if I’m the CEO who wants to give more autonomy make people own their product

decisions how do I go from that not happening to them having more ownership the leader of the team and the company

your job is to get everyone solving the problems and your job is to thus frame those problems how do you bring that out

of the introverts on your team how do you bring out their idea um well that’s actually one of the techniques is kind

of allowing different frames for discussion and ideation try to create

multiple Avenues of communication and ideation for a

team welcome Jeremy welcome Jeremy to the podcast thank you for having me I want to start with the story of how we

met do you remember how we met uh it was a rainy day in Cologne in Germany Gamescom at a at a

Mexican restaurant it was late and you you were still cool about

it I was we were going back and forth probably for like two years I was trying

to get you on a round table podcast probably two years ago it was never the right time I think you was at Cyber at

the time if I remember and then the next year was just another catch up and then we happened to be at Gamescom at the

same time that’s right I had a really strict policy of not doing podcasts with absolutely anyone it was it wasn’t you

it was me uh and and then I was like okay well that policy doesn’t make sense anymore so um weirdly I didn’t want to

self-promote um I don’t know what I was thinking I’m not a smart man uh but it was uh I’m glad we met because uh you

know wish it happened two years earlier but I’m glad we met over Mexican food that was a lot of fun yeah why did you

decide to meet in the end well I mean I’m I’m starting a company and I’m trying to uh instead of

be the person behind the scenes I’m now the CEO so it’s literally my job to be

in front of things and talk about things um I I always like um talking about

product and helping people understand um you know I I am arrogant enough to think

that I can give someone some idea of how to make uh their games better um I still

am not AG enough to think I can make their companies better I’m still trying to figure that out myself but uh the uh

you know that’s it’s definitely something that I can give to people and and they will know more about about me and about us and what we’re doing and uh

you know even better uh I I love games you know like a lot of us do this so I I

love the chance to maybe uh someone even if it’s by learning by uh by through my

failures at least uh you know knowing how to make a better game or think about making games um you know if that helps

anyone that’s super gratifying th% what I want to do is kind

of go through your LinkedIn just to give everyone a bit of an overview because you’ve had quite the journey so I’m

literally just going to read out these titles here so started in 20 3 as the

assistant editor at the Sports Exchange so this is editing content for Yahoo Fox

CBS around Sports then you went to EA working on Madden NFL as an assistant

producer you then went back to the sports exchanges the assistant editor and returning as a copywriter for the

first fasal baseball and football player notes then you went to Quick hit as a

contract designer and writer then you moved into game design as a senior game designer then went to game designer on a

mobile game at JJ mobile then you moved on to GSN as the product manager again

mobile then moved on to senior product manager then to Jam City at the director of products where you ended up being

again this is in San Francisco then you moved over across the pond to London and you was in Graham gains as the vice

president of product they make m dragons massive massive studio and then you went and became the head of Copenhagen studio

for cyber behind Subway Surfers which is another move to Denmark and then you went back to London as the general

manager of the tonic games group leading four guys and then production development manager at Ginger Joy games

and now you’re the CEO of your own self stealth startup so quite the journey and

quite the moves across the planet yeah my poor wife and my poor cats uh uh yeah

i’ I’ve been I’ve been around me I think the kind of nomadic lifestyle is very familiar for for game developers I think

I’m trying to stay in London for as long as I can now um both for my sake and my wife’s sake

but yeah I mean uh it was it was a great chance to to try different things um San

Francisco is great because I have a lot of family there and always wanted to get out to the Silicon Valley and that or

around there uh and get out to the Bay um I’m really glad I did Jam City was just amazing place to be and then

London getting to join merch dragons at the point it was at was really unique and thankfully that we’re really well

and we had a lot of growth and got to work with a lot of great people um but you know it been a dream to be back here

I I was a nomadic child so um grew up in uh the Midwest um not just Minneapolis

but lots of different parts of the Midwest um but the uh as a kid moved to Amsterdam so I had always had a dream of

moving back to Europe so getting um getting to London just as London left

Europe was you know whatever I didn’t plan wasn’t my part of my plan but it’s it’s still close to them yeah it’s your

fault uh but the uh it it was great I I I love it here um as I like to say I

London I love it so much here I’ve moved here twice now amazing so if you’re in a London

taxi cab and someone asks you what do you do for work add what do you say because that seems like a hard off I go

full American I say I’m the most important game maker in all of London uh no um I say I make games and then they

go uh anything I’ve heard of and if they have an English accent I say maybe

someway servers do you have any kids um so you know it’ll be followed by do you play games and then uh depending on what

they ask and sometimes they’re like oh I play fall guys with my kids or or yeah my teenager you know whatever played

fall guys and so different stuff like that so yeah it’s on them make games there’s a lot of moving Parts in

making a game so product could you explain what product means in games like

what part does product solve in making games um I mean again it it depends in

lots of different companies it means lots of different things a product manager um and a producer and even a

designer can mean literally the same job uh at EA a lot of my job even though

this is a long time ago they have distinctions now but once upon a time uh being a producer M you were kind of a

development manager and a designer and actually doing some production work too where you’re scheduling um and really

managing the team unless the actual engineering work it really depends um but to me product is um I think really

has two main uh bifurcations it either means you are kind of the data person

really managing the business of what the game is or you’re someone who’s really holistically thinking about how the game

operates um the business then is just a component of the how the team Works how they collect how the team collaborates

what the design of the game is and ideally the higher up you are from uh

the actual product uh the less say you have in any one of those things and the more you’re trying to influence uh the

people actually making those decisions so in your studio what version

of a products leader oh that’s that’s a great question um right now because we’re a small

studio uh I am that person uh I’m the person playing the product role um that

will change really soon um but again it’s me but it’s not just me so uh a lot

of product and design decisions have for instance so far even at this early stage been made by my CTO who’s doing a lot of

the actual building um going back to us saying um that cliche of having uh

people closest to the metal uh trying to you know make as many decisions about how to do things as possible is kind of

a platonic ideal um thankfully we’ve been able to do that a lot of the cool things about the design of our our our

first game and our first prototypes um have been made by the engineer who has to build it um and so my job a lot of

times is just kind of say okay this is what we’re trying to do this is the experience we want to give players um

this is you know I’m trying to help them think about what the end goal of that is um and sometimes it is saying okay I

think we should try this and this um but most of the time it’s that and then followed up by yeah but that’s going to

be a lot of that’s going to be a lot of work or or uh what if we did this instead and again as long as it’s moving

us towards the same goal um especially faster um and often better um it goes

okay well let’s try that and there have been a few times when that hasn’t worked and we went back to my old idea and

sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t but the point is we try to operate in a way that ideally I make

less and less decisions especially specific ones uh as the longer we go on

so um in in my company I definitely have that that product Vision the people we

bring in need to fit into that uh philosophy where we want that but there are definitely smart product people that

think along those lines already um and we’ve had wonderful product people who have already been helping us in

different ways and they’re all absolutely um smarter product people than me uh so I you know it it’s just a

question of uh who we bring on board and when we bring them on board but right now it’s me a lot and hopefully that’s

changing really really soon um and even when it is me uh you don’t want your CEO

making your product Deion even though it’s a small company and that is my background um and the game is very much

I’d say my vision um it’s you know that’s my job is to fix that to make it

our vision uh more and more and thankfully I’ve got some people but I’ll be bringing in more people who will take

it over from me and make it there so I’m excited to see what that looks like as a recruiter we were recruiting for

Studios where the CEO was very much Hands-On or had the final say on some things and I could always feel speaking

to the hiring managers that causes tension but you said it’s not a good

idea could you elaborate as why it’s not a good idea isn’t it a good thing that you who have all this vision is kind of

also the one making the the minu as well you know uh

clearly I think it’s not I think it’s a I think it’s a flaw I mean again it’s sometimes it’s a matter of um just a

function of the Skies of a studio you know when you’ve only got 10 people um 20 people even 100 people um you know

the closer you are to one person and the other person’s the CEO the more that

person naturally has to be involved we all have to do lots of things that’s part of the nature of a startup a small

company you you wear more hats the smaller the company is um part of growing up through you know a

lot of the companies who listed were different phases of being startup different sizes some were like five person companies some were 10 some were

five and became 20 some were you know they all went through different Evolutions um and also just learning and

reading about these things that is part of the challenge of growing a company is learning how to let go of your name your

company this thing you built it was your idea you know like there’s a lot of your ego that’s tied up in these scenes and

even if it’s not your ego it’s your livelihood it’s your it’s your baby like you love this thing hopefully and if you

do you know you can even make mistakes with the right intentions I may I may

have already made these mistakes I’m going continue to make them but um I definitely think it’s a a mistake to do

it uh any longer than you have to and it’s if you have the luxury of having

people I mean that’s part of what I’m saying is thankfully know some really great product people and have come to

know some really great product people and so I’d be very happy if uh I could make you know the the nitty-gritty of

these problems theirs and the more um they feel like they own these things the the more likely it’s going to be

something better I mean that is My overarching Philosophy about product um not just in games but um it’s not just

to say that um kind of anything that’s big enough is inherently collaborative

but um I I really do believe in the agile Manifesto and and lowercase a agile which means not so much corporate

agile but the spirit of you know you want the people who are enacting the plans to shape the plans so if I’m doing

that yeah I’m not surprised that those companies are annoyed at their CEO the

CEO maybe can’t even help himself maybe doesn’t even realize he’s doing it um God if that that’s what I help some

company do uh and make some company better by some you going ah am I the Baddie um you know it’s not that they’re

a bad person but we all make mistakes and it it can be hard to let go and it’s hard to find that balance it’s not easy

I am going to make that mistake even though that I’m saying that’s what I’m all about um but I do think being

intentional about that makes a big difference and can cause you to say and and then can give people who work for

you maybe don’t have as much power as you do to maybe challenge you and go

okay well uh you’re the CEO maybe Jeremy back off um and you go ah right that is

what I’m about um so again it’s it’s also about giving people the psychological safety to to say are are

you living your own values and do you think what you’re doing here is right um and yeah you’re still the boss so you

can be like yeah I am I don’t care uh but but it’s I think you create a much healthier better company and a better

product if the more you can adhere to that I want to ask you how do you get to

that stage if I’m the CEO who wants to give more autonomy make people own their

product decisions how do I go from that not happening to them having more ownership it’s hard you know a lot of it

starts with the stuff that a CEO is supposed to do um and a leader I mean it it doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO or

this is just true of um a lot of places I’ve been and part of what’s giving me the arrogance to to try to be a CEO is

that a lot of my role has been the CEO of the team and the CEO of a studio where that’s a lot of it is setting the

culture of how you make product decisions um you know a a lot of what I

did on merge dragons um was copying uh ilka uh from

supercells inverting the pyramid talk uh that really fit in with a lot of

what it gave nice Clarity to I actually hadn’t even seen the talk yet but it it was totally exactly what we were doing

um which was trying to make as many decisions uh come from the people that

are the domain experts and not necessarily the people that have the high the most seniority um and that

meant that you know if it’s an engineering decision uh try to have that idea uh or you know the the solution for

that come from that engineer and you as a leader is saying this thing’s important that thing’s important um and

then also asking questions where you’re saying what do you think is important

what what would you do uh to make this game better what would you do to now we had a problem with frame

um start with a problem I think our frame print is is bad do you agree and

then the Q8 manager holds up their phone that has just hard Frozen uh due to Thermal damage uh protections uh because

the game was running terribly and they went yeah we kind of weren’t prioritizing them for a long time uh we

actually did a whole Deep dive and we have a list of things we want to do but uh we just for various reasons haven’t

been able to do them really I mean that’s basically what happened and uh

with with one of our best updates uh we that’s basically at the start of our hockey stick was when we uh took on some

of those things and um you know you don’t know how bad a problem often is until you start addressing it and you

also don’t know how easy it is you know they’re like I gave them a list of things that they could do in two weeks

and um that they could QA in one week I was like if it fits in that box you tell me what those things are uh make sure

you and QA agree on that I didn’t know what they were going to put in the Box uh I didn’t know that apparently the way

we loaded our scene uh could have been done more efficiently and we were doing it at the same time as we were doing

Network calls as me vaguely remembering what happened and that there was a better way to do that in unity that came from an engineer um of course I wouldn’t

know how to do that uh and and then you leave room for them and then QA goes yeah we could QA that one in a little

bit of time another idea they had they couldn’t we just did it later so they they decided what was in the Box they

decided how they wanted to approach it they had buying from the people they were collaborating with that they could

actually execute this plan and um and frankly they were energized by knowing

that it was their work and that they they could go and be like I’ve been wanting to do this I have excitement

this was my idea um you get more throughput from people when they know

it’s their work and not just a task and then you get them in the mode of thinking what could I do next um and so

so your job as a CEO is to get them in that mode as again CEO of the product CEO of the team whatever it is the

leader of the team and the company your job is to get everyone solving the problems and your job is to thus frame

those problems and but but give them the freedom to be the ones that go well I’m just a junior engineer I don’t I don’t

know nothing um again they there are problems that can come with that as well

but you you want to set Frameworks for where even that Junior engineer who may uh have more um confidence than

capability that can happen um you need to create Frameworks for those that’s kind of a separate thing but if you can

get everyone kind of operating that way um yeah you just get a lot more productivity you get a better

game feels like that we’re moving from giving them tasks but we’re more giving

them the problem and then they can decide what the tasks are for problem you just get more velocity out of people

um if you can I mean again um the bigger you get the harder that is um and the

harder it is to then go okay um you know different bigger companies they have struggles where okay you have

to kind of create little groups I think that’s one way that some companies solve it and frankly I’m I’m less good in much

larger teams where you know you have to take out that but again I my understanding of this um you know this

this applies to the US Military and those are giant freakingly top down organizations and they they operated by

these same principles um maybe not to the same ends um but uh to take a

military example you don’t want a general shooting your guns uh that means

something’s screwed up you you want these things to happen so if you’re in the combat again not to go to a dark

space but if you’re in combat you have to make decisions for yourself and you have to feel like you can do that um so

it’s about Preparing People for these tough moments and then giving them the autonomy to to make their own decisions

so you are always trying to focus more on the goals and less on the task the higher up you you are um and the further

you are away from the problem and then and then the people closer to the problem you want them shaping uh what

those this kind of sub goals what those look like and then giving information being like this is not going to happen

uh for XYZ reason um and we we are close to the problem and here’s why this isn’t working could we try something else we

had this idea you know when you’re when you having those situations um that’s really good and if they don’t have to

take things up the chain and down the chain to make those decisions that go hey I knew um again I think in the military

they call it command intent um there’s this really good book by jao willink about leadership that talks about that

people can kind of make the right decision without needing to go talk to their boss’s boss’s boss you’re just

going to move faster and do better things um and move faster and break fewer things uh and make more things so

that’s hopefully uh again I say this I’m a pacifist uh but but I I do think that

that uh there’s definitely organizational learning to take from from complicated and I Stakes things

like that you mentioned there that you prefer working in smaller Studios I guess

versus larger Studios did I get that when it comes to product

so there’s people listen to this who might be working in the bigger studio and love this idea but potentially have

that problem where we have the right intentions but how do we actually put this in practice like I was wondering

because you’ve had the experience like how do you feel like we maximized the ownership in a larger Studio I think

it’s super complicated I think it has to kind of start really frankly with the people at the top of that organization

um and they have to be comfortable that that is actually what they want um it is sometimes harder to I mean you can

always pilot things again uh having groups that kind of do their own thing

and experiment um that is something you could do in a large organization where you say okay we’ve got 100 people a 20

person team can handle this task in this way and we can kind of see how that works but you have to

actually support that it might not work at first um that you know you you are

taking a risk and that you’re going to be hopefully supportively analytical about how that goes um but more

pointedly that’s not what I think I’ve been successful at I I don’t I think I’ve been in those larger groups but

I’ve I’ve seen it be harder I’ve seen how it it hasn’t happened

um and I don’t think I and I have my thoughts about how I would do things differently to make that happen and my

first answer is that which is that you know you kind of have to make sure that everyone really wants that um if you are

say a fairly waterfall organization which a lot of AAA companies are um

things come from the top they have an idea maybe it came from marketing um and again Mark not that marketing’s the bad

guy but they go some executive who’s not marketing says marketing says this the focus group said that so you have to do

this and you have to do in this day by this date and you’re doing that that happens a lot um I think that’s a bad

way to make games um I don’t think all aaa’s work like that in fact um you know

who is it um rare with sea of Thieves the group that’s making that they’re like one of the most Progressive

development groups in the world they’re giant um you know a lot of of course belder grade three everyone loves them

because they should um but but again there are big teams that work in a

really smart super efficient way um know even a lot of fortnite is is founded in

really smart uh gas SAS principles and a lot of people that are really really good um at you know having cross

functional groups but there’s other teams I’m aware of not necessarily ones that I’m a part of um and I won’t name

names in that case but they you know friends will be working from them and say my 100 person engineering team is

not talking to my 100% production team they don’t talk to each other uh um

which is kind of jawdropping but it’s it’s incredibly common um I’ve experienced similar things to that where

you end up in silos and it’s because the organization thinks uh to operate in um

domain silos and then they kind of come together um and they operate in they may

say that they do Agile but at best case they’re doing some sort of corporate

agile you know scrum do org whatever type stuff which I I don’t believe in

um and I why don’t you believe in that uh the idea of uh strictly prescribed

agile is like it’s so antithetical to the principles of agile I I can’t even

begin to describe it I mean I think um yeah I mean that’s I I’ve done scrum I think I think again if you have freedom

to apply uh principles based on a team and the structure of a team um that’s

good um agile is literally built it’s in it’s in the name it’s it’s built on

agility but if you are built a strict structures and uh Dogma about the actual

execution of things um you’re just hurting yourself um you know one thing I didn’t understand until lately was why

different companies and it goes back to a question you asked earlier about the structure of product why different companies have different structures for

product teams some have a producer at the top and then a product manager under them some have a co-lead with a product

manager and a producer some have like a game director slvp which is kind of like the structure I had at merge dragons and

I’ve worked in all of these and a lot of them have worked really really well um but the difference to me and and I

always get asked like oh well what’s the best structure and like it’s what’s best to the people you have and to the way

your company works so cookie cutter structures and cookie cutter this team

has to be can ban and every all 500 teams in this company are all can ban I

standardization has certain values but it has Mega costs especially in games and the people are not uh people are not

Legos um that’s just not how we are and so people may have weird combinations of

skills and if you can adapt your team to those skills and your your basically development practices to the team to the

skills um it’s easier to optimize it but um I my belief is that corporate agile

uh basically says no you have a scrum master and you have this person and this person it’s like well you know that can

be what a team needs it might be what a team needs at a certain phase and it can be really useful for them I I’ve had a

wonderful scrum experience um but I’ve had a lot of really bad ones and people that were pretty much dogmatic about it

and um those people may have been smart people but they were acting foolishly in

my opinion that was my heart take no it’s good to understand like the

reasoning behind it I want to take this to the perspective of someone new to

product or new to the industry and if you just think back to when you started like what do you wish you told yourself

then about product um I mean exactly what I’ve been talking about I mean

um maybe I was self-describing by thinking that I’m a smart person acting foolishly uh because I I’ve definitely

it’s debatable how smart I am at any given point particularly when I was Junior uh you know I was a dumb kid um

but I thought I was so smart and I thought I had every answer um you know I was hired into EA to be an American

football expert um and people told me you know so much about American football um and I took that to mean I know

everything and all these other people that have making mad and that have played professional football which I

definitely uh haven’t um that I don’t I don’t have any room to learn from them

and I wasn’t like it’s not like I wasn’t willing to learn anything from anyone but I I thought I knew better and the

way I designed things notice all the eyes I’m using the way I designed things was in kind of uh in a Solo Ivory Tower

um and so uh it was explicitly waterfall here my design it’s 20 Pages it’s beautiful it’s covered every Edge case I

mean it’s completely moronic but I believed it and then I’d give it out to engineers and I I would try to get as

much you know polish on it and then they’d have to go and take my stupid ideas um that all kinds of specifics

that they had to work around and they didn’t know how much room they had to change things it was just kind of take

this monolithic thing it probably got very bored reading all this detail that I put into things um and maybe even miss

some details and maybe even miss the core Spirit of what I was trying to convey so um it made worse features and

and made the games I worked on worse when I approached things that way so um thankfully a much smarter more senior um

engineer than myself I will name drop him my aome and pulled me aside and basically told me that people hated

working on my designs um and that was was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me um and it completely changed how

I look at things um and uh I got laid off from that job rightfully shortly

after he’d probably been in like a management meeting be like who to get rid of and like everyone was like Stein you know um I don’t know if it went down

like that but that’s how I imagine it and so I had some time to think about it with my next job being like okay uh that

wasn’t good um I lost my dream job what do I do and I I definitely thought about

what Meer said to me for for you know maybe a year while I went and uh you know did Sports eding again which is

great and when I I was determined to go back to games and be like I’m not going to do that again I’m going to see how

how righty was um and ever since then um that’s how I’ve tried to approach things

and I don’t think it’s an accident that my career has been on a very different trajectory since then started making

better features making better games people who made games with me liked working on designs with me people you

know seem to want to work again um particularly when we get to collaborate so um you know do un to others is done

un to you applies to kind of anything it’s definitely applies to collaboration and making games so that that I wish I’d

learned earlier I’m glad I I you know I may not make you be may not be making games today if I hadn’t gotten that hard

lesson early on what was the key difference from the Jeremy that was at EA and then

the one that came after when it came to that collaboration what was the key change um going back to what we talked

spoke about earlier in the video you know instead of saying here are all the specifics of what we have to do and what

it looks like and here I filled a box for you go do it it’s more saying hey um

I’d like this box to solve these problems and provide these things what do you think so um creating a framework

you still have that responsibility um but even being open to the conversation and then be like that’s

not going to fit in this box we can’t find that we need to make this two weeks we need to break this whatever that

conversation could but most of the time say you do your job all right and you come up you know you’ve already done

what can happen in a collaboration in a conversation and those um even if you’re

using documentation um which again violates some of the agile principles uh

conversations over documentation I believe it’s one of them but that it’s okay to write things down but when you

write things down again it’s to frame things and be like okay here’s an

example of what I’m trying to do here’s a visual here’s a diagram here’s whatever um and then coming back to

those people and saying okay whether again it can be on um teams it could be

on slack whatever or could be on person or whatever Zoom um but as long as you’re having those conversations you

know like I did this a design session this morning over a WhatsApp audio call and it felt great um but a lot of the

work was just setting the box and saying okay I’m trying to do this with this feature oh God that has this and this

knock on effect you know my engineer said to me uh okay um well then let’s take these other two things that are

more important and then had a similar thing with another one so well what if we it only needed to do this oh I was

actually thinking about that and he had like a design in his brain for how we could accomplish what we were trying to

give the player I was like oh great and he’s G to go with because he knew that it was his idea he’s going to go and

just want to have the energy to go do that I’m not going to have to prod him to remind him to build this he’s a

wonderful engineer I don’t to do that anyways but um he’s just going to have energy to do that it’s going to be

exciting and when he sees it and people like it it’s going to just feel very satisfying so that’s the big change is

that instead of them feeling like they are enacting my tasks um they are just getting a little bit of help to direct

their energy efficiently to do whatever problems they want to solve and that’s

another big one is especially with Engineers frame things as a problem

Engineers live to solve problems um we all like to figure out things but Engineers especially um that is big

superpower if you can uh do that and say okay what are we trying to do here this

is the thing they can’t do and then they go okay uh you know they love architecting things and building cool

novel Solutions but Solutions is the key word there um because that comes from a

problem what do you enjoy most about your job

um when the stuff I’m saying I care about actually happens you know when uh

you can see it at the end um you go okay we made something fun and we see that this problem that we

thought we saw with the games thing that we thought it was missing actually

resonated with players like that’s part of it if you can do that and then you

can go back to the team and be like hey remember what remember when I said this

was a bad idea and we did it anyways uh and how you know Nick or Jeff

you know Karen whoever remember when I told Karen that she was wrong but we tried anyways Karen was right that was

genius um you know when you can like those are the most fun when you can um kind of

come back and because it’s not again it’s it’s still selfish when you’re like I was Dumb and Karen was smart um

especially when you’re a leader it’s still um it is still self-serving um because a uh hopefully when you’re

making games you are trying to make a better and better product something that is fun and keeps the light on it makes

money and it’s fun and people play it so that’s good everyone knows that they can

you know keep their job tomorrow that’s that those are the two things a game kind of needs to do it is a a business

and an art so if you’re satisfying those needs great but you know that you can satisfy those needs well into the future

because you’ve got a team of hungry people that now feel more safe saying ah

I this is not just about um appealing to Authority or you know the whoever the um

the hippo the highest paid person’s opinion that’s not this team this pod uh

this company runs I know that even though I’m far from the highest paid per I suspect I’m not the highest paid

person in this room I have just as much say in things that I know the most about

and people will listen to me I I may be an introvert and um I know that people

are going to listen to me again like I I’ve definitely failed uh at bringing out the introverts or the

person who has you know uh the lowest you know that that’s that’s what keeps me up at night um what lots of things do

now that I’m a Founder but but traditionally you know like okay well how did I screw that up um as a leader

but when it’s the opposite when you actually did get the the quiet person who’s really smart and just doesn’t like talking to the room you get their idea

implemented especially if you actually disagreed with it but you give room for those people to to try things um go fast

and learn um that’s great and then again like if if you try the person’s idea and

it didn’t work out you have to then take responsibility as a leader you have to create psychological safety okay well

look I I while I may have disagreed with it there we may have disagreed with it

you know you try not to make it but that person’s like um you know I decided to do it and I thought these things were

good about it and and maybe we just need to change a little bit about it and try something you so you still you definitely don’t want to you know when

when we fail the leader fails uh when we succeed you try to make sure that the people that help that leader succeed get

recognized as much as possible um especially when it might have gone against go against your own instincts it’s very fun um it’s it’s liberating um

to to to be able to create those situations because you’re going to create more of them um and that it means

that someday this game that’s a living entity is going to be better and better how do you bring that out of the

introverts on your team how do you bring out their ideas um well that’s actually one of the techniques is uh is kind of

allowing different frames for discussion and ideation so um again just like

different teams can have different structures um different people respond

to different uh Frameworks of discussion so um you may not be the highest paid

person in the room but you may be the loudest i’ I’ve definitely been that person where I’m just the one who talks

the most the person who takes the air out of the room so uh um so things like

brainstorming and other types of ideation are great to get the ideas from

people like me uh if you want to talk then create a forum where the talkers

get to put their ideas together um the inverse of that would be something like having say a session we go okay let’s

State the goal we are trying to I don’t know have a new uh a new map uh new Mini

map in the game um okay uh I think the things that are wrong with the mini map are this and this and this and it may be

framed in a different way which is like hey our players are saying this here’s the data we have this is getting stuck

um here’s some an analysis that someone did that shows different mini maps and other games of our genre you know

whatever it is here’s the heat map and here’s you know how many people are disabling in our game versus other games

in our company that show you that they aren’t doing that something’s gone wrong and maybe we did some iterations that

caused our mini map to be different I shouldn’t take as example because I don’t do mini maps in almost any of myam but but the that say that could happen

the point is you you take that feature you go okay um look um we want a better

mini map and you try to keep not specific and we have enough time to work on this over the next two weeks um sorry

in the next Sprint we’ll have room say you’re doing sprints uh next Sprint we’ll have room to work on the mini map we agreed we can do the mini map um but

we’re not quite sure what the design is so so I have these suggestions about how to do that if you guys come back to me

uh in two weeks with exactly what I just suggested to you I will be

disappointed so go out of the room and just think and and that then creates room for some of the the people that are

more okay I’m taking I like to process a little bit more I’m not going to just chat up or maybe I’m just not confident

enough yet um to kind of go and think and then they can have their own sessions they can write things on slack

that might be where they’re more they might write you know a novel to you or to their teammates or you know whoever

they’re collaborating with but that means that it’s not putting the dependency on their willingness to put

themselves out there um and maybe you know maybe communicate in a different way so that’s a long way of saying try

to create multiple Avenues of communication and ideation for a team and again maybe you have a team of only

introverts um maybe you have a team of primarily extroverts if you have pretty much just extroverts

on the team build the process for that just brainstorm all day long just Workshop Workshop Workshop you know like

have that be a lot of your team’s process but um allow for be watching for

the people that aren’t talking um and maybe they have something to say and maybe try to think of ways to to draw

them out I’m curious now that you said that is that a good idea to have an entire

team of introverts or extroverts as a probably not a probably not I mean

again I I um I don’t know I I haven’t been in that extreme of an example um

but maybe I was too busy talking to notice the introverts um I don’t know uh probably

not again like uh diversity is not just U you know and there’s diversity has all

kinds of loaded meanings but I it has a functional purpose in having just people that are different um people yeah I’ve

heard diversity of thought has a very good definition for diversity when it comes to like the game Studio cuz it

covers yeah I mean um uh you don’t want to go American

football thing you can’t have a team of just quarterbacks um that’s a terrible team

uh or if it’s just quarterbacks and wide receivers who’s going to play defense you know like it just you that’s a bad structure um and even if it’s just not

skill set um you need within say wide receivers you need a diversity of talents you need the really fast guy who

can get down the field you need uh the person who’s very reliable in tight situations um you need the person who is

maybe a generalist maybe one of them gets hurt and they can fill into multiple roles um you know that’s Team

Construction so same thing applies to anything again go on on and on with sports um so football again you not only

do you not just want a team of Strikers but even within Strikers on say France Olivier xiru plays a different role from

Antoine Griezmann plays a different role from uh MBA and they all because they do

their different roles juru does a lot of holdup play and is a very good passer and he a big guy and he’s good at

heading the ball is mbapp is very very fast he’s good at getting around Defenders um griezmann’s also a good

dribbler but what he’s really special at is putting pressure on a defense uh so even though he’s a striker he’s very

good defensively so maybe mbappe doesn’t have to do as much work there so uh this

applies of course uh to those who don’t care about sports but the the point is um you def need a variety of not just

roles but talents and you know you don’t know uh who you have and how those pieces fit together but you definitely

need balance in the group whether it’s a balance of introversion and extroversion or definitely definitely gender makes a

big difference but it turns out having worked with people from a number of different countries they approach things

differently and while it can take some adjusting to working with people from a different culture or a different way like yeah like it took a while to adjust

to anine Griezmann it took a while to adjust to mbapp they had to figure out how to work together they didn’t just like start winning the first day they

play together like it took a minute to figure out how they could combine together that’s part of the fun

hopefully but like yeah yeah there’s a cost to learn how to work with people a little bit different from you or

communicate different from you like but the payoff is literally World Championships or in the case of uh video

games much better games so uh yeah like uh speaking of foolish things people

that are afraid of that um are smart people who are being

foolish this year has had a lot of change in the games industry you’ve had a lot of changes well personally I’m

wondering what’s changed with you the most over the last kind of one to two

years when it comes to like your career and the way you’re looking at things um finally being brave enough to make my

own game and my own company um you know I it’s funny talking to

investors trying to make new game I’ve had thankfully a lot of success um making existing games better and that’s

different than making a new game um along the way

though oh I didn’t know um that how

important it was for me to make the type of game and games that uh you’re trying

to make and some of the stuff that goes into um a lot of stuff that I really

love love and care about um in terms of just work and making games is actually

really well suited to uh startups um I you know I was always afraid of going

out on my own and kind of putting that out there but I really didn’t know if I

would ever make something that was fun that I had created and again the eye on

that is mislead and the the thing that I’m making is the of people’s input um

and well you founded it yeah yeah but even then I’m co-founding it um and I’ve

had um changes into who our co-founders would be and people I didn’t I didn’t

know a year ago are now playing really key roles in what we’re doing um but

otherwise it’s a lot of a lot of my friends that I’ve known for over a decade um that are you I’ve known for

Less what is it now a year uh so that’s I haven’t known you that long and you

know you’ve been an important person in the journey uh but there’s all kinds of other people a lot of people that are my friends that uh I started to kind of put

myself out there and put out there what we wanted to do and those friends went oh my god this is my you know this is my

dream game and these friends are um some of the most successful people I’ve ever known in games and then people getting

that excited people I’ve again I’ve never met before but I’ve read about or you know literally famous people going

oh you one said this would be bigger than social media that I don’t agree with um I’m not even sure they meant it

but getting that response from people has been crazy and I I didn’t think we get anything close like that’s

not it’s not even what my you know I would love it to happen at that point but that doesn’t seem like a realistic thing for stuff like that to happen um

but the thing that I really didn’t think was going to happen or going to know is would I make a fun game because that that is kind of the hardest thing to do

U I say that but you know that’s what distinguishes games as a service from software as a service um you know

software games are a form a software and I do not agree with people that say games are not software games are

software that has to be fun and is part of its own discipline and its own um you know has its own needs but you can learn

a lot from for instance SAS principles and apply them to games you just can’t apply all of them and you really do have to understand the fun part to actually

make something but um early this year we had our first prototyp type um of this

kind of very new type of game we were making and I started playing it and I

couldn’t stop playing it and that was frankly shocking to me like I I had an

idea of what would be fun I thought it could work but I didn’t know until I tried it like it just didn’t seem real

it seemed like arrogant to like I uh maybe that’s weird but I I didn’t know

if it was going to happen um and there’s still a lot of chance for us to screw it up as we make make the game more and

more complex and make it a fully-fledged thing and there’s going to be all kinds of things that are going to prevent it from being a successful product um not

just a game that worked well as an initial prototype um but now I know I

have a game that is fun and I need to make it um and it went from something that I wanted to make to like now I need

to um now like uh I I can’t believe that

this thing that I want to play uh I really want play u it’s now my job to

bring another world so like yeah it brings another level of pressure to it but it also is so relieving it’s like okay well it’s the other stuff I was

confident about like uh um you know being able to get good people so I don’t

know just different things I felt more confident about but um it’s scary uh you know making doing something that’s got a

different type of thing so again we it may not end up being a successful game or series of games or or what have you

but um right now you ask me today I’m like I every version since of course some

have been more and less fun than others but like I like just like playing my game now um and I’m just layering on

things and so um I always feel like we can get it back to a fun place um and

still keep it within the the vision of what we’re trying to accomplish and that’s amazing um so again I don’t know

if I’ll be a good CEO I don’t know if this will be a great company I don’t know if this will be finally a great business product but I feel a lot more

confident about it just because that to me was the thing I didn’t felt the least confident about and uh I

feel was really really hard to do um and again uh thankfully good people are

helping us make it happen like someone might be listening to this who

knows who’s has similar experience in the sense that they aren’t able to make

that jump to start in the game like what helped you make that jump to finding

your own studio and actually having the confidence to do it um a couple of different things I was I was for me I was I was working on a project for a

startup that was trying to help people understand a book about startups um

trying to make a different way of learning uh a different type of learning software and one of the subjects was uh

was entrepreneurship and startups so there was a lot of breaking down the concepts and the principles and so um I

think reading uh you know basically reading up literature on startups and what makes them successful um you know

watch some Y combinator videos um oh God I wish I remember this the guy’s name

right now uh Michael the twitch guy um from uh from y combinator that guy’s so

smart I’ve learned so much from him but you know other people um I will name drop one person uh I had a great

conversation uh early on with um y Parton from um uh C adventures and he he

when I talked to him my concept was a very different thing and it was really like a 1.5 of a different game as

opposed to a fairly unique concept and you know he challenged me on a few points and I I realized later they were

very very smart and I I kind of tried to be systematic about them and one of them was you know are you really solving a

problem for anyone who who is this actually for is this something that um does that and the other one was at least

for us was like especially in games this is a big thing um like games in 2024 but

it’s just again this is um well they may not agree with all of his politics um

Peter teal is a smart guy um and he phrases in a very aggressive way but uh

you know competition is sck Is for Suckers um so if you’re just trying to do another 1.5 you’re trying to make

Call of Duty but a bit better that wasn’t what I was doing you know trying to make um you know Royal match but a

bit better today that’s a high bar uh you you that’s a incredibly High bar um

and you better be off serious about it and that’s maybe not the easiest way to do things and I don’t do not I have

never bought into the idea that um any genre is stagnant and the how it exists

today won’t be better I I think you just look at the first-person shooter genre and you just see over and over through

history how things have gotten better so I it’s not saying that don’t go make a puzzle game go make a puzzle game but

bring something new to it um you know if you really want to create a big business it’s got to bring something uh big to

that and maybe that’s exceptional polish and execution but you know even the the Royal match guys you know they were T

toy blast toune blast and a bunch of other like the best of the best games and they just took that to another level

so you can do it um but frankly a better way is to take some of your skills from making other stuff and and try to

address something new solve a problem solve something you know make something find a new as um wonderful Ry Maza likes

to say you know find genre Blends I I think bringing ideas from different genres is really great so that’s that’s

more the I’m going for and I’m I’m not trying to compete with the existing incumbit I’m trying to make a new thing

for a lot of people that don’t maybe play games but don’t have this kind of experience for them right now um and

that was part of the surprise it’s like oh that’s actually fun I think not just those people are going to like it you

know people that have the existing games are going to find a maybe a complimentary experience to what they’re playing right now so um I I would

definitely say look at what people you know read Peter theel read um you know

just read about what startups go goes into them um just just read and study as

much as you can talk to Founders uh they’ve they’ve been through the pain and I’ve been so lucky to have so many

nice Founders generalists give their time um and just help me understand uh

that what I’m doing is totally insane uh and you know but uh but it’s still possible doesn’t doesn’t mean you

shouldn’t do it I like that so much I got some

personal experience with this where I used to after vampire survivors came out you know great game brilliant game yeah

but then the next two years I I remember it coming out I played it got it on the phone 100% did it and then I just it

felt like every other Studio I spoke to were making a vampire Survivor game like all the new ones all the startups it was

like yep it’s like vampire survivors but you know a little bit different and I’m like just hearing what you’re saying now

like it feels like they’ve elated the problem of coming up with an idea but

they got the bigger problem of having to now spend stupid amount of money to make a better vampire Survivor than the

Chinese survivor.io version which has stupid amount of money invested in it and I’m like why are we trading I get it

I feel like they’re trying to reduce risk but in essence have given them such a big problem and your way of coming at

it is I feel like a lot more achievable again it’s it’s not that um a red like

again I’m not saying a red oan isn’t possible to uh to swim in like uh you know even just looking at those examples

um uh You’ve Got U was it deep rock Galactic uh Survivor um I believe uh God

I can’t believe I’m forgetting the name of the company because we worked with them um but the guys that did Deep Rock

yeah so Ghost Ship I’m pretty sure the people behind Deep Rock um but then they had um a smaller uh Danish Studio I

they’re both Danish um developed that it’s great great game it’s doing well for them

great now uh if you like vampire Survivor uh definitely I mean but again they got the Deep Ro alactic people

behind it and you know these people worked on a Subway servers game for us and did a really good job um so these

are really really good developers I’m not saying the people making um vampire survivors but a bit

better can’t do it um you just you know just do you have the Deep Ro Galactic

people and their IP helping you out um then yeah go for it if you don’t um you

know and again even if you do have talented people in great IP um that’s not always enough um but yeah I

definitely think there’s a lot uh again and that was my lesson like I my lesson was okay um I get what what Peter Theo

is saying like I I I get why he was sazed in Silicon Valley but I get that he also has a lot of wisdom and it’s

it’s very smart and he’s not the only person that says that um so they listen

listen to the listen to people you may disagree with uh that’s always a good good lesson um because you know you may

learn something and that that was my lesson that I I had to take um which was like I don’t want to hear you that my

idea of making you know um this game but a bit better is the is probably not that

exciting for anyone um uh and they were right I was going to say that is a big

part of it like if the product isn’t exciting then even if it’s the correct product but if you can’t motivate the

people that are going to work on it because you’re going to have so much motivation because it’s your studio but if you have a product that isn’t that

exciting I think that’s a big ask to get people really pass yeah but I mean even that’s maybe giving me too much credit I

mean that’s one of the things they talk about that uh talk about with Founders is like their resilience the studios

don’t die when they run out of money they run when they give up and you need

to do something that even when you feel like it’s hopeless you still want to make it happen like that’s um there’s a

lot of companies um that have found success um you know even when things

were D I mean one of the things I definitely remember from my time at Graham was just stories those Founders

would talk about um like where they were on their last paycheck and you know they were uh they they were basically not

taking a paycheck as Founders or the company was about to die and you know this is a company that went on getting bought for a quarter of a billion

dollars you know just like very shortly after these things were happening um and the personal sacrifices they had

to make you it had to be something they really believed in um and so for me I really you know I had to look at who I

am and what what would motivate me um it’s not really that I’m trying to be a billionaire it’s like I really I really

want these kind of games to exist um and you know if I’m the founder I’m going to be fine uh you know eventually I’ll find

uh the yellow brick road so to speak um but but the real thing is like okay so

there’s lots of different ways you can make money what would get you up in the morning and even when you feel like depressed or tired or exhausted or

hopeless like they would keep you plugging through and that’s proven to be really true um you know I’ve had plenty

of setbacks on this journey and um I can’t believe I I have a game that’s uh

fun talk to me when the game’s successful there will probably be a lot more setbacks to come between then

um so yeah I think I think that was very important to me uh know know what you need to motivate yourself if if billions

of dollars find something that feels like a safe bet you know like maybe maybe go find your equivalent of the toy

blast people and back that you know um get into that red ocean Do It um even if you don’t care about uh match three

games if that’s fine but you you have to pick the thing that you think will get you out of B resilience is really

important coming to a close now my last question is around LinkedIn you mentioned learning a lot from Founders

so very open question like what does LinkedIn mean to you uh that’s exactly

what it means um who is it and Drees is it Glenn Glenn brag is that who you had

Glen sorry Glenn um just I learned a lot from that talk uh just watching you know

that that that talk you did um for context uh I did a talk with Glenn about

remote work which was at the end of last year I’ll put it I’ll put some description in whether anyone’s

listening to this but yeah go on so uh I haven’t I haven’t hit him up for a lot of uh like oneone time yet I need to do

that actually it’s on my list but um I watched that video a couple times I’ve discussed it with other

Founders um I’m using teams instead of slack because of that um but just lots

of different things um you know that’s and that’s some of that I I don’t even know Glenn I but I reached out to him to

say like hey that was great uh he really put to voice a lot of things that are principles that you know having that’s a

lot of that’s what happens a lot of times for people it’s like um you you say something they’re like w okay you

just put differently the thing that I kind of had in my head and validated that I’m not crazy so it gives you a

little bit more boldness to go forward with something so listen to Glenn and that specific example was was definitely

something that pushed me to be like okay act you know be more decisive be more more confident in doing different things

okay you’re not crazy um so yeah and and then I’ve just met a ton of different people uh one of Founders I won’t name

but you you’ve introduced me to a few Founders who’ve been the coolest people um and they’ve helped me just understand

um different stuff and of course even um building up the team handling different stuff um just getting connected with

different people it’s been incredibly useful um you know meeting investors and different things but the

most enervating part I’d say has been meeting other creators um there was one

person that made a game I love um and I saw him commenting on some

post uh few weeks ago and I I saw his name I was like I know him did he why

are we second degree connected I did he unfriend me and then I realized no no no

I I’ve just never met this person uh i’ just been reading uh interviews with with him for years and so I just reached

out to him on on LinkedIn um we’ve had a couple of meetings now turns out he’s awesome um uh and you know he he made

even help the company but uh they just different you know Linkin is fun social

network for sure like LinkedIn has been my life the last um probably eight

months I’d say and everything you said you’ve mentioned so many different things there you can meet new people learn new things and then hopefully do

both of those things at the same time right you learn something from someone then you actually meet them and like we

did that’s how we met uh it’s no I don’t need I’m preaching to the ch but yeah

it’s just really cool to hear those different ways that you know you’re lucky we

met yeah awesome where can people go to learn more about you keep up to date as well because it’s been very teasing

listen to these stories and what if someone wants to keep an eye out on what’s coming next well yeah look

forward to the publishing of this podcast um I expect we’ll have a little bit of more news uh coming from some uh

various uh traditional Outlets coming up pretty soon um um so um yeah keep keep

your eyes peeled um I will say the name of the company we’re actually not that stealthy but for LinkedIn pesar but

we’re called TTFN games um and uh got some exciting people helping us out and

a fun game and uh hopefully we keep it that way and we turn it into a big product and then a lot of games get

follow out after that very excited and I’m sure that will happen um willing to put money into it

even and I’ve asked you a couple times so hopefully that will happen we’ll make it happen we’ll make it happen so cool

yeah one day nice and yeah obviously if anyone wants to connect with Jeremy you can find him on LinkedIn at Jeremy Stein

and that goes for me too at Harry Fu but yeah thank you so much