Speaker 1 (00:00.024)
You have to accept the fact that people are going to hate your game. It’s just a fact. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s always about figuring out is it going to be 30 people hating on it or is it going to be 30,000 people?

Today I’m joined by a 30 plus year games industry legend, former executive director of the IGTA and Global Game Jam, working on everything from the Halo series to Age of Empires. He’s now CEO of Geography and co-founder of SetJetters. Could you give a concrete example of like, look, this is what could happen if we don’t take this seriously.

The game came out in South Korea and it was instantly banned. The Korean Ministry of Information said that this never happened. They made a special patch only for Korean players that changed history. Companies do this every day to decide do we want to sell in China, do we want to sell in the MENA region. They’re often having to tweak content like that to a certain degree in order to make it sell in that market.

We talked about what studios get wrong when releasing globally and how culture can make or break the story with some real examples.

They might see something in that character design or in that environment or even in the narrative, the story that is relevant to their history or to their culture and it’s being used in a way that is inappropriate.

Speaker 2 (01:08.846)
From someone who has helped shape how AAA studios think about culture, this episode’s guest, Kate Edwards.

Hey, welcome to the show.

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

I couldn’t wait for today at Nordic. We literally had a 30 minute meeting slot and it turned into like 90 minutes and I had to apologize to the person. I completely forgot about my next meeting because we were just talking for so long. Like the story was so good. So I, in the diary, I remember it was like, we need to book a podcast. And he was like, okay. And then here we are. So I’m very excited.

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, that was a great conversation. I’m glad it led to this.

Speaker 2 (01:46.776)
There we go. So for people at home, very quick recap of who the legend Kate is. And I’m using that word. I didn’t even come up that word. I’ve had like seven people say Kate is a legend. I know who she is whenever I’ve mentioned like, yeah, Kate’s here. So 30 plus years in the games industry, CEO and principal consultant of GeoGraphy, which is a consultancy, which essentially helps kind of with the culturalization of a game, making it global. And also

the co-founder of SetJetters, which is a film tourism app, which is also an interesting story. And on top of all of this, former executive director at the International Game Developer Association and the Global Game Jam. So we have lovely point of view essentially of the games industry and also just a very cool story. So I want to get straight into it. how does a geographer get started in the games industry?

Yeah, that’s probably like the one of the number one questions I often get asked, especially by people coming into the industry because they’re curious. so for me, it was was fairly I won’t say it was straightforward. It is in hindsight, but not at the time. So I was doing my graduate school work here in Seattle at the University of Washington in geography and cartography. And as I finished my master’s degree and I was working on my first year of my PhD, Microsoft called our geography department.

and because Microsoft is close by their headquarters and said, hey, we need a cartographer to make some maps for us for this new product. So to make a very long story short, I went over there on a contract basis and I made all the maps for the product in Carta Encyclopedia, which some people might remember it. If you’re older than maybe 30 or 35, you probably remember it. It was the dominant encyclopedia in digital form.

basically the last major encyclopedia before Wikipedia showed up online. So I made the maps for that product and my six-month contract was coming to an end and then they renewed it and said, hey, now we need your help on this project, now we need your help on that project. So they kept extending it and extending it and eventually that six-month contract evolved into a 13-year career. And so as I was at the company,

Speaker 1 (04:01.582)
doing this work and basically helping me not just with map making but also with cultural sensitivities, geopolitical sensitivities and other things. I started having games come to me as well with questions. So my very first video game was 1993 with Flight Sim 5.0 when they reached out to me and asked me some cartographic advice for Flight Simulator and the rest was history. Then that whole job evolved into a lot more.

I created an internal team at Microsoft called Geopolitical Strategy, and that basically formalized my work on all the games at Microsoft. And that’s how I ended up getting into the game industry to make a long story short.

So cool. So when were you like exclusively working in games? Can you paint that picture?

Yeah, so at Microsoft, course, my team that I created, we were working across every single Microsoft product. So Windows and Office and Internet Explorer and all of that stuff, including a lot of games too. But it was after I had the company went through a particular incident with one game that got us in a lot of trouble in the MENA region. And after that was resolved, this work, what I call Geopolitical Quality Review at the time.

became a formal process on every game that Microsoft created after that. And so we’re talking all the halos and fables and age of empires and all that stuff that I worked on back then. And so when I decided to lead the company in 2005, I made the conscious decision that I wanted to work on games. There’s a lot of things I could work on, but I said, I love games so much. I’ve been a gamer all my life.

Speaker 1 (05:44.718)
Pong was my first video game because that’s how old I am. So I was just like, I want to do this work, but I want to do it on video games because I just had such a fantastic time. So when I left in 2005, I would pretty much say that was the mark when my work became, well, intentionally became exclusive to games, even though ever since then, 20 years ago, at any given time, about 10 or 20 % of my work is not games related at all. It’s still…

kind of hardcore geopolitical and cartographic consulting.

can imagine a lot of people, me included, when I first heard this, I first heard about this through you. But then now that you said it, it all makes sense. Like, of course, yeah, we need someone to do that. But it’s not something that is conscious in the mind. And I imagine, especially with your clients, it’s probably a similar story. So when you started this process, like, what is the common things we’re fixing here? Like, could you bring people up to speed?

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great point. mean, there’s a lot of different issues. mean, so a lot of people when we’re talking about like international adaptation, the first word that comes to mind is localization. And localization, which happens pretty much on every kind of content, that typically means language translation, because most people who work in localization are translators or they have some translation background. And of course, that’s extremely important because we want the text

in the games, in any other content, we want it to be legible in other languages. That’s kind of a no-brainer. But what a lot of people don’t think about is what about all the other content? Because text is only one dimension of the product. What about the icon design? What about the color usage? What about in a game, you’ve got all these different elements, the character design, the environment design. A lot of games tend to lean into influences from real world cultures. Like if they’re making a fantasy world, they’ll make

Speaker 1 (07:36.096)
a certain culture within the fantasy world that emulates a real world culture. They might create a faith system, they might create a political system, and all these other things that get generated for a game often have an inspiration in the real world. And so what I’m always looking for is what are these elements and what are the elements being put into the world and then how are they going to be perceived by players and the public when that content eventually gets out there because

they might see something in that character design or in that environment, or even in the narrative, the story that is relevant to their history or to their culture. And it’s being used in a way that is inappropriate. I mean, you could even think about dancing games. Like I’ve worked on all the dance central games and even something as simple as following an avatar on the screen. Well, I’m looking at gestures and body language. like when an, when an avatar is dancing and they’re using the thumbs up gesture, well, in some countries,

the thumbs up gesture is the same as the middle finger, you know, or this in the British Commonwealth, or this in, you know, there’s a lot of other symbols that mean the same thing. So just because we say, a thumbs up is cool because it means okay, it means good. It’s like, well, that’s not true universally. And so I’m thinking about that kind of level. What are all those kind of subtle cues, whether it’s historical, religious, political, know, human representation, all of these things,

that can influence how people perceive the work that we’re doing. Because our goal really is game creators, we just want people to be immersed in the story and in the fun of playing the game. We don’t want them to be kind of kicked out of the experience because they saw something that is potentially negative to their culture.

trying to build a game let’s say it’s for a global audience and I hear you I hear you but I’m just still it’s just I’ve not internalized what you’ve said like could you give a concrete example of like look this is what could happen if we don’t take this seriously

Speaker 1 (09:37.442)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, here’s an example from the early age of age of empires. We had a scenario that was put into the game, is, know, the age of empires is based on real history. So they take these battles or these big scenarios and they kind of generalize them a bit and put them into the game. So when age of empires in the early version of age of empires, we had a scenario that involved Japan and Korea. And what showed in the game is what happened really in history where the

Japanese invaded the Chozon Empire, which is what Korea was called at the time. They invaded during the Middle Ages and almost took it over. And so the game designer said, that is a great battle to have you play. You’re going to be playing as the Chozon and you’re going to try and stop this massive Japanese invasion. So it was put into the game and you start the scenario playing as the Koreans. then we said, that’s great. That’s a really cool scenario to put in.

Well, the game came out in South Korea and it was instantly banned because the Korean Ministry of Information, they said that this never happened. And from their perspective, from their cultural historical perspective, Japan never had a massive invasion like that. That’s not what their history books teach them. Even though all the history books outside of Korea say that it did happen. So what are we supposed to do? You know, that’s a good example where Microsoft at the time was trying to grow its games business.

And was very important to have Korea as a market because we know from market research back then and even today, South Korea is a huge gaming market. It’s a massive market for all kinds of games, but especially real-time strategy games like Age of Empires and like Starcraft and other games of that genre. So the only way we could release the game in Korea was to change that scenario. We couldn’t take it out of the game because it was too late.

in production, would have messed up a bunch of other things. The only thing we did, and it was a difficult decision, is we made a special patch only for Korean players that changed history. So now instead of Japan invading Korea, Korea actually invades Japan, which to our knowledge never happened back in that era. So as you can imagine, that created some debate about ethics and the truth that we’re presenting in the game. But that’s…

Speaker 1 (12:01.516)
That’s part of the cost of doing, making a business decision. If you want to sell into a specific market, you might have to make a really difficult decision like this. I mean, companies do this every day to decide, do we want to sell in China? Do we want to sell in the MENA region? They’re often having to tweak content like that to a certain degree in order to make it sell in that market. And that’s what culturalization is all about, is thinking about, are there certain dimensions of the content that might be problematic? And do we need to

change it or not change it. mean, the team could have easily said, we’re not going to do this. And I would have stood behind them because it is creative art. It is self-expression, but it’s also a business. So you’re trying to generate more revenue off of your game. And they also knew that for long-term benefit that you really needed to get into South Korea. So that’s why they had to make that decision.

for sure. And it’s also not game isolated, right? Because it’s not like you’re quote unquote, pissing off someone like the players only it’s like also the government. And if you want more games in the future there, I’m guessing you want to have a good relationship with that government. it’s a bit, it’s like, I don’t know how to say, but like, it’s more than just pushing copies of an individual game.

Absolutely, I mean, it’s really about establishing a relationship with that particular culture because you are a content producer, you are producing creative content that you want people to enjoy as much as possible. And so, and over time, like every major creative media form knows, you create a relationship with the fans, you create a not just the fans of that particular IP, but with the fans who are based in different countries.

And so you do kind of form that relationship. And so when you violate that relationship by doing something that is potentially culturally offensive or politically offensive to that market, even though it’s unintentional, because almost all the time, all of these mistakes are unintentional. They’re just mistakes that people did not do the work to figure out whether or not this is going to be a problem. But it’s unintentional, and yet it’s taken as intentional.

Speaker 1 (14:15.416)
from that market, their perspectives that you did this to us on purpose, we want to know why, because we’ve been such great fans of your game or of your work, so why are you picking on us like this? And that is often the characterization that the local market has, whether it’s the fans, whether it’s the players, or it’s the government. And obviously you have to maintain good relations with the government because they control whether or not you can distribute your game in their market. So you really have to do a certain degree of

of relationship building with the government, especially if you’re a larger company, to make sure that you’re not going to run into problems.

Yeah, for sure. A bit of a tactical question here. If I’m an indie developer, should I even think about this? Because you said these are all technically mistakes. So I’m an indie developer, I’m making a game. Should I be proactively checking these things? Is this like a final check I’m doing at the end of the game creation process? But then you said it was like, it could have been too late. So they have to do patches. Like, when do I start to think about this?

My advice to all game creators, whether you’re an indie or AAA or anything in between, you’ve got to think about it early. This is a big difference between localization and culturalization, because typically with localization, you have to wait until the content is mostly complete, which we know in most games it never truly is complete, but we get close enough to complete, because they don’t want to do a translation of the text unless it’s done.

You know, if the text is going to keep changing, then they have to keep redoing their work. So they have to wait until oftentimes later in the product development cycle, whereas with culturalization, so many of the issues that I deal with can be fundamentally taken care of way early. So oftentimes the best case scenario is when I come in on a project during the concept phase and I’m looking at the early version of the script, I’m looking at the early concept art, and I can help them navigate very easily and quickly

Speaker 1 (16:16.91)
At that stage, I wouldn’t do that if you’re planning to release in this market. I wouldn’t try this if you want to release over here. I can give that advice. And of course, at that stage, it’s very easy to fix, and it costs almost nothing. But if you don’t think about it early, and you go into production, and you start creating all these content assets and building your world out, it’s going to get a lot harder and a lot more expensive to fix it as you go along. So I would say, even as an indie developer,

You may not have all the resources that a AAA company has to do all this kind of work, but you can still ask those questions. You can still kind of look at it through that lens and say, you know, how are people outside of my own experience going to perceive this? And just even if you just think about it, that’s half the battle is being aware that this is a potential dimension. But the last thing I would say is basically, you you do have the ability even as an indie developer to check some of this stuff.

Go to universities, ask professors who are professors of a certain region or specific culture. Just put their name in the credits as an advisor or consultant. Oftentimes that’s all they’re asking for.

Perfect. Wow, very nice. Very tactical advice. Okay, I want to I was gonna say go heavy, but yeah, just go down deep like because you were executive director of the IGDA global game jam you’ve seen a lot of games and you’ve been in the industry for a ridiculous amount of time 32 plus years so You said something at Nordic game which stuck with me. It’s like we’re not only living in a kind of

polarized world politically, it’s also socially. Like there’s just, that’s grown and I’m guessing you’ve also seen that transition happen yourself, like firsthand. So it’s a very open question. Like, how do you feel about like the current state of the industry, like relative to before, like what should people take into account that maybe they didn’t have to before?

Speaker 1 (18:18.71)
Yeah, that’s a great question. mean, it is a challenge because I I have seen this industry really kind of grow up. mean, because it’s really come into its own over the last 30 plus years and, you know, how it has evolved into the largest form of entertainment on Earth, which still a lot of people, even some people in this industry don’t realize how massive games are on a global scale. It’s just tremendous. I mean, we surpassed film and music long time ago.

as far as the amount of money we make, the amount of attention we get. All the attention, of course, is on them because movie stars and all that kind of stuff and BAFTA awards and the Oscars and all the glamour. But honestly, we’ve quietly become this massive media powerhouse that’s of taken over all the screens of anybody under 30 years old. So, but a lot of people who are older as well. And…

You know, I think that real challenge today, of course, is and this is where I’m going to sound like an old person yelling at a cloud because I guess I am a little bit. Social media has completely disrupted the whole space. There are a lot of benefits to social media. I’m not going to completely, you know, diss it. You know, I can see the benefits of it, especially like corporate accountability, you know, tweeting at a company saying, hey, you messed up here. You need to fix this. A lot of time companies will react to it.

and they’ll do something because they don’t want to be called out. So I think there’s certain mechanisms that are positive, but for the most part, it has really kind of weaponized opinions in a way that has become really problematic for a lot of creative media, not just games, but any creative media, film, television, you name it. They have to deal with a certain amount of backlash that builds even before the media even releases. They’re already dealing with it.

You know, so I mean, with that has probably been probably been one of the major changes to the whole dynamic of creation, because you used to just basically be heads down, create your game and then release it to the world and kind of see what happens and get reactions. But now, especially when you go into the indie space, but it also happens at AAA, you’re constantly you want people to be excited about your game. So you’re releasing images, you’re releasing videos.

Speaker 1 (20:42.412)
You’re kind of showing them, getting them hints, like, hey, look, here’s what’s coming. It’s really cool. And yet, right from immediately, you start getting backlash. It’s like, I don’t like it that way. I’m not playing this game. I mean, for example, I worked on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Fantastic project to work on. I loved working on that game. It’s gotten tremendous amount of accolades and awards at one Game of the Year Nordic Game, among others.

And yet I remember when they did the very first reveal in early 2024 of the gameplay, there were two reactions on social media that were super negative. It’s not on PS5. I’m not playing it. Well, it is now as of April 2025, it came out. But the other complaint is that it’s not third person. It’s a first person game. I’m not playing this and you shouldn’t play it either. Here’s why you shouldn’t play it because it’s first person and just like.

Why? Why all this anger? Why all this angst and anxiety? Why judge the game just because it doesn’t look like Uncharted? It doesn’t look like Tomb Raider, even though both of those games are based on the legacy of Indiana Jones. Why not give it a chance? know, Machine Games has done a tremendous amount of work, great work with like their Wolfenstein series, doing first person, you know, hand to hand and fighting and all that.

And so give it a chance. And of course, once the game came out, people have a chance to play it. They’re like, oh my God, I love this game so much. And all of the complaints about not being third person just kind of went away because they saw that, you know, give it a chance, play the game. So I’m just kind of like, why, why do we need all this cloud of anger and hatred about something? Just wait until it comes out and try it. And to me, that whole dynamic, that wasn’t even as bad.

I would say 10 years ago as it is now. And I know it’s frustrating to a lot of people in creative media, but especially in the game industry.

Speaker 2 (22:39.936)
actually seen this firsthand. So the way I found out about game news is YouTube feed, just like my natural YouTube feed. And there’s kind of this new style of content, which basically news channels, I’m not going to name examples, but 95 % of it is just hating. Like, for example, very good example, Snow White. my god. Like that movie had

Someone reacting to the Snow White trailer for like two straight years and every single update about that and I’m not saying it was a good movie or a bad movie I haven’t seen it but like it paid to shit on that movie It was just so much attention got you that and then I see the same thing with any remotely controversial thing like for example I understand it with GTA 6 game of the decade There’s loads of stuff to talk about and then there’s literally people hating on leaks or like

them stopping a piece of content or then changing like a story. It’s like, why did they do that? It’s like, guys, the game’s not even out. I’m just trying to like reverse engineer everything runs on incentives. People pay attention to it. So people are going to keep making content. And that wasn’t the case before. And then some of this content, millions of views, even if it’s like a two minute clip, like for example, I didn’t go watch Snow White because every single day is like, my God, so much. And then when I…

I was very curious because I literally I of course watch those videos because why not? It’s just recommended the time. And then when I check on IMDB, it was just basically like this was a mediocre film. That’s my result of what it was. So it wasn’t as bad as all the hate. But I mean, I just get this every day. I didn’t go and watch it. Maybe I’m not in the market for it or anything. But all this to say, it’s just this constant barrage of, I don’t know if hate’s the right word, but like that commentary style of content, at least on YouTube. It’s definitely, I’ve seen it happen over the last couple of years.

Yeah, and it’s just, I don’t think it’s productive. I don’t think it’s constructive. That’s the thing. It’s just like, even read this morning with the Superman movie, the new James Gunn Superman coming out next month, there’s already people, you know, hating on it and saying it’s not the Snyderverse. It’s not Zack Snyder’s version. So we’re not going to go see it, but not only we’re not going to see it, we’re going to buy tickets and not show up or we’re, you know, or they’re going to try and like cock block the film in some way.

Speaker 1 (25:04.47)
And I’m just, or boycott it. And I’m just like, who cares? Just let people go see it. Who cares? And we deal with this in games as well. And so to me, so many creators that I work with, game creators, go into their project knowing that this is hovering over them, knowing that there is this potential hatred or whatever we want to call it, is lingering and waiting out there for them. And that’s why in recent lectures, when I talk about,

making games in a polarizing world. You know, I tell people you have to accept the fact that people are going to hate your game. It’s just a fact. There’s nothing you can do to stop it because people are going to react to things negatively because like you said, it sells and it creates views and it creates reactions because that’s just what it does in today’s world. And so you have to accept the fact that that’s going to happen. And so what I try and do, like with my work, it’s always about figuring out

Is it going to be 30 people hating on it or is it going to be 30,000 people? And if it’s a huge crowd like that, there’s got to be some bigger reason possibly for what’s causing that reaction. could be something in the content. could be a cultural reaction, political reaction, whatever the case. And so that’s where I come in and really try and help my clients navigate, know, not eliminate all hatred because that’s not going to happen. Basically make sure that is as minimized as possible.

sure like you want people to hate quang we don’t want people to hate but like you’d rather they hate a feature rather than an entire country hate the game because of the story exactly right all righty so you used a word and it was very interesting so when it comes to games what is allegorical distance and why does that matter to games

So allegorical distance is a concept that I’ve come up with that I talk a lot about in my culturalization work. And what it basically means is this. Kind of like what we alluded to earlier, when any game is made, and frankly, any creative media, but we’ll focus on games, when you’re creating a game world, there are so many elements in the game world, especially if it’s a fantasy or like sci-fi game, is an allegory.

Speaker 1 (27:22.574)
And of course allegory is the narrative structure where you basically kind of take an idea and you wrap it into some kind of fictional, I guess, cover so that you don’t know exactly what the meaning is. But there is like a hidden meaning in there. you know, so an allegory, oftentimes if we have a fable or, you know, allegories used very often in children’s because the stories are an allegory for a moral lesson.

or an ethical lesson. so a lot of these stories that we read as kids are very kind of simple and straightforward. Aesop’s fables, which goes back many, many centuries, that’s a great example where Aesop’s fables, which pretty much we all read as kids, they are moral lessons. And so those fables are allegories. And so when we build game worlds, oftentimes what we’ll do is take inspiration from the real world, because that’s usually where all creative

creativity starts. It’s a mix of what we are real world experience as well as our imagination. We kind of blend those together. So let’s say we’re working on a fantasy world and on this fantasy world, there’s a part of the planet or the landscape that is a desert environment. So any fantasy game I’ve ever worked on that has a desert environment, what do you think the people there look like? They look usually with a darker skin tone, usually with black hair.

or darker hair, and they’re wearing robes. And so in other words, they look very much like people, Bedouin people from the Arabian Peninsula, from North Africa, and so on. So that is an allegory. So what they’re doing in the game, they’re saying, we’re going to design these people to look like that, because in the real world, you know that people that look like that live in a desert environment. So therefore, in the game environment, if you see them, you know that they’re from a desert environment too.

So that’s kind of an allegory that gets created. But the problem is, is that oftentimes when we create these characters or create, you know, let’s say the desert culture in a fantasy world, we’re not putting enough distance between that real world inspiration and the in-game implementation. Because if it’s a fictional culture, then they should not look exactly like someone from the real world. They should not act like them. They should not talk like them. They need to be different enough.

Speaker 1 (29:45.324)
so that there are more unique culture that fits the fantasy world. So that is what I call allegorical distance, making sure that when you have that real world inspiration, which is perfectly fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want them to not be seen as being from a specific culture, then you need to put in the work to do the creative work to make sure it’s not so obvious. And that’s what I call allegorical distance.

Beautiful. So in that example, I’m thinking of a game like RuneScape. Like I grew up, I go to the desert area and it’s exactly like you described. They wear a certain thing, they’re a certain skin color. So is there a common example or thing they should do to make that distance? Because I’m trying to think of the changes I would do now. like, I don’t know, make them cyborgs. I just can’t, it’s hard for me to like make someone look less real life desert people.

Yeah, well, mean, you could even start with the basics of human representation, ethnicity. Do they need to look like they’re from the MENA region? Probably not. Maybe there’s other reasons. There could be other logic built into the world for why they don’t look that way. Maybe they’re a different race. Maybe they’re a different species, something like that. If you look to something like Dune, both the books as well as the recent films, Dune is a good example where

Clearly, Frank Herbert, he said so in interviews before he passed away, that yeah, the Fremen are an allegory. They are an allegory for the people of the Middle East, messianic, because most, lot of, at least three of the major world religions had messiahs that came from that region. know, Muhammad, Moses, Jesus. So he was basically doing an allegory.

for how those people, people of that kind of an environment, find their Messiah or elevate a person to be their Messiah. And of course, the representation as you see in the films, both the film in the 80s as well as the recent films, they definitely, because Frank Herbert intentionally saw the Fremen as an evolution of the people of that region, but an evolution of like, it’s thousands of years in the future, a long, long time on a completely different planet.

Speaker 1 (32:06.56)
And so when they did the designs for the film, obviously there’s a lot of elements that they are wearing that kind of emulate like Bedouin people, for example, with the robes and the head covering and all that. But then what do they have? They have one item that is so unique that makes them completely different. They have a still suit. They have a piece of technology that recovers their water and moisture that is so critical to their survival. that having that one fictional element.

instantly makes them different. Yeah, they may have robes that they wear over the stillsuit, but the fact that they have to wear this stillsuit that keeps them alive on this particular planet and environment is one element that basically creates a lot of allegorical distance right away, because you don’t see people in desert regions or in our world wearing anything like that.

Yeah, so I was kind of half-white, making them bit more techy, I guess, but that’s a very good example, right? It’s so different. They… Yeah, I love it. Sweet. So… I have a question. I don’t know if this is controversial, but how could you make a game more inclusive, but avoid being kind of generic and everything to everyone?

Well, there’s a lot of ways you can make a game inclusive. mean, depending on what, there’s a lot of things that depend on it. are there even humans in this game? I don’t know. Let’s assume there are. Let’s assume there’s humanoid characters that inhabit the universe, whether it’s fictional or real. But let’s say it’s a fictional universe. So, you know, there’s the dimension of gender representation, dimension of ethnic representation.

There’s cultural background, there’s socioeconomic backgrounds, there’s geographic backgrounds, there’s so many different dimensions to inclusivity. It’s not just about gender, it’s not just about race. Those are the things that we tend to focus on, so we kind of laser focus on those. But there are only two dimensions of what it means to be human. mean, there’s so many other dimensions of what makes us who we are, especially the cultural dimension. So you can think of other ways.

Speaker 1 (34:12.353)
to make it inclusive. Like maybe there’s certain practices that happen in that environment. For example, most of the world does have a religious system and faith system of some kind. So maybe, you know, rather than making them sort of generically non-religious or non-faith, maybe there is a faith system that people follow in that world. Or maybe there’s a couple of different faith systems that people follow, similar to our world.

That is one way you can make it inclusive. So you’re basically being inclusive of people who follow a faith and people who don’t. That’s one level of inclusivity, for example. There could be a lot of other things like that, different kind of practices, gestures they use, different objects in the environment that they use or don’t use. So there’s a lot of different ways we can think about inclusivity. obviously, if we want to focus on gender and ethnicity, that’s important too.

But then let’s say you have non-human characters in the environment. So what does gender mean to them? What does ethnicity mean? Is there even a different ethnicity in that species or not? And it’s interesting how even that concept has evolved in certain media. Like if you look at Star Trek, great example how in the original show, a lot of people complained because the Klingons in the original Star Trek show in the 1960s looked kind of like Hispanic people.

with kind of the mustaches and everything they were wearing. But then you fast forward into Star Trek The Next Generation, and that show was a lot different in the 80s and 90s, where they basically introduced races within species. So now Klingons, you had like white Klingons, you had black Klingons, the Romulans had white Romulans and Asian Romulans. And so they kind of introduced the idea that there is differentiation within a particular species, whereas before it just wasn’t the case.

And so people were not really complaining about that. They actually thought that was really cool because that kind of added a certain depth to the inclusivity of that universe in a way that people just didn’t think about before. So a lot of times it could be subtle, but sometimes it could be more blatant. It just depends on what your goals are.

Speaker 2 (36:23.554)
I’m hoping you’ve seen this movie because for me this was a movie I watched where I thought they went a bit too far, they didn’t make enough allegorical distance. Do you know the film Bright? Will Smith was in it.

Yes, I know of the film. I did not see it though.

Okay, so yeah with that film essentially the Don’t know how to say the orcs there wasn’t enough allegorical distance in my head from orcs and like What the culture of you know, african-americans in America? It was just like everything was the same and there was some commentary when it came out It’s like it wasn’t kind of enough difference like the elves were all looked one way fairies all look one way

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:08.692)
Yeah. Yeah. We haven’t seen the film, so we can’t I don’t want to go in.

I know the premise though, but yeah, I get what you’re saying though, because I definitely know the premise. So yeah, and that happens. mean, you know, I can give you a quick example from Dragon Age, because I’ve worked on all the Dragon Age games. And in the original game, one of the species in one of the races that is in the game are the Dalish Elves. And the Dalish Elves were designed to be an allegory for immigrants into the United States.

And so this is being made by BioWare, which is a Canadian company, and the narrative designers purposely decided to use the elves as an allegory to talk about and to kind of show in the fictional world of Dragon Age, how do we treat immigrants and how do we treat the other that comes into our society? So the Dalish elves were taken from basically a position in a lot of fictional media where elves are like these godlike perfect beings like in Tolkien.

and they were brought down to kind of this untouchable outcast level. So in the the world of Dragon Age. So lot of people you’ll hear a lot of NPCs and others kind of talk about the Dalish elves like they don’t like them. They want them to go away. They don’t understand why they’re there. And of course, from the Dalish elves perspective, they’re trying to recover their homeland, which these people have taken over. So, of course, there’s also an undercurrent of indigenous displacement that is also part of the allegory.

And so it was intentional. was very intentional to do that in the narrative. But a lot most players did not pick up on it because they just kind of saw, yes, for some reason, the elves, people don’t like the elves. But we did hear from some players who especially players who came from an immigrant background, whether themselves or their parents, they recognize this. They said, I what the elves are going through and what I hear them saying is very much my experience. I know what I know what this feels like.

Speaker 1 (39:03.564)
And so it’s interesting because sometimes that allegory is going to connect with a certain player and it won’t with others because it’s not part of your life experience.

while you’re reading that I brought up a Reddit page and I literally just saw seven people have your realization like there was one person who was like he did it in italics historical awareness of colonialism intensifies but then everyone else is talking about why don’t the elf just do X and then people are like discussing this is why and this is why and I can tell like some people can tell and some people can’t so just so I got that right would you say this is like a good example because from my head it empathized with the people who

kind of connected with that without quote unquote alienating or this is one way one of those youtubers put it where it’s like the message it’s not trying to force it would you say this is you’re just painting a good line yeah

Yeah, think what they did was brilliant. mean, yeah, I’m biased because I worked on it, but I didn’t write the narrative. mean, there was, you know, Dave Gator and a lot of other amazing narrative designers back in those days. They’re the ones who came up with this. And I just thought they did such a great job. it’s I often, you know, bring that up in a lecture about being a great example of what I would call kind of moderate or medium level allegorical distance because

If you don’t want to bury the allegory too much because you want people to pick up on it to a certain degree, but you don’t want to hit them over the head with it or make it too obvious in their face.

Speaker 2 (40:33.902)
Pushback too. I think I’ve noticed that at least with games coming out, like they’re forcing something not for the sake of the story, but for the sake of quote unquote the message.

I totally agree and I think that’s where some games recently have gone a little bit wrong where, know, it’s like don’t, don’t as the old saying goes, don’t put the cart before the horse. You know, you want to make sure that you, there’s nothing wrong with using allegory. There’s nothing wrong with taking that approach, whether it’s, you know, an allegory about gender representation or, or whatever it might be, but you have to make sure does it serve the narrative? Does it serve the player experience more than anything?

that’s what it needs to serve first. If it’s just there for its own sake, then you might need to step back and say, do we really need that line in there or do we need to have that particular dialogue or whatever? So I do think we need to not be too absorbed with our own narratives and just make sure that it’s great to have it in there, but I think subtlety is actually more powerful. And that’s the beauty of allegory, honestly. mean, when you think back to…

old shows like Star Trek, the original Star Trek in the 1960s, or the original Twilight Zone, those shows were masters of allegory because they had to be. Because back in those days on television, you could not talk openly about racism, you could not talk openly about the Cold War. And yet there are so many storylines in the Twilight Zone and in the original Star Trek that talk about racism, they talk about, you know, the Cold War, weapons of mass destruction.

nuclear annihilation, all of that stuff is discussed, but they do it in a way that is super creative and it’s a little bit subtle. And I think that’s the brilliance of it is when you have people think about it and then the more they think about it, they’re like, wait a minute. This is actually about this thing. I’m like, yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 (42:28.652)
Yeah, sweet. No, I love it So you’ve been in games for a very long time and you started or you co-founded right a company called set jitters and yes on me the idea It was super cool. I’d love to share with everyone listening today because this is something anyone can use today So yeah, could you quickly describe such errors?

Absolutely. So one of my big hobbies that I’ve had since I was a teenager growing up in Southern California is I love visiting filming locations because I just I just think it’s fun, know, especially films or TV shows that have a personal connection with me like Star Wars, for example, or Indiana Jones or any of those. It’s magical to me to be able to go to the filming location and think about like this is the place. This is the very place where they captured that shot that was so emotional or so

cool. And so I’ve been doing this almost all my life. And so when I travel so much to speak around the world, I try and find time to like, go sneak off and you know, see some filming locations. I just did this two days ago in New York at JFK Airport where they filmed some scenes there from different films. And so during COVID, I was stuck at home like everybody else and for 18 months. And so I partnered with four other

co-founders and we created an app called Set Jitters, which is on Android and iOS. And so this app allows you to find filming locations around the world, go to the location, and then once you’re there, you can actually recreate the scene by having a split screen of the frame from the original film and then how it looks right now. And so, and you capture that with the app and post it to social media, including inside the app. And of course, because of my influence being from the game industry,

We have gamified the app so that you can actually collect scenes. When you get within 60 meters of a scene, you collect it and you earn points for that. You can earn badges, as you’re seeing right there. So we have badges at different places around the world. Like we just introduced a badge at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts where they’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the movie Jaws.

Speaker 2 (44:37.516)
Yeah, I saw that. saw that on your feed today. Yeah.

So you go there and you collect about 15 to 20 scenes and you earn the badge and you get bragging rights for that. So yeah, this is basically a hobby and a passion project that has turned into an actual business. And I gotta say, it has been so fun to work on this. It’s just been an absolute blast.

I imagine and for everyone who Like me didn’t know this was a thing before this is very cool. Like when kovat came out I used Pokemon go I stopped using it after a while But it was just super cool to have a reason to go outside And then this is also a reason to travel go outside and also isn’t something that you like am I being efficient with the game? Am I doing this? Like I think this is I guess I don’t want to say Pokemon go for adults but

there’s an element here like it’s just a nice excuse to go outside and like you said is a little collection involved and yeah I just everyone just it’s a good idea so if this is something you do or you didn’t know you wish you had then there we

Yeah, it’s been so fun. And I gotta say that the thing that we’re really trying to do is to bridge that emotional connection. Because I can tell you, when I went to the original Lars Homestead site in southern Tunisia and visited there a few years ago, it was very emotional for me. Because I was 12 years old when Star Wars came out. to be able to, I never forget when I was walking towards the building, because it’s still there.

Speaker 1 (46:06.922)
Because every once in a while fans will go out there and they’ll kind of rebuild it and kind of keep it keep it there I was weak in the knees I was starting to tear up because I’m like I just could not believe that I was standing at the very place where it all started where all of Star Wars started right there and That was that was very special. So it’s been fun to recreate that in various parts of the world

Yeah amazing and you’re doing it for loads of people which is super cool. Lovely. Alrighty. Okay, inside a question. So what does the executive director of the IGDA do? I know you’re not here now but like yeah it seems like a massive title right but you you did that while you’re doing other jobs right?

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:48.706)
Yes, yeah, I was doing my consulting work on the side while I ran the IGDA and also while I ran the Global Game Jam. But the IGDA was created way back in 1994 to basically be a center point for developers to basically get together and work together, communicate with each other about our craft and talk about how we make games and also to be advocates for what we do.

because in the same year in the United States is when the Entertainment Software Association was created in response to the US government as there were some politicians in the US government who were very anti-video game at the time. And so the ESA was created by the industry as a response to that saying, hey, we’ve got our act together, we’re organized, that’s also when the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, the ESRB was created.

to basically self rate our games for age ratings because otherwise the government was threatening to step in and do it for us. And we do not want the government doing that for us. And so the ESRB was created, the ESA was created, and then kind of in response to that, the IGDA was created, which was originally called the Computer Game Developers Association. But then over the years, the IGDA grew and it became…

this key organization for lot of developers around the world. It created sprouted chapters all over the world. When I was running IGDA, I think there was somewhere maybe around 200 or 300 chapters at the time. And I was running it 10 years ago. So the main job though, the executive directors is basically to get people interested in not only joining because it is a membership organization.

but join because you want to be connected with other developers. You want to join a chapter, you want to be active, you want to be talking to other developers and sharing what you do and learn from others. We also have special interest groups that were created. we have, like I created the localization special interest group in the IGDA before I became the executive director. And those are focused on very specific functions. They’re also focused on different groups.

Speaker 1 (49:02.05)
Like I think there’s a parenting special interest group like for developers who are parents. So there’s a lot of different groups. And I think being part of a community, that really is the most important part. You really should not be working in isolation because most games are not made in isolation. They’re made by a group of people. I know there’s a lot of great solo devs out there, but that’s rare. It’s rare to have all the skills to put a game together. They do.

attention. So I see you and And it feels like there’s so many of them, right?

Yeah, but you know, we have a lot of amazing tools today that do allow for more more solo developers. And I think, you know, I meet them all the time and I applaud them for taking that path because it’s not easy. But even a solo developer, I think should be part of an organization, whether it’s the IGDA or something local, or there’s just a local meetup for game developers. I think it’s super important. But the other main job of the executive director and what I was doing very frequently was being vocal.

being vocal about issues that affect game developers like crunch time, mental health, all of these kinds of things. And so being vocal also get you a certain level of response, whether you want it or not. And so like my challenge when I ran the IHDA is that I was running it during Gamergate when Gamergate was a huge online issue going on, the big misogyny campaign. And so because I spoke out against them, I became one of their primary targets.

So yeah, that added a lot of challenge to the job, but I was able to push through that.

Speaker 2 (50:36.684)
Yeah, because that was 2014 so you can imagine you can imagine If it was bad then how bad it was because yeah. Yeah I want to Take it to the game maker listening now. So you were looking at also the global game jam and also I imagine at IGDA you’re looking at a lot of games some will succeed some don’t so what’s the secret sauce when you see all the games that did well like

Do you see anything in common? Any pattern?

Well, if I knew the true secret sauce, I’d probably be retired and living on a private island, but,

No you wouldn’t, because then you wouldn’t set jet.

Well, true. Yeah, that’s true. Well, my private jet would take me there. the I think the thing is, is that because there are so many games today, there’s so many games. It’s the biggest complaint we hear from both, you know, from pretty much everybody in the game industry. It’s about discovery. How do you get discovered? How do people find your game on Steam? How do they find it on an app store? It feels like it’s almost impossible.

Speaker 1 (51:44.854)
And of course, as many people have said, with far greater skill than me, especially all those amazing community managers out there, it’s the skill of building a community. Because it’s not just about building a game, it’s about building a fandom around your game. And building fans who like the kind of game you’re making, who appreciate what you’re doing. They like the theme, they think the game is fun. But honestly,

you know, when it comes down to it, it’s really about is the game playable? And by playable, I mean, not just like, can I pick up control or move through it? How fun is it to play this game? You know, is it compelling to play this game? And I think that that to me is often a sign of a good game is that I am compelled to keep playing because I get asked to look at a lot of games. I just did, for example, the judging for the Games for Change Awards, which are coming up soon. I get asked to judge a lot of game contests.

And so I do play a lot of games. I visit a lot of conferences and play a lot of games. And it’s all about being compelled. It’s like, this game make me want to play more? I don’t care what the art style is. I don’t care what the genre is. I don’t care about any of that. What I care about is drawing me in. Is it giving me a reason to not put the controller down? And that’s to me is like the factor. And now I realize that’s not a lot to go on.

But that, you for me, what compels me is going to be different from somebody else. And that’s the beauty of our individuality as game players. know, for example, I know for a fact that I tend to play a lot of first person shooter type games just because I enjoy that genre. But I also love discovery games. I love open world discovery. you know, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are just phenomenal for that. They were so well designed because they knew exactly what people like me are going to do.

They’re going to pick a distant mountain, head towards it, and then eventually you’re going to hit stuff in the environment and come across it and experience things. And I love that. I love that kind of game. And so there is a case where I, because of the open world format, I am compelled to explore and I love exploring and I’m just going to keep going and going and going. You know, and so that’s what it is for me. It’s that being compelled to play.

Speaker 1 (54:07.5)
and being compelled to experience more. And again, it’s really not about the genre or any of those other details for me.

Yeah, no, I echo a lot of the same thoughts like I Funny enough. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. Maybe you’re the other version of Me when it comes to like reviewing games, but every time I review a game they say no one’s ever given us feedback before I’m like, what do you mean? Like why is no one giving feedback for the game? And the main thing I used to Harp on was like I’d imagine myself as a person who’s like, all right I’m the day one retention cohort. Will I play this for more than one day? And I was like no because

This takes too much time to figure out or this is like the word compel was such a good one like when I think of the games I play more than one day because like I want to go back see what would happen or I want to go and see this and sometimes I Saw a recent YouTube review for the game dune You saying if you’d like survival games, then you’re gonna love the the game dune But he says if you want to have fun doing certain feature, it will take you good 20 hours. I’m like, whoa, so

Unless I’m literally played other games before if I like that start of play I would have to play for 20 hours like alright So you’d lose me and I think a lot of games who don’t have like for example, he said it very well is that Dune IP might convert you into a survival player or your survival player and you already enjoy it If you don’t like survival players, you won’t really like this game And if you didn’t like it you enjoy it and that’s fine And I found that a lot of games just assume that the person is gonna come in and figure it out It’s like no like people have

growing and growing Steam libraries. And a lot of people like me will pick one or two games and just go back to it. Because I know it’s going to be a good time and I know can pick it up and stop. I don’t want to have to learn a new game.

Speaker 1 (55:51.438)
Exactly. I mean, I do the same thing. It’s like when I have time and I would just want to relax with a game, I play Halo multiplayer. That game’s over 20 years old, but I still go back and play Halo.

Yeah, because I think it’s just because I know it’s gonna be an okay time. I just realized I’m self Analyzing myself the only time I look for new games is when I have a flight like oh I could like discover the game on the flight for a couple hours, but because that’s The way I do it then I’m only looking at mobile games. I’m like, okay If I’m look at a mobile game has to be one that’s offline and then I limit myself It has to be a rogue light because I don’t want to start a game and then not come back to it and feel And then I’m like, all right, I can only play those style of games. That’s interesting

You know it’s funny because I find myself I have a parallel approach I don’t tend to play much on get on on flights but I do watch movies and it’s on it’s on flights where I will experiment with and see and watch movies I’ve never seen before even though I mean I could watch them at home on Netflix or whatever but it’s on the flight for whatever reason I’m like well I’m here I’m not going anywhere I’m just gonna sit here and

Parallel universe, if I get disappointed on the flight, it’s like it counts less, I don’t know.

Yeah, it’s an interesting observation, I agree, because I tend to be the same way. And I think that’s true of any media though, mean, any creative media. That idea being compelled, I mean, it’s just like a film or TV show, you’ve got to compel me to watch this. Draw me in, give me a reason to keep spending my time here. But I think it’s particularly true of games, because with a film or TV show, what are you going to lose? Maybe a couple hours?

Speaker 1 (57:28.13)
But with a game, just like you mentioned with Dune, you’re investing many, many, many hours in this game potentially. So you really want to make sure it’s going to be the right game for you.

For sure. think like you either have the community side, whether it’s in the game or outside the game, or for me, a big one is can I watch the game? Like some games I actually watch for a ridiculous amount of time, like let’s say like 30 hours. And then I’m like, all right, I should play this game. And then I play it for a stupid amount of time and watch at the same time. So anytime I don’t feel like playing the game, I just watch the game and I’m like, I can watch, get better and then come back and then try the thing new. But some games are just not built for YouTube. And I feel like why?

Just please. That’s like the discovery platform. Just make it dreamable, make it playable, viewable anyway. All righty. want to for the kind of last part of the podcast here is like you’ve had a career in games. You probably the longest career in games I’ve had on the podcast so far actually, which is a win. So the question I have is like for people either just coming in or people who want to continue being in the games industry. We understand like head count. It’s fluctuating, right? It’s going down.

I know some studios they’re hiring and they’re struggling to find people then there’s also the flipside where it’s like there’s like no jobs for people so I guess if you had to speak to some young people today thinking about joining the games industry or people who are like recently graduating what would you tell them?

Well, I think there’s probably at least three things I would tell them. And the first one is yes, do it. games, creating games is a passion that you will never escape from. And if you find that you have the passion for doing it, you won’t escape from it. No matter what job you end up doing in your life, you’re still going to want to do it. And I’ve been around long enough on this planet to know that you can’t avoid your passions, nor should you. So it’s like, if you feel very passionate about something and you really want to do it, just do it then.

Speaker 1 (59:25.122)
find a way to do it. You might have a weird path to do it, but you got to figure out that path over time. The second thing I would say is that it’s easy to be discouraged with what you see in the game industry right now or hear about certain companies and all of that. But what I think it requires us to be is a lot more creative about how we approach getting into the industry or finding that job.

that we really want. mean, let’s face it, even the job that I have now, I created this job. It did not exist. And I created it while I was inside Microsoft doing a different job. And so that’s one piece of advice I would give is that you got to really think creatively about how, if you have an idea for what you would really like to do, and you may not even know what that idea is yet until you actually start working on games, which is totally fine too. But the point is you got to start working on something.

And so what I often give people advice is that, let’s say for example, there’s a certain franchise you would love to work on or a certain company you really want to work for. Get a job in that company no matter what. It doesn’t matter what the job is, just get a job. It could be on some, know, some people say, well, I want to start in QA because it’s, you know, an entry level path, which if you’re a professional QA person, they don’t see it that way because there’s a lot of people I know who’ve been doing QA for decades.

And it’s not just an entry level path. I mean, it’s a serious function in the industry. But there are QA testers that tend to be a more entry level path. You could try that. But the point is, get inside a company first. And then once you’re inside, you basically do, maybe this is a bad post-COVID analogy, but you got to become a virus. So you can’t make change happen or infect them with your good ideas unless you’re already inside.

If you come externally as a consultant, basically it’s like, yeah, yeah, fine, don’t call us, we’ll call you. But if you’re already in there as one of their employees, it doesn’t matter, you could be an accountant, you could be a lawyer, could be whatever, it doesn’t matter. You may not even be part of the core creative team, but you’re inside the company. Once you’re inside, then you can have those conversations with people and talk with the designers and talk with the artists and say, hey, I got an idea to do something like this, what do you think?

Speaker 1 (01:01:49.94)
and get feedback and maybe do like I did at Microsoft. I eventually wrote a proposal and it took me seven months of shopping to get around to five different VPs before I got approval, but I did not give up because I had a lot of people around me saying, yeah, we need this. We really need this. Please don’t stop trying. But again, you got to get in first. If you’re not inside, then it’s really hard to make that change happen, to give them your ideas.

Or I should say, know, at least use your ideas to make what they do better. And, the third thing then I would say is that you got to be creative about where you do this, because I know a lot of young people, you know, they say, well, just, I’m whatever, I’m from the West Coast of the US or I’m from Germany or I’m from wherever, and I want to find a job locally. It’s like, why?

Why do you want to be local? Is there any advantage to staying local? Maybe there is. mean, maybe you have family, maybe you have friends, but at the same time, the industry is truly global. And there are companies all around the world, especially in emerging markets, that are desperate for talent because they are not producing the level of talent that they need locally because a lot of the education systems in a lot of emerging markets are not quite there yet in terms of teaching really solid game design.

and programming skills. I mean, they’re getting there, but they’re not quite there yet. So that’s an opportunity for you to maybe you can go move around the world somewhere or find another way to enter the industry. don’t think just don’t think too locally. Don’t always think about just AAA or PC games. The mobile space is massive. If you want to work on mobile games, the point is be flexible, be creative and just find a way in.

And then once you’re in, then you could start doing that work you want to do to see if there’s a different kind of job you want to get or you want to actually create.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50.542)
beautiful advice one thing I want to add is the because I was the agency recruiter for a few studios hiring unity developers and a lot of people don’t know there’s a hidden job market like they know of it but like practically what you can do is like a lot of studios will make a job for the right person and a lot of studios right now aren’t hiring that much but trust me if I said hey this person just came available do you want to speak with them they would say yes and then they would

Hired this person and no one would ever know and because I’ve done that firsthand like four times because I’ve had a relationship with the hiring manager and they Yeah, we actually are planning to hire a unit developer. Let’s chat him now. actually he highlighted something we want them right now, so Well, that’s a backtrack if you’re either currently have a job or don’t have a job just have conversations with people at studios either through informational interviews There’s some nice resources where there’s communities you can just literally join and there’s game professionals and also game kind of

Aspiring professionals. There’s the fun simith club by alexander brasi and amir satvat has a spreadsheet which is constantly updated with mentors just getting conversation with people who work at a studio and then asking them like what’s the biggest challenge right now like a big one everyone asked me when I was listening to what you said like you make your own job like Everyone says no one does documentation If you just offered to like come into a studio like I’m gonna fix everyone’s documentation and like I just want the minimum I’m sure someone’s gonna say yes, and that’s gonna be one of the

best ways to learn in my head. yeah, definitely just get in and like you say, be that positive virus, get those internal champions by just making other people’s lives easier and then you just get fans. Happy day.

Well, just to add to that, because you raised a great point and you mentioned about networking and being connected with recruiters. The networking part is crucial to the game industry. I mean, it’s crucial to a lot of creative industries, but the game industry especially. It’s like cold calling by sending a resume to a website. You’re not going to get a job that way. You get a job by the relationships that you build with people. And I’ll say this as somebody who is originally an introvert.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57.74)
and it’s a baseline introvert, I will tell you right now, because I’m faking extroversion right before your eyes, you can overcome it because I meet so many people, especially young people coming into this industry who are introverts like me, and I know it’s tough, I know it’s super tough to build those relationships and to reach out to people because it’s the last thing you want to do, but you have to do it. You have to find a way to push yourself.

And even if you start on LinkedIn and like find people who do the job that you want to do or work for a company that you’re interested in, reach out to them and don’t ask them for a job, but ask them like ask them questions about their work. Ask them, you know, Hey, I saw that you worked on this particular game. I love that game. I’m really curious. What, what process did you come up with to do this? This and this, you ask them specific questions about their work because I can tell you right now that pretty much anybody in this industry,

If I get somebody asking me questions like that, I will answer those questions because we love talking about our work. I mean, we’re very excited about what we do. And I think it’s really hard for them to turn it down. And just so your whole point is trying to develop sort of a conversation and rapport with them. And then maybe eventually, if you kind of have a good rapport going, maybe then you could ask, like, hey, I’m trying to do this or I’d like to do this. Do you have any advice for me? Do you mind looking at my portfolio?

I’m thinking about doing this kind of job. Do you know what kind of openings are like right now for that kind of job? Just general questions. But if you ask for a job right away or before you have that rapport, it just shuts down the conversation because we all get that all the time. People saying, hey, I need a job. Do you have a job for me? It’s like, sorry.

It’s literally is a binary answer. You’re not starting a conversation. But the example you gave is brilliant. Like if you and also just for some numbers for people, because I’ve actually given his advice and they’ve gone and done it. Expect 80 % to say nothing and that’s okay. It’s just normal. 20 % might give you a reply. Let’s say 10 are positive and then five end up being a people that will happily join a call. So if you just found a few hundred people and start sending a hundred personalized messages, because if you probably have more time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09.366)
you will get someone to reply and if you ask it a nice question like Kate’s example where you’re asking about how did you do XYZ? It’s like I get those questions all the time from people ghostwriting. So I go to the games industry and it’s very interesting because I have a niche. I’m not seen as competition. I’m like, yeah, good luck goes around for the games industry and I’m not going to write for your industry. So I have a nice little conversations with people just about gross writing and techniques and just like you said.

Like I’m happily join a call just tell them everything because I want people to succeed and I think a lot of people are like that I mean, you know Kate’s been the industry for 30 plus years all these titles then she would also answer those questions I think yeah that explains it. I just go to my podcast go to the people and they just ask ask them and they give you trouble just tell them to Tell his Harris for you know, we find now beautiful maybe Positioning now to people later in their career

Because you’ve managed to stay quote unquote relevant. I’ll use the word and there are some people who Had a very long run and then they’re like, I have to dust out my CV again and then they’re struggling Would you say anything differently to them?

I mean, it depends on what their background is and their history and kind of where they want to do at that stage in their life. mean, it’s, you know, assuming they want to keep working in the game industry. I know it’s tough. I know that ageism is a very real thing in this industry as it is in the tech sector in general. You know, that’s something that we have to constantly fight against. I’ve been extremely fortunate that I have such a niche job that I made up. It’s such a specialty that

I don’t really know anybody else who does this kind of work like the way I do it. And so that’s been a huge benefit to me. But, you know, if for people who are out there who’ve had a career of 10, 15, 20 years in the industry and they’re, let’s say they were a producer or a creative director or something, or have some other job like that, you know, it really depends on, again, what they want to do at this point. And I meet a lot of people of that age group that get closer to my age.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21.176)
where they want to pivot. They’re like, I did this for 10, 15 years. I’m tired of it. I want to do something else now. it’s kind of figuring out how they pivot is not easy because, know, they, have a tremendous amount of experience, but maybe not in that specific thing. But, so I mean, they, they, they, again, same advice though, they really need to be creative about how do you take all that body of knowledge and expertise you have and pivot it towards what you want to do. And that’s the creative part. You really have to think hard about,

how is this gonna be applicable to this other kind of job that I wanna do? And of course, if there’s a skill gap, then you need to go back to school and get those skills, know, do it on the side. I know it’s hard because a lot of people who are older have families or partners or whatever the case may be. And so it’s tougher, but you know, a lot of people do that. They go back to school, they’ll get another degree or maybe just a certificate in programming or whatever the case may be. But you have to have that.

kind of attitude of lifelong learning that your journey is never done. You know, I love my work so much because the more I do this work is the more I realize how big it is and how much I don’t understand. But I love that. I love the fact that there’s always something over the horizon because I don’t want to feel ever like I’ve figured it out. You know, because then it’s like, well, then why am I doing this anymore?

You know, I keep getting, now that I turned 60 this year, get people ask me, so when are you gonna retire? It’s like, I’m not gonna retire. I don’t even know what that means. Like, well, you can travel the world. It’s like, well, I already do that. So don’t need to retire to do that. I love what I do and I can honestly say that. I’m gonna, like I tell people, I’m gonna drop dead doing this work and I’ll be perfectly happy with that.

Beautiful. Anything you feel like we haven’t covered today that you’d want to leave as a little message for people listening.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14.03)
Just one last message is this, guess, is especially for the younger people, you know, talking about being introverts and all that kind of stuff. We’d also talked a lot about social media. I just want to say one thing that, you know, I mean, I mentor a lot of people coming into this industry, and I love the fact that they’re passionate and they want to get in this industry. But the one thing that I see so many of them are plagued with is constantly comparing themselves.

to other people. And this is where I’ll interject the Mark Twain quote where you wrote that comparison is the death of joy. And I love this quote because you really let that sink in. There’s so much truth to that. And unfortunately, social media is designed for comparison. It’s what it’s best at. You know, we see our friends posting, here’s what I’m doing or here’s what I’m learning or here’s where I’m going. And, you know, we want to celebrate that with them. But then it also causes people to go into a depression spiral.

and it affects their mental health. So what I would say is that as much as you can, you know, it’s a human instinct to compare ourselves, but as much as you can, try not to do that. Or if you see people that say, oh my God, they’re like someone in your class or someone at your work, they do this work so amazingly well. Guess what? You just found a mentor. Why don’t you approach them and ask them, hey, I admire your work so much. I love how you do this. Do you have any time? Could you please teach me?

because I would love to learn this from you. And just ask them and see if they’re willing, you know, because that’s one thing I absolutely love about this industry is there’s such a great spirit of collaboration that happens in this industry more than any other industry I’ve worked in or around. And it’s why I became the executive director of the IHDA. It’s why I ran the Global Game Jam, because I love the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie in this industry. And so don’t be afraid.

to leverage that instinct that a lot of game developers have to basically help each other. Because more often than not, you will be surprised at how willing people are to reach out and help you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22.828)
So true. I’ve had 230 guests over podcasts over the last couple of years. Every single one. Just saw this British guy called Harry, who is a recruiter saying, hey, do want to be on a panel podcast? The amount of yeses I got still blows my mind. And some of them from CEOs of multimillion dollar companies who was their first podcast. And they still said yes to Harry because it’s like, an opportunity to give back. Like, please, what Kate is saying, everyone, like it is very, very real. And if you want again.

for the introverts out there. Don’t make it hard on yourself. Go to either this podcast or Evolution Exchange Gaming, which was the one I was on. You’re gonna see hundreds of episodes of people who spend their time on a podcast. They’re probably more likely to help anyone asking for help because they’ve already shown a signal. So you can make it even a bit easier. Fantastic. Okay, Kate, if anyone wants to get in touch, what is the best way?

Probably the best way is you can find me on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn profile is a good gateway. You can see more about my background and I do respond to LinkedIn messages. I may not get to them right away, but I will get to them eventually. So if you want to add me on LinkedIn, feel free to do that. I’m really easy to find there.

Amazing. Alrighty. All the links for everyone will be in the description. But yeah, Kate, thanks so much for this conversation. was so amazing.

Thank Thanks very much.