We basically put a payw wall on H.io for the Windows version, which seems like a no-brainer of like, well, let’s earn

money, but longer term, having people engaging with the IP is more valuable than short-term profit. Today, I’m

joined by an indie founder who took a game jam project to over 300 million downloads without VC funding. These

other ripoff versions of Amian Yellow with hundreds of thousands of downloads, but the thing that really stung was

those games were actually they were making money. That was entirely just they were making profit off us. We talk

about what it takes to build a sustainable indie studio and how smart design made the baby in yellow perfect

for YouTubers and why distribution not marketing has driven their virality. Because of the nature of going viral,

you want as many eyes on something as possible. Retaining players and all those sorts of things. They are way way

easier problems to solve than getting players in the first place. From someone who’s built one of the most played horror games in the world, this

episode’s guest and CEO of Team Terrible, Greg Lee. Greg, welcome to the show. Thanks for

having me. Thank you for coming. We’ve actually, this is our second technically podcast. The other one was offline um in

format Manchester, which is good, which was a nice CEO panel. And yeah, really looking forward to today. So, for

everyone at home, today’s guest turned a game jam into a global phenomenon. Talking about Team Terrible CEO Greg

Lee, who took The Baby in Yellow to 300 plus million downloads, all without VC

funding. into a true indie. And in this episode, we’re going to unpack how he left Rockstar, built a sustainable indie

business that also designed for virality. So, if you want the blueprint for building games that also spread and

kind of end up marketing themselves, then this podcast is for you. So, Greg, my first question is kind of if you take

me back to like what triggered the first wave of downloads for the game? Do you remember that day? Yeah. So, I mean, it

was a game jam and generally game jams, they don’t they don’t get a lot of players. Like, you’ll get people who

make game jams playing game jams, but like they’re rough around the edges. You only have 48 72 hours. They’re not good,

but they have potential. But the the thing that we found was we actually messed up. So, we were meant to submit

it to like a private um submission group on it.io, but we actually downloaded the latest version of Unreal. And because of

that, we couldn’t submit it on time. So, we actually ended up not entering it into the competition we were meant to be

entering, which is hilarious. So, what we did in the end was we just threw it up online and we thought, well, we made

something whatever it goes up online and we have a lot of other games up there, but what we noticed very quickly was it

went from like a good game jam has like maybe a thousand, maybe 2,000 downloads,

but a lot of them are sitting like a hundred. And this one we came back after a week and had five, six, 7,000. And

when then we noticed it was it was YouTube, it was content creators, it was people, and they would hunt through

places like Itch to find weird games that other people hadn’t played before. And I always assumed, although I’ve

never actually confirmed this, but I always assumed it’s a thing where a lot of these people, they were like not huge

big players. Some of them were, but a lot of them were like quite small time content creators. And I think it’s a way

for them to have something like genuinely unique. Like it’s a new game. It’s something that no one else has done. So whenever they post it on their

channel, maybe some of these games do go big, they’re one of the first videos. So it’s kind of a way sort of like a

symbiosis of if their games popular with them, that helps us. So it’s kind of like a nice back and forth. In fact,

actually, funnily enough, some of the content creators who blew up. They we we we’re quite friendly with a lot of them

now. And some of them mentioned to me that like their first big video was the BB and Yellow back in the day, which

obviously is a really nice thing because it’s a bit of a back and forth where for us that’s great because we got people

eyes on the game, but also for them it’s great because they got to expand their channel and and some of these channels

now have like I think there’s a couple and a couple of million subscribers and like back then, you know, I mean this is

four or five years ago now. A couple of those content creators had maybe tens of thousands. So it was that it was that

initial thing of it started picking up and picking up and picking up and it’s the nature of ver v uh it’s the nature

of going viral the more people playing it the faster it grows it’s sort of like um there’s like

a critical mass you kind of hit so that was what we noticed was yeah just people started playing the game people were

interested in the game people wanted to talk about the game and then in that that returned to what we saw more and

more downloads one of the big things we actually saw though was the content

creators was a big thing for us. But obviously this was we were still employed at the time and so this game

wasn’t making us any money. It was a free game on it but we noticed that

people started uploading the game on mostly Android but a lot of mobile stores and they were monetizing it. So

they would just take our game, rip it off, do something pretty bad, but like along the same

lines, and they would just upload it, and people would start downloading it. Because what we noticed was like any content creator that upload a video gets

half a million views. People watching it will just start searching for that game just like, “Oh, I want to play that. I

want to play that.” And a lot of people play games mostly on their phones. Like a lot of YouTube um content is watched

on phones. It’s why shorts and stuff exist. So a lot of people were instantly going to the place they download games,

which is obviously mobile stores. we had no presence there. Um, and then we noticed these games and they were

getting 100,000 downloads and at this point in time that’s like double triple what we were getting on the official

version on PC. So it was around that time that we figured this is something

special. Like we’ve got content creators there. This is kind of blowing up. There’s a lot of people like I can Google the baby in yellow and there’s 50

60 100 videos appearing but there’s also these other ripoff versions of the baby in yellow with hundreds of thousands of

downloads. But the thing that really stung was those games were actually they were making money like um obviously

content creators get money out of advertisements and stuff but again it’s not quite the same. There’s a certain level of like that’s almost marketing.

You know yes they make money out of there for their monetization but you’re getting eyes on your game whereas these people there was no benefit to us

whatsoever. Like that was entirely just they were making profit off us. So the natural thing was like to combat

that we need to release a mobile version of this. So that was what we did and that was the scary thing like once we

did that stuff really started blowing up cuz the PC one did well but I think it was to do with the demographics. um the

mobile one really really blew up and it got to that point where suddenly this wasn’t just a little game that we were

making for fun in our free time like suddenly this was a revenue stream and um although at the start not a fantastic

one um but we also had to learn a lot to do with like how monetization works and all this kind of stuff but we firmly

believed that we couldn’t market this game because we’re we don’t have a marketing budget

and we didn’t have money to pump into that so what we essentially decided to do was we make money on mobile. Let’s

just keep the PC version completely free. So download on Edge, no cost, entirely free. And the reason for that

is it makes it easier for content creators to download it and therefore more people to do it and then funnel more people back into the mobile because

we noticed that when we turned on monetization, our downloads dropped to like a tenth and it wasn’t it wasn’t

made a lot of money. When you said down turn on monetization, do you mean put a pay wall behind the mobile game? Uh on

the on the PC game so on. So, we basically put a payw wall on H.io for the Windows version, which seems like a

no-brainer of like, well, let’s earn money, but we took the strategy of longer term having people engaging with

the IP is more valuable than short-term profit. And because of the nature of going viral, you want as many eyes on

something as possible. So, we just viewed it as the state of like we’re just not going to make any money on PC.

PC is basically there to just allow people to download it and upload YouTube videos, and we’ll make all our money

through mobile. Now we have changed that now after several years but for that first while it was basically just like

get this in as the hands of as many people as possible because monetization and uh like retaining players and all

those sorts of things they are way way easier problems to solve than getting players in the first place. Like that’s

really hard to do. It’s something that costs a lot of money. It’s something

that tons of companies exist to do so and we had no capacity to do that. we couldn’t compete against, you know, some

of the heavy-hitting mobile games. So, our marketing budget, I used to joke, our marketing budget was all the money

we didn’t make on Windows. So, I I don’t know how much money we would have made, but like let’s say for example, it was

20 grand or whatever, like that was our marketing budget. Um, so yeah, like it was literally just a get it into the

hands as many people as possible. The other problems have solved theelves out. Like I mean, if you have a player base,

that’s nearly always the biggest problem. like everyone that I speak to who owns other studios is just getting a

sizable amount of people to care about your name because we viewed this as this has the potential to go across multiple

products. Like this could be something we could work on. We could then do spin-offs. We could then do other IPs.

It’s something that we are certain of other IPs, other games based on the same IP. It was something that we were really

really passionate about. And this community started developing as well. We started getting fan art. We started

getting people making Discord groups. we started getting loads of emails. Um, a lot of our demographics are sort of like

teenagers. Um, so you get emails from individual players, but we also got a lot of emails from like parents of like

kids who were like 12 or 13 basically saying like how much their son or daughter loved the game. And so we were

just like, well, cool. We just need to we just need to get this out there as much as possible. And that was always

the attitude we took. know we have the we had the switcher strategy later on because as we hit like sort of 200 million downloads we used to sort of

like joke that it was like right we can tick the box of we have players you know um I’ve worked on bigger games that had

less players that had massive budgets so getting that that number of players is like astronomical to me like we never

expected like I remember whenever we first hit a million downloads and I genuinely was like right that’s it we’ve

we’ve achieved something here um after we got past 100 million downloads, it kind of got to the point where

it was meaningless. Like there were like number Yeah. Yeah. It was like uh like

what’s the difference between 100 million and 110 million? Like I I already can’t visualize what 100 million

people is. There was there’s a weird thing because it’s difficult to like view that number in your head. Like it’s

not a normal number. It’s so big. There’s a friend of mine at one point did some like napkin math and I I can’t

remember exactly what it was but it was along the lines of like one in 37 people on the planet have played your game and

I was just like that’s mental. He’s like think of like you know like a school classroom or something like that like you know usually about 30 40 people it’s

like one of those people have played your game and I was like that is nuts to think about. Um I haven’t redone the

napkin math on our latest numbers but it it would probably be something similar to that. So yeah, I mean that was that

was the whole thing of us just like make the game as accessible as possible. We don’t have the ability to market this.

So we’re going to rely entirely on it being viral and then figure out monetization later on which is like

that’s basically where we are now. So a bit unconventional I guess but very unconventional Greg like it’s so cool.

Um, I remember seeing a short because we had a meeting booked for

London in January and I was like, ah, cool. Team Terrible. And then I searched the game. I was like, why has he got 30

million? I was like 100 plus million. And then I was like searching the game on YouTube. There was like a short with

hundreds of millions of views. I was like, what is happening right now? And then I asked you in person and you kind of told me what happened here. So

very interesting and I think there’s a lot of lessons here for everyone at home. So, what I want to do is a bit of a quick zoom out and we’ve got the game

jam, we’ve got all the distribution, we’ve got the games. That was a few years ago, right? Um, so where are we

now? And what I want to talk about in the podcast is kind of like what we’ve done to get that point and the lessons

we’ve learned along the way. So, could you paint a picture of Teen Terrible as a studio now? How does it look? I mean,

now we have different problems. Like, I think every studio’s got problems, you know what I And ours aren’t major ones

because like I said, we have like an IP that’s doing well, but there’s obviously a lot of problems. And one of the one of the big ones is like me and Aaron, who’s

is the co-founder of Team Terrible, is like us adapting to the position we’re in because four years ago, it was like

me and him in our bedrooms. It was like end of COVID. We were just making a

game. We just quit our jobs. It was all like a bit haphazard, I guess. Whereas now, uh there’s 12 of us. We have an

office space. Um, we’re still working on the Baby in Yellow uh because we’ve been continually sort of like improving it.

We we’re still in early access on Steam now, which we moved over from Itch and we’re a lot more like a real company.

Like for a very long time it sort of felt like it was just two friends kind of making stuff together and then suddenly we had to sort of take stuff

seriously and um as I said like the sort of problems and stuff that we have are things like you know what the hell is

HR? Oh no, we’ve got to sort out this thing. And it’s all those sort of little bits and pieces of like running a business that whenever you’re making

games initially, you don’t think about. Like whenever we made that game, I wasn’t thinking about running a studio or I wasn’t thinking about porting to

mobile or all the technical constraints. All I was thinking was like this is a cool idea. Um, so I guess these days we

have a lot more of like a big picture kind of focus compared to where we used to whereas it used to be very very

simple. But one of the things I will say is like it’s it’s still an attitude that we want to instill within the studio.

Like we don’t know exactly what our next product’s going to be, although we have a whole bunch of ideas. But no matter

what it is, we’re definitely going to do something similar. Like I’m not a fan of locking yourselves in a room for two or

three years working on a product and then shipping it and finding out your product’s not very very good. Like I think that with this day and age with

how fast things move and how accessible and how interconnected everyone is, getting stuff out early is is the

absolute key. And you will be amazed what people will look past if the game is good. Like if the game is good,

people will look past bugs. They will look past bad art. They will look past junky parts if the game is actually fun.

And I mean, even look at some of the other biggest games that have blown up over the past while. Like I remember when PUBG came out, and PUBG at one

point was like the most played game on Steam by a huge mile. and it was really buggy, but it doesn’t matter because if

the game is genuinely good, people don’t care. And I I think that’s something that people struggle with a bit where

there are games that are out and they have incredible art and that’s sort of what carries the game. And there are games out there that are like incredible

technological jumps and that’s really impressive. But nearly all the games that come out that have done incredibly

well are enjoyable to play. They’re just fun experiences. you know, just point to

like what’s come out recently like Batro, even things like schedule one that blew up on Steam recently. They’re just really fun experiences. And I think

that that’s what we want to do is we want to work on more fun experiences. And it’s sort of a thing of right now

we’re a bit more serious. We’re sort of like focusing on the product and all these sort of big boy business things,

but at the end of the day, we’re still indie developers and we still love game jams and we still love making cool stuff

together. And I think if we lost that, we would lose a huge part of like what made us successful in the first place.

So yeah, I I don’t know what our next product’s going to be or what we’re going to work on next. But I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to become

super corporate. I mean, it was one of the reasons why we quit and made our own studio is we never we never wanted to be super corporate because I think that

takes out a lot of the passion. And I also think it can kind of kill a lot of

the creativity in a game. Not always. There are some bigger corporate companies that make incredible games,

but for me, I just I love I always love those weird little It’s It’s like someone who’s really really into film.

They always watch bizarre stuff. They don’t watch Hollywood. I kind of feel like I’m like that with games. Like I just love weird indie stuff. I’m not

really big into the the Hollywood blockbusters of games as such. Then it’s different, right? Like by default it

will become different. And I feel like if there’s anything your game, it’s different, right? Yeah. like the games

you mentioned, Balletro, schedule one, different each of them, like they’re different. Um, I was on LinkedIn this

morning and I saw a post. Someone said, uh, a game on Roblox got 1.2 million concurrent players, something stupid,

which is like more than like 10 times more than Fortnite Battle Royale right now, which is like 100,000 players, and

it’s a Roblox game. And I was just thinking, well, the parallel here with

your game where you got all this, I guess, distribution, right? like it’s easy, quick, and a younger audience.

Then you get all this things on the back end where you get all these extra players and all that jazz. And

it’s so important. Like I’m thinking of all these people I’m speaking to like founders and like you said, they’re

putting all this effort into the product, but like is it fair to say that distribution is

kind of everything with the game at this point? Yeah, I mean there’s a weird

thing where like it’s art. Um, and although I’m not a UX guy, like I have an understanding of UX and there’s a

sort of like fundamental concept in things like UX, which is like like number of clicks or number of button presses like in your product. If you’re

designing like a menu or a website, you want the players to get or not the players, sorry. Um, you can tell I’m a

game developer. I refer to everyone as players, not users. But, um, you want the user to get from the loading page to

the important stuff in as few clicks as possible. And there’s like statistics around like for every click you add, you

will lose a certain percentage of of people engaging with it because there’s

a lot of distractions these days, you know, uh there’s a lot of stuff on your phone, there’s a lot of stuff on the internet. And for us,

competing with some of those big guys was so difficult because they have budgets and incredibly talented people

working on huge IPs. So just make it as easy as possible for everything that we

had in our game that like detracted or took away for that or made it a little bit harder to get hold of that was like a huge downside for us. So like yeah

distribution getting the stuff out there like it is important because everything you put up that’s a hurdle like I said

we put up a pay wall which is obviously that is that is how companies make revenue. It’s not a bad thing but that

was just a hurdle and even in the game like uh originally when the game come out even the menus and stuff to get you

into the game it was really minimalist. It was literally just like download it, you’re in the game because once people

got into the game, they enjoyed it and they liked it. But anything that could stop that coming up to it was just like that was an obstacle. That was an

obstacle to getting a player to where we wanted to be. Um, so it’s it’s a weird one to be honest. There’s like um I’ve

talked I’ve talked about this with a lot of people because at the end of the day, we got very very

fortunate and very very lucky with this stuff. But I have a sort of little thing about like how I look look to luck. Like

I do think luck is always an element. But I always think of like effort to me is like rolling dice. So like someone

could roll a dice and instantly roll a six. You get people like that, they are just born lucky. They just have stuff. They just, you know, they’re born into

money or whatever and they just they have a six straight off the bat. You get other people who work their entire life in incredible things and they could roll

20 dice and not get a single six. That also happens. So to me, effort and trying out things is just adding more

dice. And for us, we made I don’t even know how many game jams at this point.

Somewhere between 20 or sorry, somewhere between 30 and 40. I think Aaron’s even done more for us. But to me, like I’m

not saying, oh, on your your 30 your 35th game jam, it’s going to go viral because it only takes 35. Like I have no

idea. Your second game jam could go viral. You could do 200 game jams and none of them go viral. But you have to

keep trying stuff out. you have to keep doing stuff and it’s it’s what I said earlier on about I think it’s a big

mistake for companies to sort of sit and work on a product for several years without sharing it because there’s a

huge risk of that’s a huge amount of investment that’s a huge amount of manpower that you’re now wasting and you

you could share that and it could just not work and there could be a cool little thing that you’re working on that you share and suddenly it just resonates

with people and I think that’s the big thing is like once something resonates with people it’s identifying that really

fast and capitalizing on like that to me is what luck is. It’s like getting very very fortunate with an amount of effort

and then the flip side is identifying success and making sure you don’t let it slip through your grasp because that was

like one of the big things for us was like we saw it was popular on mobile. Cool. Well, we can’t do this part-time

anymore. So, we had to like quit and do it like that. That was it. It was like, you know, we can’t work full-time jobs

and also do this. This might be our only chance. like we might never ever get something of this nature again. So, we

just have to throw ourselves into it. And worst comes the worst, we do it, we go bankrupt, then we go back and we get

another job. But I would rather that than lying at home every night thinking,

“What if I did quit?” You know what I mean? I I wanted I would rather do it in feel than wonder what if because I think

that would genuinely haunt me. I mean now looking back if I knew this I would be obviously incredibly sad but back

then I didn’t realize this level of success. Like we we used to joke that by this stage we might have like four

employees and obviously like I said we’re on 12 now and it’s just a very very different st. It’s

been a it’s been a it’s been a weird journey. Like it’s it’s been cool. It’s been exciting. But I think it’s just

like sticking to like some fundamental pr principles of like things that you’ve learned and like certain

certain like ideologies that you believe in I think is like a really really important thing. And I I want to make sure that even though we have grown and

we’re not the two guys in our rooms anymore, we still have the same like vibes. Like there’s still the same like

underlying what we believe in to make product good, what we believe in to like what players want. Um, I’m also not a

big fan of like over monetizing, I guess would be a good way to put it. Um, whenever we released

the game as sort of part of our ethos of making the game as easy to play as possible, we didn’t put a lot of adverts

in the game. Um, we actually minimized that basically we sort of worked out of like what’s the least we can get away

with. And one of the big things that we get commented on a lot, now don’t get me wrong, people still complain there’s ads in the game because it’s a free game.

There’s going to be adverts. But I play a lot of free mobile games over the past 5 years looking at peers, looking at

what the people are doing. And we are very generous when it comes to like not showing ads too much. And we definitely

could have increased that and probably made more money. But one of the big reasons that I think it was successful

and people come back and play it and tell their friends about it is it’s easy. There’s not constant

interruptions. You are making that thing. It’s it’s not quite distribution, but it’s the same kind of thing of it’s

a distraction to take the player out. Every time there’s an advert, that’s a chance a player might quit. That’s a chance a player might not see more of

it. And there’s so much stuff in the game to see that having a player quit early meant that wasn’t a fan. Whereas,

if you keep the player in the game by not overloading it with ads, that person could turn into a fan. That person could

turn into like a proper community member really really engaging with it. So, it’s a tricky balance of like

the artist and me wanting everyone to experience this incredible experience and here’s my story and me and Aaron

talking about all these ideas we want to share and I have staff members with mortgages and I need to pay them. So,

there’s like a weird balance and it’s trying to find that line and I generally lean more towards creating a

good product than I do trying to monetize. But we have to be careful with that

because those happy ideologies only go so far. Like there there is a realistic aspect

to this. We are running a business. We need to make money. We need to make revenue. So to me, it’s it’s just

keeping those ideas alive and being aware of them and being aware of where we came from. I don’t want to turn into

one of those gambling games that’s all about, you know, that’s all it is. Cuz to me, that’s that’s borderline like

abusing your player base. Um where it’s sort of driving on addiction and stuff. whereas we want to make something good

and reasonable that people engage with. So yeah, it’s it’s it’s

tricky because there’s like a lot of things I’m learning over time trying to like handle all this stuff and there’s a

lot of things that we definitely did wrong and there’s a lot of things that we definitely misunderstood at the time.

But looking back, I don’t think there’s anything that was like a huge failure. And I think a big part of that

was doing what we felt was the correct thing to do and sort of doing what we felt was like who we were as a team. And

I think that’s like a really really big part of it. 100%. The

long-term mindset is coming through a lot here. Um especially when you mentioned about like luck um which I

really resonate with. Um, I write about luck in it’s like if you fish with a

very tiny net, you could catch the fish first try and you are lucky. But if you

cast a bigger net and you fish regardless, even if the weather’s even if the

market has so many competitors, eventually you’re going to hit the big fish. And like when you mentioned the

amount of game jams you’ve done, it’s like over 40 combined like

he starts to put everything into perspective, right? He didn’t just like go and do a game jam as a weekend treat

at Rockstar and then he ended up being a hit and then you just kind of waddled your way through. There’s a lot of

things that happened behind the scenes for us to get to this part. And then again, I just love hearing the

when the game was doing well, you could have just put ads on it and then actually that would have killed the studio maybe like potentially, right?

Like they could have just cut distribution right there and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you again had the long-term mindset and

trying to get fans, not just customers because the fans will then produce an environment where

the symptom will probably be more money, right? Yeah. And it it’s the thing as well is like every every person that

downloaded the game and played the game like we found like word of mouth was a really big one for us. And it’s such a terrible

marketing strategy because you can’t you can’t really control it. Like it’s not one. You did I count you on that. You

did right. You made it very easy to play. You made sure people experienced the game to talk to their friends. Like

you can control the experience to facilitate more word of mouth. Yeah. You can’t put money in get word of mouth

out. You’re right. You’re right. It’s not something that is like as much of a onetoone. Like you can’t do like

Facebook advertising where you get like an analytic dashboard. You can’t get that with word of mouth. But you’re right, that was the kind of thing that

we were leaning on was like if someone tells someone about this, we want them to turn around and say they had a great

experience. It was a really cool game. We don’t want them to say it was full of adverts. It really annoyed me. I really

like the game, but it was full of adverts. Anything negative like that and it’s like uh that was like one of the

biggest things that like really spread for us was that word of mouth. Like a lot of people played the game because

they saw a content creator, but a lot of How do you know that? Well, because they would tell us. So, there’s a lot of people that would be like like one one

of the amazing things I had I had an incredible experience at a wedding a few years back. So, my my girlfriend was the

uh maid of honor and she was away doing photos or something. So, I was at this table with a group of strangers and I

started chatting away to them and uh it was a family and the the dad was roughly the same age as me and we started

bantering and chatting. Soon as I mentioned that I made video games, he obviously wants to know more. He’s really big gamer himself talking about

the stuff and blah blah blah and he heard about some of the games I’d worked on in the past, got really excited, asked me what I’m doing at the moment

and I mentioned Baby and Yellow and he was like, “Okay, never heard of it.” Most people our age haven’t heard of it. like I feel very old in our Discord

server because they’re all posting memes I don’t understand. Like I’ve never felt so out of touch. But anyway,

he I actually he says, “Well, your two daughters might actually know the game more than me.” And he had two daughters, one about 16, 17, and one maybe about 14

or something like that. And the the older one, no idea. Younger one lost her mind. Like absolutely lost her mind

because she’d watched tons of content creators play the games. She knew these

content creators, but she’d also talked about it even to the point where towards the end of the night, there was her and

maybe eight other kids and they got an iPad from somewhere. I have no idea where and they were all playing the baby in yellow. And it’s because whenever she

met me, she got really excited about it. She phoned her friends to tell them that they were actually almost more excited

about the content creators cuz she was asking me questions about the content creators and I can’t remember which one, but there was one of them. He apparently

says he’s color blind or something like that. And she said, “Is he really color blind?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I’ll ask him.” So, I emailed him and he

emailed me back and he was like, “Yeah, I’m red, green, color blind.” And she was just blown away that I could do this to this like like you know what I mean?

It’s like me growing up like watching TV. It’s it’s the equivalent of that. It’s such a huge part of like life and

culture. But anyway, like they they found this iPad and suddenly there was this group of like whatever 10 kids all

sitting around playing the baby and yellow together because she got so excited about it. She started telling other kids that were there who’d never

heard of it. And then I was just this weird thing where sort of in the background like I’m out

I’m meeting people. I didn’t know a lot of people at this wedding because it’s more like my partner’s kind of uh friends. So, I was out meeting people

and like having a few drinks and enjoying myself and then every once in a while I would just glance over at these like group of kids all playing my game

like in this wedding. It was very very strange to see. But I’ i’ve had other friends as well where um

one of my friends discovered it when they were on holiday. Sorry, one of my friends kids discovered it when they were on holiday. And I think it was

through someone they met when they were out there. So, they were at some sort of resort and one of the other kids was playing Baby and Yellow and then he came

home that night and was playing Baby and Yellow in the hotel room and my my friend his dad was like, “Where did you

get that? That’s my my friend’s game.” I think. Yes. He said, “You’re too young to be playing that cuz it’s like a horror game.” And he was like, “Oh, one

of the guys or whatever one of the other kids here showed it to me.” So, there’s like there is a lot of these sort of like they’re anecdotal. obviously you’ve

got to take with a pinch of salt, but there’s a lot of these stories sort of pop up where people very organically

find out about the game. And while there are a bunch of my friends uh who have like kids, um there’s also a bunch of my

friends who also play it themselves as well. Those ones that I can directly say like, “Oh, I told them.” But there’s

also a lot of people that will randomly be like, “Huh, yeah, my kids play your game.” Or, “Yeah, my friend plays your

game.” And it is just like very, very organic. So, I think it’s a weird mixture of that content creator thing,

but it’s also that thing of it’s a it’s a very human thing to want to share experiences with each other and creating

something that people resonate with means they want to share it with others. Um, I mean, that’s essentially what content creation is. That’s what let’s

plays are, just on a slightly bigger scale, but it’s the equivalent of me

finding a cool piece of music and wanting to tell you about it because it’s something I want to share with you. And it’s very humbling and it’s very

kind of scary to sort of be part of almost like the zeitgeist with that where we’ve become

like a part of culture. Like another one as well is on our Discord. Like I said, there’s a lot of teenagers on there that

I struggle to understand because they talk strange, but they post they post a lot of really cool fan art. Um and our

community manager, she would quite often share fan art with me and other members of the team. And there has been like

school textbooks vandalized with iconography from our game, which is like I remember doing that as a kid. I

remember drawing like the Batman logo or like Spider-Man’s mask in textbooks, which I’m not saying is a good thing.

You shouldn’t vandalize, but I I remember doing that as a kid. And it’s weird now that there’s kids doing the

same thing, but doing things with like symbols or characters or stuff from something that I created. Um, and that

was like a such a such a minor thing, but that was like a really special moment for me where it was kind of like I could put myself in the footsteps of

them, sort of looking at the the IPs and the characters and the stories that I cared about. And there’s obviously a

certain demographic or there’s a certain age group that have the same feelings with this. And when you mentioned the

whole looking forward thing, that was like a a big part of what we’re trying to do is getting your IP to be popular solve so

many problems long term. Like we used to joke it’s a it’s a little bit like killing the the golden goose. you know,

when do you cash out? Because the the more you get this accessible, the more you have more players engaging with it,

the bigger it gets, the more value you’ll be able to extract down the road versus if we cashed that really early.

Like you’re depositing into your goodwill bank, getting compound interest, and you’re like don’t want to

take. Well, it’s even like I said like the the the itch. IO demo. Like we could have put that as premium and got like a

tenth of the downloads, but then that’s a tenth less content creator videos and then that’s a tenth less than but it’s

it’s kind of like exponential like these sort of logarithmic. Yeah, I think that’s what it is. Yeah. If you got 10

times less downloads and that’s 10 times less creators, well the impact of those

creators is also 10 times less like a download. So yeah, it’s like what

there’s a few things you mentioned there which are really cool. Um like the wedding example is amazing

because that wouldn’t work if it’s a game that isn’t easy to get into. Yeah.

And also actually fun. And then you mentioned the icon stuff. I don’t want to become that podcast host who just

repeats what you says, but like I have to mention a couple things you said here because I think they’re really cool. the fact that they’re drawing icons on the

book. Like I read a Reddit post cuz I was like, “Okay, what’s the law of Baby and Yellow? I might need to know.” And

there’s literally an essay. I was like scanning it. It’s like basically the Cthulhu universe and then like the babysitters have this weird kind of like

there’s rabbits and there’s hunters. Like I didn’t go too deep into it, but like there’s souls involved. Loads of

stuff. And I can imagine me going really deep into that and like oo I know

something that they don’t know. Like Five Nights at Freddy’s examples, right? I don’t know if you’ve got kind of also

I wanted to ask you actually I’m going to ask who came up with the law. Is it you and the co-founder who’s writing all

that stuff? So that’s actually quite an interesting one. So actually goes the whole way back to the game jam. So

the game jam was made by myself, my co-founder and one other guy who actually uh years later came to work and

now works with us and which is cool. But the three of us did the game jam together and

the theme of the game jam. So game jams quite often have a theme in it sort of just to sort of vaguely guide you or like put up restrictions and the theme

was out of control. We had a friend who just had a baby and was constantly moaning about like how he is his life is

chaos and he is like no he has no say on anything that happens anymore. So kind of as a way to like poke fun of him we

were like well let’s just do like a like a kid but like ramp it up. And originally it was more of it was less

horror and it was like a sort of JackJack thing from the Incredibles where it’s like a super baby but like an uncontrollable baby. what would a baby

with superpowers be like? H And we played around with it and it was nice, but it was like it just didn’t have

something that really captured you. And it was the other guy. So, it wasn’t Aaron or myself. Um, it was the other

guy who was working with us, a guy called Ross. And he’s very well read, really into a lot of like different

authors and stories, particularly a lot of dark stuff, weird stuff. Like he he’s he’s just a very interesting guy to talk

to. But he’d been he’d read a book called The King in Yellow, which is um I mean it’s reasonably well known amongst

people who like sort of weird culty Lovecrafty and stuff. So it’s not actually a Lovecraftian book, but it’s

sort of lumped together as like a Lovecraftianesque kind of thing. And it’s about this whole sort of like king

that lives in another dimension and sort of like it’s very sort of just Lovecraftian, you know, like he’s he’s influencing people in our world and

they’re going crazy and all this kind of stuff. And it was sort of he mentioned this stuff. I was like that’s an interesting thing to play on. What if

what if we changed this to be like rather than it being like a superhero and what would a superhero be like as a baby? Like what if it’s like like a

Lovecraftian monster like what would a Lovecraftian monster be like as a baby? I always use the kind of analogy of like

you know the biggest toughest UFC fighter in the world at one point was literally a helpless baby. So what if we

took the idea of like an unstoppable monster from another world? What would

they be like as a helpless baby? You know like so that was the kind of idea that we played with. So the the book is

like um in the creative common so it’s it’s over like 100 years old. So it’s like it’s free to use and it’s free to

reference. Um so we took that as a sort of like uh baseline but then built our

own lore on top of it. So there’s certain aspects of it that we use. A lot of it’s very open to interpretation I

would say and we took aspects of it that we liked but then we started developing our own mythos and our own sort of ideas

around that. But funnily actually you mentioned about the

watching like reading the Reddit post and seeing an essay. There’s a weird mixture of things and this is also a thing to do with like understanding your

player base which is like a lot of people who play the game just want to

have a scary game or they just want to mess around with a rag doll baby because it’s funny and they want to do amusing

stuff and that’s totally totally cool. But there’s a lot of people who play the game who are really into the the lore.

Like Five Nights at Freddy’s have the similar kind of thing where they want a deep dive. They want to understand. They come up with theories. They’re really

really interested in like specifically what is happening in this world, what is happening to the players. And because of

that, we have to balance a fine line where you have to cater to both. And they’re very different groups. So you

have to cater towards needs to be fun, needs to have nice silly moments, it needs to have scary moments, it needs to

be accessible, but it also needs to have depth. And that was definitely something that we we always sort of talk about

this idea of like primary and secondary information. Like primary information is the door is locked, you need a key. And

secondary information was like a wizard used to live here. Do you know? It’s it’s stuff that you don’t actually need to progress in the game, but for people

who do care, they’ll go and find out more. So we ended up having to have this sort of like double layer approach where

there’s the game, it’s nice, it’s fun, it’s simple, and then underneath that, there’s more if you need it. So if you

want to find out more, you can do so and you can dig a little bit deeper. So it was a tricky one like trying to like balance that thing of

some people don’t care, some people don’t care about story, some people just skip every cut scene and that’s that’s totally okay. I have done that in

certain games. There’s been games I’ve played that I’ve loved and I’ve got to a point where like don’t really care about the story anymore. I just want to get

back into the cool combat or I just want to go and explore the space. And it’s a totally valid way to play. It’s the exciting thing about games where it’s

like nonlinear storytelling. You don’t have control over the camera. You don’t have control over what the main

character does. So, how do you ensure that the story is still told even when people are doing

the wrong things as such? I I wouldn’t say wrong. Wrong’s not the right word. Um, different things, creative things um

than than what you originally intended, which is definitely interesting. I feel like I’ve just gone on a tangent there, but I hope it was interesting.

It is. I’m brought up the YouTube search results for Baby and Yellow and it’s ridiculous

because I was trying to check. I wonder if most of the videos are based on like

the story and the theory or like the horror and it’s a bit of both. Um I’m my

screen. There’s a nice mix here. Hopefully we get this on the podcast. But for everyone listening, I’m on

YouTube. I just search Baby and Yellow videos. Then you got streams 5 million

from a year ago, 1.8 million from 8 months ago. You got animations, you got

people who just play the game. But this is crazy cuz got Markiplier, Baby Yellow, full update, 45 to 5 minute

video. So I actually checked if the game Theorist made a video who I knew, but

they made that four years ago, but then there’s still all this content being created. So there’s content about him

being terrifying, but then there was videos about like all the endings of the

of the game. So like I know for a fact this game hasn’t had a bajillion hours

building lore like you know Runescape. There’s not like a thousand different quests, but you’ve given enough where

another person who’s a creator could go and run with it and then like you say

create all this content. There’s um there’s an amazing thing if you just stop scrolling there. There’s like a

really really good example of like what this game kind of is where it’s like um that video second from the top like Baby

Yellow scares my golden doodle puppy whatever the frig that is but it’s like horror terrifying blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah but then the video directly below that is just like this is some weird stuff man there’s so many things but the one below that is like

the BB in yellow wearing like a bunch of top hats and it’s all silly so there’s this weird thing where it’s like

we try not to take ourselves too seriously as well I think at the end of the day it needs to be fun it needs to be engaging and yes there are serious

aspects to it, but we’re not going to shy away from the fact that parts of the game are just silly and fun. And we

actually find an interesting part, and this was like I wish I wish I knew this intentionally because I would be so much

smarter than like what I actually am, but a lot of horror games have this weird thing where

you have to escape from a monster or whatever the hell it is. And sometimes when you have to look after someone like

someone there was like a there’s a friend or an ally or someone you’ve got to care for. And in our game we did this weird thing where we like merge them

like the thing you’re looking after is also the grenade that’s about to go off. And we wanted to like josition a lot of

like the serious aspects of it of being like well what if whenever he’s angry at you and pissed off at you and trying to kill you, he’s like horrible and we into

the horror but then when you’re looking after him it’s more like the the comedy side of things. And then there’s a nice

thing of like catching players like offguard where like is it silly or is it serious? And it’s a nice thing sort of

playing between those and dancing between those different lines. Um which I find really really interesting because

there’s there’s the dumbest stuff we talk about about like you know we’re looking through nine different fart noises to pick which one’s good. Then

the next meeting is us sitting down talking about like the lore of how the

different dimensions interact with each other and like all this like it’s such a bizarre game where it has those kind of

like differences. Um but as you can see that there’s a nice mix of like how people engage with the game. It’s not

just all horror. It’s not just all silly. It’s not just all whatever. Like there’s there is a nice

mix. But yeah, the the amount of content that’s been created from it, like there’s been music videos, there’s

been animations, the fan art is incredible. Like the fan art is some of the coolest stuff I’ve seen. There was a

girl apparently went to her high school graduation dressed as one of the characters, which I thought was insane,

but also like kind of cool. Like from my point of view, like I think you shouldn’t People have tattoos of it as

well, which I think is crazy because I’m starting to think out loud now. Like

Minecraft, right? Yeah. Movie came out, blown everything off. Went crazy. I went

to McDonald’s and actually went and bought some related to McDonald’s. So I got I got this stuff just to

decorate the mic. And then funny enough, on the weekend, you know what I went and did? I was like, “Ah, what’s happening

in Minecraft YouTube world?” And I shouldn’t have done that because I went down a rabbit hole. Started watching about SMP lif steel. And this ties back

to this game because the people who consume

Minecraft content, I’m guessing start off youngish. So we’re talking teens,

but like I’ve played Minecraft when I was teen. Every now and then I’ll come back and watch some content because the

people creating that content tend to be adults. Yeah. And now I’m looking at this in the lens of Baby and Yellow

because so much consumption is happening. Like there’s so much attention going to the game, then the

creator does put in the effort to make content about said game. So like market player literally can only upload so many

videos, but he chose Baby in Yellow for one of them. He only did that in my head because either the game is interesting,

but also there was already attention. Yes. So, like I’m wondering now like if for people listening like if your game

can be played by young folk, think Roblox age or like the game that we have

here that actually allows for so many different things because then you got not only more of them because they tend

to play games, but also they have more time. They can do all this theory crafting. they can do all this word of mouth stuff and then as they grow up

hopefully they grow up with you as the studio and then boom you’ve got a forever studio in terms of like an

audience like I’m getting quite hyped talking about it cuz I’m like wait a minute we’ve got hundreds of millions of

players you’ve got their details in some sort if they’re on the play store like I

was actually quite shocked um thinking in my head like when you said you are

making your next product I thought you would say oh yeah the next baby in yellow Not necessarily from what I’m hearing. I mean,

our attitude is always try some stuff out. We’re not going to go away and make something for a year or two. Like I said, we’re going to try out some stuff.

I have opinions. So, will it be in the same universe? I think so, but I

wouldn’t say definitely. The fact that it’s not 100% to me is like whoa. The other thing as well is like we’ve

been working on this game for quite a while and like we’re fortunate enough to have like a relatively successful

studio. So if after this game comes out and we just spend 3 months, 6 months and

we just make a bunch of stuff that’s not baby yell to give everyone a pallet cleanser to give everyone a break to let

a couple of people stretch their legs and do a bunch of stuff where they’ve kind of missed it. You mean internally now? Yeah, we’ll definitely release it.

Like what’s the downside? like it comes out and falls down or who cares? No, sorry. I meant like you mean not the

players but like Yeah, because the thing that a lot of people don’t understand because mind you, I’m putting Baby and

Yellow in this podcast title. We’re going to get some players listening to this, which isn’t that common. So, welcome everyone who’s more of a gamer

rather than the game dev. But like a lot of gamers don’t know that gamedev fatigue is a thing, right? Like um

playing or I guess creating the same game for x amount of time. Like I had this I used to place Unity developers on

jobs and one of the most important thing for them was the project. Like is it an interesting project or will I gouge my

eyes out? And that’s more important than money. So like after a certain point like you need to be enjoying what you’re

playing. I’m not saying that the team doesn’t necessarily enjoy it. But like you said palent cleanser I can imagine

that is a bit of a rest bite as well when you’re working on different titles. Oh 100%. And it’s like I don’t think there’s anyone in the studio right now

that’s like miserable by any means. Like would anyone say no if I said hey let’s

just make something else for a month? Probably not. Just cuz it’s nice. It’s nice to do different things. Novel.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And the thing as well with game development is parts of it are more fun than others. Like

concepting and sort of coming up with ideas can be really really really fun if they work. If they don’t work, it’s

awful. Working in the middle of the game is generally one of the best bits when everyone kind of knows what they’re

doing. There’s a good direction. And there’s a lot of like oversight, there’s a lot of like drive. And at that point,

it’s just kind of like go do what you do best. And that’s that’s a really fun part. But then the end nearly always

sucks quite a lot as well because it’s usually bug fixes. It’s cutting stuff that you know you’re not going to be

able to make for release because we need to release in two months or whatever it is. And we don’t have time to do X Y and

Z. So that gets cut. So there’s definitely like aspects of it where it comes up and comes down. And like I personally have felt it. I know most of

the people in my team have at some point, I’m not saying most, everyone in my team at some point has had highs and lows where aspects of game development

is like going better. Sometimes it’s not going as well, but we try as best we can

to sort of like allow people to express themselves and we want to try and hire people that like

are self motivated and want to do different stuff. And as much as

whenever we first started with me and Aaron, it was like we did everything ourselves. Like both of us did design. Aaron is a programmer and my background

was art, but it meant that we had to both do a bunch of other stuff where like I was also having to do like audio because we didn’t have an audio person

back then, you know, or there’d be random bits and pieces we just had to throw together. Whereas now we’re not

like hyper specialized. Everyone kind of is involved in design in some aspect. Although I generally sort of drive that,

but like if someone turned around to me and was like, I want to go and try and make this sound effect or I’m going to go and try and make this little thing. It’s like generally

assuming they’re not behind on their work or something important. It’s I don’t mind people playing around trying out stuff. Like I want people to be able

to like have a little bit of freedom in what they do so that they’re not entirely just in a box. It was one of

the big reasons that I struggled working in larger studios was I had this sort of game jam attitude where I like to be a

generalist and I I was shouted that by a couple of leads where they were like no no no you need to specialize and I was

like I absolutely refused to specialize. So I would do a little bit of animation, I would do a little bit of audio, I would do I mean it was mostly art, but I

would do a dabble in other things. But even within art, like are you a character artist, are you an environment artist, you know, are you a 2D artist,

there’s all these things and I just refuse to be any of them because for me,

if I just generally leaned into like levels and environments and stuff, but if that was all I did all day every day,

I suddenly didn’t feel like I was a game dev. I felt like I was an environment artist. I want to work with game devs.

like I want to work with people that care about making games. I think it’s okay to enjoy working at big companies

and to be super passionate about that aspect of your job, but that’s not what I got out of making games. Like I wanted

to be there because I wanted to make games, not make art, if that makes sense. Like I wanted to make my art as

good as possible, but the art was a tool to make a game. Um, and those are the people we want to hire and stuff. So,

like when it comes to like taking a break and doing a pallet cleanser, like I want people to screw it. Do you want

to do some VO writing for 6 months or something? Absolutely. Like, you know, I think everyone when the game comes out

will deserve a break and as long as it’s constructive and they can justify it to me. Like I want people to have the

freedom to sort of be able to mess around, try some stuff out, and have a change of pace because it’s tiring. Like

making games is hard work and there’s been a lot of like late nights. And although we’re not as bad with crunch as we used to be, particularly when we

first quit our jobs, because obviously like when we quit our jobs, it was that initial panic of like, well, might have

tanked my career. Let’s let’s see how this goes. But um I’ve completely lost

my train of thought, but it’s gone. I think I’ve been just talking rubbish for too long. No, it’s

not. It’s good. It It’s passion. And I I wanted to ask you on here cuz for the

last few minutes I’d like to dedicate it to kind of people in your footsteps or people who looking to join. So um you

mentioned when you’re looking for talent, you’re looking for people who are self motivated uh and you’ve already done

some hires relatively quickly I’d say. I mean, I don’t know how you’d feel about that, but like you’ve gone from around 3

4 to 12 and like when you’re looking to hire, what decisions are you making? Cuz

a lot of people are looking to apply for jobs in big companies, but I don’t think

many people have heard from like the indie studio CEO. What are they looking for? Cuz that’s might be not typical

advice that they’re hearing online. No, that’s what would an indie CEO like to hear from a candidate when

they’re looking to apply or join the company. Yeah. No, that’s that is that’s a really fair point and it’s something

that I didn’t really know the answer to and obviously I can’t speak on behalf of all indie studios, but I can talk about

like what we value. Um, so like working for a big company is is

quite different to working for an indie studio like from a variety of reasons. Like one of the ones being you’ll generally specialize in one area and you

don’t really sort of like you know if you’re an artist you don’t generally go and write any code generally but um

depends how big the company is. Whereas in indie you’re kind of expected like audio guys off sick you have a little

bit of experience in audio and we ship in two weeks can you do some music please like you know it’s a little bit more chaotic like that. So there’s a

certain aspect of I genuinely think it needs to be people who really really love what they do and

I mean that in a bit of a crap way where indie shoes are less stable like the

easiest thing to do and I say it’s the easiest getting a job right now is tricky and I’m not trying to like downplay how difficult the job market in

the industry is which is really really bad but in generally what I mean by easier is there’s a lot of churn people

come in come out go in do your job leave and that’s that’s downplaying the

massive amounts of work that people put into these projects and like there are people who work crazy amounts of overtime but there is a certain aspect

of like generally although the past few years are like completely on this uh generally they’re much more

stable they have more cohesion within inside themselves they’re generally less

likely to go under whereas like indie studios pop up and disappear constantly

like all the time and like in Dundy where we’re from there’s a big gaming scene. There’s a lot of small studios

and like the amount of studios that have popped up and just vanished is insane because it’s a brutal brutal place out

there. Whereas some of the bigger companies with their like strong IPs, they are generally able to weather the storm a little bit more, but you kind of

lose a little bit of autonomy in that. Um, it’s a tricky one. I think it sort of depends on the kind of person and

what they want out of it. Like do you want to be a small part in a huge

machine that everyone’s going to be really excited to see or do you want to be a really really big part of a small

machine? Well, if you’re looking to look at someone’s career, right? Let’s say someone’s looking to apply for jobs.

Let’s take the example of more entry level, right? Yeah. Participated in a few game jams. What do you what would

you tell them? Like if you talking to that average person right now, like what advice would you give them? I mean, I

generally I look for people who are applying to us to be like working on their own stuff. Like that’s

a big thing. And like I like Can you define that for people? Yeah. I’ll be a bit more specific. No, no, no, no. This

the reason I’m saying that is like I feel like from speaking to some game devs, the definition of working my own

stuff, there’s a massive gap into what your expectations are and then what they

think is enough. So like what do you mean by working on stuff? Like what would be enough in that department? So

the big difference between like what I would look at versus like a AAA studio would be they’re looking for like a

laser focus on a particular thing whereas I massively put value into like

full products. Now that’s not to say someone needs to have shipped the game but hiring a coder and in their

portfolio they’ve also done a bunch of 3D modeling because they wanted to make this level and they wanted to make this thing and they’re not very good at 3D

modeling but they did a bunch of stuff themselves. Weirdly enough that goes a long way for me. like an artist that’s willing to learn a bit of scripting. Um,

like an audio person that can like also do some level design. Like that’s cool to me. It’s like I personally look for

generalists. I look for people that cross boundaries between disciplines

because that’s really important for who we are because I never know what the needs are going to be. And we always joke that we have to wear many many

hats. So it’s like working on personal projects, showing passion and showing that you want to make games, not just

parts of games. you want to make games and I personally put a lot of weight on things like game jams. That’s not the

same with everyone. That’s just because my background is game jams. So, I always resonate and I generally know the type

of person that goes and does that because that’s essentially making games for fun. Like that’s basically what a game jam

is. Like you learn, but like it is essentially someone saying to you, I really enjoy doing this. I’m gonna give

up two or three weekends a year to stay up late at night and drink loads of coffee and make a video game. And like

that is the type of person that I want to hire. Um, so like that goes a long

way for me. And it’s not always the same. Like I know a lot of studios don’t care about things like game jams and stuff, but for me and who we are and how

we were built, that’s a really big important thing. And most of the devs in my studio have done game jams, if not

still engage with them on a regular basis. though are semi-regular basis at this stage I would say. Um

so yeah that’s probably the biggest thing that I would look for. It does depend on the rule but like in general

that’s a sort of like blanket advice that I would give I guess. Yeah that documentation of the

stuff they’ve done and you’re given some really tactical advice. I wanted to ask you let’s say I’m really good. I enjoy

going to game job game jams. How do I document what I’ve done there?

for it to be visible in like a 30 secondond. I don’t know how much time you spend on CVS, but most people I’ve

talked to it’s not much longer than a minute before you kind of make a decision. So like how do I articulate I

mean Jones I’ve done that is a very very good question. Um I mean the ones you

did hire how did they present their experience for example we actually got very fortunate a lot of the ones we

hired actually ended up being people we work with before. So we ended up like whenever we set up the studio there was a bunch of people that like we knew were

very good very very senior people and they sort of saw the opportunity and like can we come join? Um but yeah in

regards to that like seeing if someone says I do game jams and they

have it on their CV and there’s a link to somewhere that has all their game jams I’m going to play at least one of

their game jams because it’s not common that happens. I’m a huge fan of that

kind of stuff. And beyond the I need to look through a portfolio, the dev in me

goes, “Ah, I want to learn a lot more from doing this.” And also, I get to play through your CV. Yeah, it’s this

kind of a thing of like I just want to Okay. I mean, like I think it’s kind of like a brave thing to say like, “Here’s

a game that I’ve made. Go look at it.” But like, yeah, I I’m probably will. And it’s it’s not great advice for like my

end as regards of like it’s a huge waste of time. But like it’s a big passion of mine and if someone’s going to link me

some stuff they’ve made, I might only play it for 30 seconds, might play it for 10 minutes if it’s really good. I

don’t know. But like yeah, if someone actually links me stuff and they actually have games to play, I probably give them a go. Beyond that, I mean,

it’s just a case of like my background is always art, so I always lean on that. And generally the CBS are art related,

but it’s all to do with like the folio. Like it’s all to do with what you have and showing the best bits. If you’ve

worked on 10 game jams, cool. Don’t show me the eight crap ones. Show me the two cool ones that you’re really proud of.

You could do a little bit of a breakdown and like what you did in them specifically. And this could be something as simple as like um like I

would think of almost like a portfolio piece like couple of screenshots of the game, maybe a little bit of a breakdown in the back end or what you were doing

or what your specific thing is. Like I always lean towards art. So I would imagine like screenshot of the game,

screenshot of the character with some technicals like the wireframe and stuff like that and then maybe a link to the game like something like that enough

would be enough for me to be like hm that’s interesting. There are other things we look into like we need look

for fundamentals. We’re a very senior team so like we kind of assume

that people applying to this are like relatively competent. Now, that’s to say we have hired juniors and stuff in the past, but like we do have quite a high

standard of like being able to use Unreal, being able to use blueprints to be able to like script all the sorts of

things like aren’t expected necessarily, but they add a lot of weight because they show a certain level of competency

in regards to shipping a product that we massively massively value. So, being able to display like what you’ve worked

on and breaking it down to like the important things like here’s a really good example. There was there was a game

jam. didn’t actually apply it to the studio, but he did a little breakdown like a postmortem of the game jam and it was just a one pager had a couple of

images and there was one particular problem and it was to do with he wanted to make it look like um it was like an

indoor sort of hellish environment that was like a like a like a waterfall made of lava and he broke down how he built

that and like what materials he used and what techniques he used and it was

two images in the paragraph. Super interesting. Like that’s the kind of stuff that like I was instantly like that’s quite interesting. I wouldn’t

have done it that way, but like it was the kind of thing of I would love to see stuff like that. Just show me stuff that you if you find it interesting and

you’re super passionate about games, there’s a very good chance I’ll find it interesting because

that’s the kind of stuff that I’m into. That’s the kind of stuff the other people I work with are into. So, I think that’s the really big thing is there’s a

lot of the stuff comes out very very naturally when you’re very passionate about it. Um, it’s a lot easier for me

to say this on the other side. There’s obviously thing of like, you know, are things good enough and self-doubt, but

realistically just showing your stuff off um and not being afraid to take feedback on those as well. You know, I

don’t think anyone makes I don’t think anyone’s portfolio is a good portfolio the first time they make it. Mine definitely wasn’t. So, yeah. Naturally,

like for everyone at home, like I was a recruiter. I did loads of CV reviews,

gave advice on CVs. And then when I tried to get my first job, my CV was

dreadful. And then I actually got a CV reviewer myself and he said, “Yeah, just this all needs to be reshuffled.” I was

like, “Oh, yeah.” It’s like sometimes you just need that third eye um from someone else. the you made one point

which I really wanted to double click on the showing your thinking on the CV and if it’s something you find interesting

it will come through and I just pictured you thinking ah lava waterfall guy

rather than it’s name guy right like you you want something that’s going to be in there and memorable and like yeah um I

managed to get a scholarship for the university I went to study and I knew I would get it I was like really young

they said basically send us a video of why you deserve a scholarship I I was like, “Easy. I’m just going to

literally, for everyone at home, we’re in my camera shop.” I jumped out that window, and it’s a balcony. And I said,

“All right, guys. I’m just going to go outside for some better lighting.” And I jumped out my window onto the balcony.

And then that was my 5-second video hook. And I then said, “You can remember

me as the guy who did X.” And then I got the scholarship. And I know for a fact, I can just imagine it happening

internally. It’s like, “Ah, this guy jumped out the window. Might as well.” It’s like something that’s just going to grab attention. I wonderful screenshot

or what have you. It’s tricky because like you’re applying and there’s a lot of other people. And you’re right. Like

there’s a thing of catering your applications. Like if you Googled me or

googled Aaron, you would find it pretty quickly how much we love game jams. Yeah.

Cater it. Make sure at the top of your CV, it takes two seconds to edit a CV and put the top here’s the game jams

I’ve done. Because if I open a CV and that’s the top line, I’m instantly interested. That’s not to say I’m hooked. It’s not to say you’re going to

get the job, but I’m interested all of a sudden. Like, you can do a wee bit of research. And I do think as well

with smaller studios, there’s more individuals in it. Like a lot of bigger companies are a lot more

corporate in their hiring. Like they have very very strict policies and all this kind of stuff. With smaller studios, at least for us anyway, to me,

there’s a lot of like a vibe check. Like I want to hire someone that I’m going to be sitting beside. I’m not at, you know,

I’m not working in like a massive company where I might be hiring someone that might sit in the next building to me or maybe I’m just literally involved

in recruiting. Like, you know, I’m just trying to fill slots and it all has its purpose, but like that’s not what we

are. Like I’m hiring someone that I’m probably going to see every day because there 12 of us. So, like I want to make

sure that we’re going to get on that you’re going to fit. What are you checking for in the vibe? Because I have the same thing. Like you want to pass

the vibe check, right? But like what is your vibe check? I mean, a big thing is just like

there’s a sort of thing of like being like like a like a douche. Like there’s like sort of like thing of like there’s

certain people you don’t get on with. We don’t take ourselves super seriously all the time. I want someone that I can

enjoy spending time with, but I also want someone that I know I can trust. Like it’s that thing of some of my good

friends are doctors and when they’re off their shifts they are mental. They’re crazy guys and they

love drinking and stuff but see when anything happens and we had this in a night out where like a guy tripped and fell there’s like something switches

like they just become serious like it’s sort of like job mode kicks in and like those are the kind of people want like I

want someone that can chill out. I want someone I can enjoy time with, but I also want someone that I know if things

get push comes to shove. Yeah. Yeah. If things get hot, like I want I want to know that they care and then they have

my back and like, you know, that’s the kind of thing. But I also think as well like I can teach someone skills. So if

we hire an artist, it’s okay. We can make them a great artist. If we hire someone that I don’t get on with, I can’t change their personality. And I

don’t mean they’re a bad person. I just mean like they’re maybe just not right for our our studio. But I’m a big proponent of like like hire the person,

not the skill set. The skill set is adjustable. The person is who they are. And that’s that’s a lot harder to

change. I also wouldn’t be comfortable with trying to change who someone was. But I think we’ll end it there. One more

question. Greg, anything you want to get off your chest to anyone watching this

potentially looking to join the industry or looking to level up themselves? Like any lessons that we think we haven’t

covered today? I don’t know if I’ll necessarily touch on something new,

but I think at the end of the day, it all boils down to what are you currently

working on? And I think there’s a thing of like the whole thing of you miss every

shot, you don’t take. I get that. But some shots aren’t on target. And I think there’s a certain element of like make

sure you’re working hard, but make sure you’re working smart. If you’re working on something and it’s not working out

and you’re sharing it with people and it’s not it’s not engaging, why do postmortems on your work, review what

you’re doing, learn from mistakes. Don’t just assume doing the same stuff over and over again will will lead to

greatness or or improving skills. It’s taking a moment. And it’s important to

sort of self-reflect. Look at your work, whether it be a game or a piece of artwork or tools you’re working on. What

went well? What didn’t? What would you change for next time? because it’s a stupidly competitive

industry and you’re complaining you’re now competing against a lot of very very talented people. So you need to be

passionate and creative but you also need to be analytical and aware that you’re fallible and that you can

improve. I think I used to joke the day you get to the point where you make something or you work on something and

you look back at it and you say wow I’m never going to be able to do that again is like the start of the of the

downfall. every piece or everything you’re working on should be improving in some capacity. And I don’t mean

entirely. There’s going to be times you’re going to do something that’s going to go wrong, that’s fine. But if you start seeing like a downward trend,

why why why are you not improving like you used to do? Um, so yeah, it’s it’s it’s hard working but working in a smart

way is my biggest sort of piece of advice around that. And you’ve demonstrated that very well.

Test and ship quickly like don’t wait, right? Amazing. Greg, thanks so much.

Where can people find you, get in touch if they want to bite your ear off? Uh, I mean, I’m on Twitter. I’m Hey, I’m Greg.

Uh, we also have Team Terrible Games on, sorry, Team Table, Team Terrible Dev on Twitter. You can find The Baby in Yellow

on iOS, Android, and Steam. We have a Discord community and a whole bunch of

other stuff. But all those things I’ve just listed, they are all linked together. Our community managers made sure they all backlink. So, if you find

one of them, you should be able to find the rest of them. Um, if people are working on cool indie stuff and want to talk about things, I’m always interested

to like hear about projects and stuff. And yeah, I hope everyone’s interested

or found this interesting. And yeah, it was it was an absolute blast being able to sit and talk to you for a while. I

appreciate it, Greg. And I definitely found it interesting. Amazing. Thank you, everyone. And yeah, those links will be in the description. Everyone at

home, thanks so much. If you’ve come this far, consider subscribing on the app that you’re listening to this. All right, Greg. Thanks so much. Cheers.