just more tempted to skim on a screen than we are on a piece of paper. Is that what you found? Like what did you learn when you were doing that study?

Lindsay Barnett (09:36)
That is definitely one of the things that I had found. And interestingly, as it relates to backyard and gaming in general, there was a gamification of some of the children’s ⁓ books that were in on e-readers. And the question that I had kind of developed after observing so many of these students that were like,

reading and I say that with quotes because they were on the device and engaged in the material for a longer period of time, but they were not actually reading a lot of it. They were like playing with the interactables on the page or clicking around to other things and basically everything that wasn’t reading. Now, of course, there are examples where it really did help kids, especially if kids were

learning English and being able to like have the words highlighted and move through. But I think over overwhelmingly it became like just because someone is on a device doesn’t mean they’re utilizing it for its intended result or gaining what you’re hoping for. And oftentimes you’d look around the classroom and people would be reading and you have no idea what they’re reading behind that screen. So I thought that was

That was definitely one of the things. The other thing on the flip side though that I found, ⁓ which I think applies to podcasts and applies to gaming, is some of the kids who were at a lower reading level ⁓ got to have a more accessible platform where they could read at a level that was appropriate for them without having the embarrassment of holding a book that’s not the same range as their peers. And I thought that was a really interesting one of like,

There was a level of comfort because nobody knows what they’re actually reading. And so if they were at a different level, they really could maximize the results. And in some ways, I think that you get to experience that with, gaming, especially like with digital downloads, like cozy games are so big right now. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. And maybe you’re more likely to, to, to, to check out a certain game or try it out.

if you don’t have to like go into the arcade and actually like play that specific game. And I think people are able to create fandoms and communities ⁓ with something that they are passionate about and find those people. So there’s a lot that that project informed. ⁓ And, you know, I also like very much looked at a lot of educational media companies that were doing things the right way and taking, starting to take notes of that and

kind of apply that to anything else that I’ve done.

Aaron Nemoyten (12:35)
That’s really interesting. I had not considered the idea that the fact that you’re on an e-reader and everyone has the same e-reader means that nobody can see what you’re actually reading. And that’s sort of like the free school lunch thing where if you’re on the free school lunch program, if it’s a program that some kids are on and some are not, then there’s a stigma associated and you can be embarrassed and maybe you don’t pick up the food and you don’t eat it because you don’t want the other kids to know. But if everyone gets the free school lunch, then who cares, right? It’s for everyone.

Lindsay Barnett (12:49)
Yes.

Right.

Right.

Which is very different, especially with, you know, in a classroom, books are often, ⁓ like, ranked based on reading levels, which is essential for, you know, people finding the right. you know, there is quite the difference if you’re a high reader or a lower reader, like, to be able to have to go to that section. And so for something like, you know, an e-reader to solve that problem was really interesting.

You know, I think that that’s the same thing with accessibility, right? Anybody can play backyard baseball and they play it at their own level, but nobody has to know what the settings are. It’s your preference of how you want to play. And I think that sometimes when you think about things that were intended for educational, but can be applied across just making life better for everyone. ⁓ That was definitely something that my master’s program taught me. was like, it doesn’t need to be for kids. It doesn’t need to be educational.

It could just be the better way to do things. certainly with our accessibility and our games, I think that’s a good lesson to have learned.

Aaron Nemoyten (14:11)
really cool. I think, you know, the idea of the spectatorship part of it affecting behavior, it’s interesting, especially considering gaming. Like, I certainly have been in situations where, you know, a friend did an arcade birthday party and everyone got $10 worth of credit. So you could play whatever game you wanted to essentially for free. But would I play a game that I’d never played before?

Lindsay Barnett (14:21)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Nemoyten (14:38)
even though it was not my money because I would maybe look stupid doing it in front of my friends, right? ⁓

Lindsay Barnett (14:45)
Yeah. Or

would you be at that arcade party? Would you go and play dance dance revolution if you didn’t know how to dance well, or would that be too embarrassing? But would you play that alone? ⁓ because you wanted to see how fun it was. think there is, there’s definitely an aspect of like doing it in front of other people and, ⁓ something that’s really cool about like games is you can build communities with people that

really understand and have the same interest as you. And that becomes something even stronger. I think backyard baseball is a great representation of that, of there are a whole generation of people who grew up playing it and then went and played baseball in their own backyards and like all understood with the same level of understanding because they played the same game to get there.

Aaron Nemoyten (15:40)
It’s the old saying on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.

Lindsay Barnett (15:44)
Bringing it back to the dogs.

Aaron Nemoyten (15:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was also just thinking

about the time that I was playing Time Crisis 2 in an arcade and I was playing one-handed and I sort of hit a flow state and then at the end of, I think I lost or something and I looked around and I realized there were like five people watching me and I was like, I’m that guy right now. I’m the one that everyone’s like, my God, look at him go. And I felt kind of weird.

Lindsay Barnett (16:05)
Hahaha!

mean, yeah, I think there’s a lot of that. And I think, you know, it’s about now just figuring out ways that we can celebrate what the games that we love and how we love them. you know, again, doing it at the level that makes sense for you, because that’s been really cool to see like kids play against their parents in like backyard Derby or demo and.

each of them play at like their own accessibility point. So it feels really equal. And it could be the first time in that kid’s life that they ever have the chance to like beat their parents at a sport. And it happens and it’s really fun to watch.

Aaron Nemoyten (16:56)
Make Games Drink Coffee is brought to you by me, Aaron Nemoyten I’d love to grow the audience for this podcast to the point that it can pay for itself in some way. To that end, it would really help if you left a review, if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts Spotify, or like and comment if you’re watching on YouTube. You show that algorithm who’s boss. All right, back to the show.

Aaron Nemoyten (17:18)
So this is a question both of you. I’m sure you both have your different answers for it, but do you have the other dream IP to work with? And James, you kind of already answered this, but like, can you share what it is? Can either of you share what it is, or is it all kind of like it’s in the works, it’s legal stuff, we don’t wanna give it away?

Lindsay Barnett (17:37)
could not really share because like this, it to me, backyard sports is so my dream. ⁓ when I started playground productions, we had a whole slate of projects and, ⁓ the minute backyard started to catch fire, we cleared the rest of the slate. Cause I’m like, first of all, everybody wants a project to catch fire, but what happens when you actually do? ⁓ so the dream project for me is more like, I want this.

to this brand to expand out of just, you know, we have backyard baseball coming. I can’t wait for the next sport to come out. I can’t wait to do more TV. If we did an animated special, I want to do more animation. I want to do a feature film one day. Like I have such big dreams for this franchise and, you know, getting to create with these amazing characters, like that’s so the dream, but ⁓ it goes much farther beyond

just this game.

Aaron Nemoyten (18:37)
So your answer is you’ve got your hands full, you know? Yeah.

Lindsay Barnett (18:39)
I’ve got my hands full and also like,

you know, I mentioned, ⁓ or I’m not sure what I think I might’ve mentioned, like my love of the peanuts. There’s also like, I don’t know if I want to, ⁓ like some things like need to be left there. Like I have certain memories with my grandparents and whatever with certain brands that I don’t want to like be living in. I want to keep those as a fan and backyard is one that like has just been such a joyous process that.

I’ll stay in this fun world. actually tell my friends, ⁓ I have my personal Instagram account and then I have access obviously to the backyard sports official Instagram. And I tell people like when there’s too much going on in the world, I’ll just go on the backyard Instagram account because it’s much like more fun place to be on there. People are very positive. My for you page is like sports and games and like,

fun things and funny things. I’m like, anytime it’s, I like living in this fun world.

Aaron Nemoyten (19:43)
There’s this new term called Hope Core. Are you familiar with it?

Lindsay Barnett (19:48)
No, but I feel like I live that.

Aaron Nemoyten (19:50)
So it’s it’s the

idea that like, it’s sort of, it’s in response to the kind of postmodernism nihilism thing that, ⁓ you know, something like ⁓

Rick and Morty, I love Rick and Morty, but people have criticized it a bit for sort of feeling nihilistic and there being a lot of media that’s just sort of about, you know, about itself, about breaking the fourth wall, about, you know, the sort of self-awareness and winking at the audience, like Deadpool, for example. And ⁓ maybe people are getting tired of that and Hopecore.

Lindsay Barnett (20:25)
Can

I break the fourth wall right now? Well, if you like Rick and Morty, you should really watch the Backyard Sports animated special because it’s done by the same studio Lighthouse Animations who did Rick and Morty. But Backyard Sports, the animated special is a much more safe environment.

Aaron Nemoyten (20:28)
Yeah, sure.

Yes, so I actually watched it last night with my son ⁓ and ⁓ we

both laughed ⁓ many times ⁓ Yeah, I thought it was fun. It’s it’s so bright we ⁓ we got a new TV

Lindsay Barnett (20:58)
But same animators

as Rick and Morty, which is kind of crazy.

Aaron Nemoyten (21:01)
Well, and Rick and Morty, it’s funny, like there’s so many adult animated shows that feel really bland visually. And they’re mostly like they’re inspired by some combination of like Rick and Morty and Family Guy and stuff like that. But Rick and Morty looks better than all of them. So yeah, props to that team for sure. Also,

Lindsay Barnett (21:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. They’re amazing.

Aaron Nemoyten (21:23)
described Project Hail Mary as Hopecore, because like, it’s, it’s just a really positive piece of media that’s about like, people solving problems and finding the best and it’s not cynical and it’s not trying to, ⁓ you know, the message doesn’t end with like, well, there’s nothing we can do, right? It’s, it’s all about, you know, finding the best and being positive and ⁓ that’s something

Lindsay Barnett (21:26)
Mmm.

Aaron Nemoyten (21:49)
I think we could argue that we need right now. Yeah.

Lindsay Barnett (21:50)
could use. Yeah, I

think it’s really important. And I think part of the fun of the storytelling with the backyard, whether it’s the video game or the animated special is I think that the there’s been like a little bit of an overcorrection of what kind of content people need. And there’s something as simple of what would happen if your sports superstition like was not matched. What happens if you’re lucky gum?

you know, was missing that right there is a sports story, but it’s a true, like everybody can understand that because adults have their own crazy superstitions, maybe even more so than the kids. And, ⁓ you know, I just think that like sports are one of the best ways to teach people about life. And, ⁓ I think that there’s a lot about resilience and winning and losing and all of that, that sports can teach.

That’s part of what I love, even though backyard baseball is not an educational game. There are a lot of, a lot of my students at least struggled with, ⁓ post COVID, they struggled with winning and losing because they hadn’t had the experience of it before. And, ⁓ you know, if you think about that, if you were quarantined in kindergarten and then didn’t come back to school until second grade, like you missed a lot of that playground recess, gym class stuff.

where like you were at home and you’ve only won and you’re seven years old. So I think there’s things like that, like baseball of all of the different sports is such a good representation of like, you might get struck out, you get another at bat and you got to get up there and you got to do it. And it’s about how you show up and what you do the next time. And I just really think that people could learn more about that and it might help them with their life.

Aaron Nemoyten (23:45)
I really like the exploration of that perspective of when you’re a kid and things that are objectively low stakes feel like the most important thing in the world and.

Lindsay Barnett (23:57)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Nemoyten (23:58)
That’s actually one of the reasons I love a Christmas story, even though I’m Jewish and I didn’t see it until I was like, you know, 28 or something. ⁓ But I love that perspective of, of, kids have this idea that like everything is the most important thing ever. And ⁓ even though adults are the ones that have to tell those stories to, you know, make the cartoons and write it and stuff. I think it’s important to get into kids’ heads in that respect and tell that story from their level.

Lindsay Barnett (24:07)
Sure.

Aaron Nemoyten (24:24)
and with the understanding and the empathy that like, yeah, I understand that this feels really important to you.

Lindsay Barnett (24:29)
right. And that’s part of, I think what makes Backyard so unique is like, it’s how these kids are coming to the plate. know, Ronnie Dobbs is our head of marketing’s favorite character. And I don’t typically pick Ronnie for my team, but he always talks about Ronnie being his favorite because Ronnie ⁓ hops up and he’s so happy every time he gets to the plate. And then if he strikes out, he…

he cries, but the next time he gets back up to the plate, he hops up again with a smile on his face. And like, that is life. And that character represents what it’s like to just be a kid and get back up there and try again. And I think, you know, those are universal stories. You can just frame them in a way that a kid can understand, but a lot of the adults, I think, understand it in a very different way when they reflect back on our game and play it.

Aaron Nemoyten (25:02)
Mmm.

Lindsay Barnett (25:26)
play it again, like they have a very unique perspective. One of the most unique perspectives being like, people are often like, yeah, there’s hardcore simulation games. I’m like, have you seen a T-ball game? If you see the T-ball game, this is probably the most realistic to T-ball that you’ve ever seen. There’s a kid somersaulting and spinning around in the field and picking flowers. That will hit you differently as a parent or a teacher than it did as a kid.

Aaron Nemoyten (25:48)
you

Lindsay Barnett (25:53)
Anyways, James, what’s the dream?

Aaron Nemoyten (25:55)
James,

yeah, can you share any of your dream IPs that you would love to work on personally or as a studio?

James Deighan (26:06)
Yeah, I guess some interesting ones personally, I saw your Sonic shirt, Aaron, so I’d love to do like a Dr. Robotnik factorial game where you’re just like, setting up and kind of like starting in like Green Hill Zone 1 and creating the levels Sonic’s playing through and through like an expected kind of, you know, evil scientist moment, you’re like reframing history to your advantage with, I had a strategic withdrawal at end of this level because we have to go to the next level, right? So.

Aaron Nemoyten (26:15)
⁓ wow.

James Deighan (26:34)
That’s been like a wishlist thing for a minute. then, I think all the games we grew up with that we’re still fans of now as adults, your Zeldas and Borderlands, all these things are really interesting. But I’m like a sucker for arcade sports. I used to play 15 minutes of NBA Jam before bed in college, years after it came out. I grew up in a sports city. I loved playing sports. For me, it was like a huge part of my identity as a kid growing up.

you know, not getting too much into details there. I’m like a foster care product in any city in any house I go to, I could just play sports and make friends and find my way around. And it was like so much of my identity then. And even now it’s like, it’s such a genuine passion. And we think about like these arcade sports, they’re so much more accessible than like the crazy finger karate of like the FIFA’s and the current PGA. It’s like, you sit down to play a current generation, like modern simulation sports game.

Aaron Nemoyten (27:21)
Yes, yes.

James Deighan (27:27)
There’s like a pretty massive barrier to entry to just sit down and enjoy our executive producer here, Danny, at one point was like world ranked 10 for like some of NHL titles. He’s crazy, crazy hockey fan and player. And, but it’s so hard for the team members that even if they love hockey, if they’ve kind of lapsed in their reps for playing games that franchise, you can’t like casually play. It’s like a brutal. So, you know, maybe, um, a new take on NHL 94 will be a lot of fun.

You know, I thought about some of that stuff before and we’ve talked to NHL and they’re pretty bullish on us. So it’s just a matter of timing and, yeah, you know, if I had been two inches taller, maybe a little longer limbs, I would have loved to play pro hockey, but you know, I definitely have a, I just love, I love arcade sports. I’m a sucker for it since we started MegaCat and we’ve made a ton of internal sports games and game jams. made this really funny one called Field of Nightmares.

Lindsay Barnett (28:00)
Or we could just make backyard hockey and call that a day.

James Deighan (28:20)
kind of plays like pigskin football. If ever played that before, Aaron, it’s like a Sega Genesis arcade game. But it’s it’s the most simple pick up and play football game. And you’re just running left to right. There’s like, they reduce the roles like crazy to make them arcade snappy. So you can just go. And there’s all these silly things that are just like kind of off the chain where if you’re down at halftime, you just get this really powerful troll in your team and the audience chants troll. And you just have this really powerful running back. And it’s like, just, it just so much pure fun. And I always.

Aaron Nemoyten (28:25)
I didn’t play that one.

James Deighan (28:49)
My creative director’s a little bit of a curmudgeon for these things and you can get him so excited still playing these games because they’re just purely fun, dude. And I always feel like there’s a gap right now for these titles. And I think that’s one of the things that makes it so exciting for fans when they sit down to play like backyard derby at PAX East is that it has all the toggles. You can play a higher difficulty version, but it’s accessible to like a casual player or a kid. And I’m just so happy to be able to work on a franchise we adore that

can take some of these fan wishlist things into the product design early and make sure we’re bringing something to market that anyone can get up and play.

Aaron Nemoyten (29:25)
That is cool. my perspective on like racing games and sports games is like, I will play it if it is not realistic. If it is realistic, I’m not interested.

James Deighan (29:35)
Yeah, I’m with you, man. It’s tricky because the more realistic it gets, there’s a level of artistry in those simulation titles. And we’ve been able to do some max dev on a couple of them that are like really impressive, wild game engine, technological masterpieces that are just these insane functions. But that’s just a different craft. And I think the stuff we like to build and we like to play.

Aaron Nemoyten (30:00)
I agree we need more of that like NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, the Rush series of racing games. I loved how you could just fly across the city and it made no sense, but ⁓ you know, ridiculous but fun. SSX, that’s a series that needs to come back. ⁓ Somebody needs to make kart racing games besides Nintendo. ⁓ You know, one every like seven years is not enough.

Lindsay Barnett (30:15)
Yeah, love.

These are great ideas.

James Deighan (30:25)
Check out HyperYuki

on Steam. HyperYuki is an independent title that plays just SSX Tricky I just saw at a trade show. It looks awesome. Yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten (30:33)
Nice,

nice. Yeah, that sounds good.

This is getting to the kind of like LinkedIn inspiration slop territory, ⁓ what has, I saw that you’re really into strength training and you used to do bodybuilding. I’m not sure if you still do, but ⁓ is there something that game developers can learn from strength training and bodybuilding?

James Deighan (30:53)
Yeah, you know, I’m pretty biased, okay? Like ⁓ it’s my number one hobby in my entire life. And I would say the only thing that has never faltered in my life has always been fitness and games. That’s always been the high points and the things that make me happiest. And I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that shouldn’t live an active lifestyle in some capacity. You just have to find what is a little bit fun for you and a little bit satisfying to make it stick. And we used to have this…

Workout program we started here during COVID called Catfit. And we were doing these like 15 to 30 minute blocks. And we’d had a ton of our team members who were locked in at home, like doing like guided catalysics. And I, you know, I have a physiology degree, which as I was mentioning in my med school story, turned into a bio degree and it went pre-med. And then I got into the MD PhD program at Pitt. And I dropped out after about two years thinking like, I wonder if I, this is silly to say now, but it’s like, like, wonder if I can make games. ⁓

Aaron Nemoyten (31:50)
What if? What

if?

James Deighan (31:53)
And it’s like, you know, it’s funny. My wife is the one that convinced me to drop out. She was like, you know, you love games so much and you just left this vacation and we went to like a video game bar. She can’t stay away. Like, why are you, why do you care so much about like, why can’t you just exercise and, and do that later? Like you don’t have to do this as a profession. And, you know, but cat fit like reminded me that, you know, a of times people just need exposed to it. It’s like a power of association thing. And it’s a community team building thing. And, you know, a lot of the team members started it then, and that created a little bit of, um,

friendly social accountability. And we set up like a Slack bot and we added like a couple little things of the Slack bot where it reminds people to drink water. And, know, we give them points for being consistent. And it became like, I used to make this joke to some of my industry friends. The next trade show we did, which was one of the packs East, was a 20, 21 or 22. And we were there to show a boxing game we had just created and WrestleQuest, which is a wrestling game. And when we showed up, I was joking with our booth neighbors. like,

I’m like, all the mega cat nerds are like 150 pounds of steel each, because we’ve been doing planks and pushups and sit ups, and you guys are sitting at home rotting. And just goofing with each other, because most of us had only seen each other at that point two years ago, because we were locked in for COVID. And the reality is a ton of my team members had like slimmed down, and were like, posture was better, like scoliosis addressed And a lot of it was just this really small catalytic moment of this team unifying. Can you do it for 15 minutes? Can we just hang out?

And for a while there, were leaving microphones on, everyone’s like exasperated, laughing and breathing hard. was just really fun. And it just reminded me of my earlier years as a personal trainer where a lot of times it’s just like, you need someone to give you a chance to do it in a way that you want to do it. So it’s not being thrust upon you in force, right? So Zumba, know, Billy blanks tapes, whatever the thing is, you’re to dance, dancing, you got to find your thing. don’t, sometimes I remember people would get so turned off by the concept of like weight training because it wasn’t exciting or fun for them.

You just gotta find the thing. Yeah.

Lindsay Barnett (33:48)
to say that

James has to be a bodybuilder because we’re, we at the playground are going to give him a very heavy lift with all the work that we’re going to give him. So, you know, he’s got to be able to do it, but James and I bonded. We’re both, sometimes we have very similar traits. mine is not as much weight lifting as much as it is cardio and the amount of meetings that James and I have had, especially at the start of.

James Deighan (33:58)
Hehehehehe

Lindsay Barnett (34:18)
working together where like I was camera off on the elliptical and he was camera off lifting and I was like, that’s going to work. That’s going to work well for us. We took a meeting on a, was it next on a ellipticals next to each other once.

James Deighan (34:22)
You

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right.

Aaron Nemoyten (34:37)
that’s funny.

That’s a good use of time. That’s very efficient.

Lindsay Barnett (34:39)
Yeah, it’s

the best way to be efficient.

Aaron Nemoyten (34:43)
Lindsay and James, thank you so much for being on Make Games Drink Coffee.

Lindsay Barnett (34:46)
Thank you for having us.

James Deighan (34:47)
Thanks for having us.

Aaron Nemoyten (34:51)
And that’s the end of episode 20. Wow, 20 episodes already. How time flies, right? Thank you for listening to Make Games Drink Coffee. You can find out more at makegamesdrinkcoffee.com and you can email me at makegamesdrinkcoffee.gmail.com. Remember to like, follow, subscribe, leave a review, and tip your barista. Drink up, I’ll see you next time.