Talk:2023-04-17 Margaret Krohn Interview - Tangents of Creation

This transcript is auto generated and has not yet been reviewed and formatted. Please help us format raw transcripts.

Surowy zapis

• 00:00

Welcome to Tangents of Creation.

• 00:01

I am your host, Jamie Kass, and with me as always is a lovely Annie Lace.

• 00:05

And today we have a very special guest.

• 00:08

Margaret Cronin is with us and we're going to hang out and just get to know you and

• 00:14

ask some questions and hopefully chat about cats for who knows how long.

• 00:19

I already saw one in the background.

• 00:21

I did.

• 00:23

So Margaret, thank you for coming on.

• 00:24

And the first question I did want to ask is what is your favorite wattage light bulb?

• 00:30

I don't even know how to answer that question.

• 00:36

Like between 60 to 100 watts, like where's a good range?

• 00:42

I don't know.

• 00:43

I just use whatever lights I get, man.

• 00:46

I'm happy that there's light that I'm happy that it exists.

• 00:49

Sometimes, you know, the funny part is that when electricity goes out and you don't

• 00:53

have lights anymore, you realize how important things are in your life.

• 00:58

This is like, where's the candle?

• 00:59

Where's the torch?

• 01:01

I'm pretty sure if we lost power right now, I don't think we would have any way to

• 01:05

light any, cause we just moved.

• 01:07

I got a promotion, so we like moved two hours away, like last week or the week

• 01:12

before, something like that.

• 01:14

So like things are still kind of packed and I have no idea where anything is.

• 01:19

I do know where a lighter and one candle is.

• 01:22

So I guess that would help.

• 01:23

I like the idea of Annie just walking around with like a little lighter.

• 01:29

I'd have my phone until like that actually like burns up.

• 01:33

But okay.

• 01:34

Yeah, then the battery's dead.

• 01:36

So now that I have that question out of the way, I guess we can dive into some of

• 01:40

the questions that I kind of brought up.

• 01:43

The things that I think were kind of interesting, cause I was looking at like

• 01:46

your, not early career, but like your, the education side of things.

• 01:56

I saw that you were previously were studying for healthcare administration

• 02:02

and had music theory in there.

• 02:03

So how did you go from that to ending up into game development?

• 02:09

Oh, I mean, raise of hands in audience.

• 02:12

How many people have degrees?

• 02:14

They're not in that field.

• 02:15

I mean, probably a million of us.

• 02:17

That's true.

• 02:18

But yeah, I think it's one of those things where, you know, when I got out of

• 02:22

high school, I graduated early from high school, but I was thinking, Hey, what can

• 02:25

I do that can help people?

• 02:28

And you know, I'm, what I really love doing is organizing and bringing people

• 02:32

together and managing budgets and finances.

• 02:36

And I think that healthcare administration just made sense to me.

• 02:39

I had been doing a lot of like, what would you call it?

• 02:43

Volunteer work with hospitals because someone who's close to me is really part

• 02:48

of, she was a nurse.

• 02:50

And so I got to be a part of a lot of volunteer work with that specifically

• 02:53

in the, by the diabetes field.

• 02:55

And I got to see a lot of structure that just wasn't great in the healthcare

• 03:00

field that I was like, wow, I would love to be part of helping fix that.

• 03:04

Um, and you know, just being part of that in any way that I could.

• 03:08

So, uh, that was kind of the reason why I went down the healthcare field was

• 03:12

because I wanted to help run and manage hospitals and make that process better.

• 03:16

Um, you know, alternate universe that might've been an interesting path to take.

• 03:20

Music theory was more just kind of a love.

• 03:22

Um, when I was going for that, I actually in high school and in college was part of

• 03:28

a band called Orbital Strike.

• 03:31

Um, they're a progressive funk metal band.

• 03:34

I'm a huge metalhead.

• 03:35

That's awesome.

• 03:36

No kidding.

• 03:37

So for us, that was just really me just wanting to be more of a nerd in

• 03:42

regards to the music stuff that I love.

• 03:43

And I still do really love, love, uh, love music.

• 03:46

I also have seen that there's been a lot of fairly interesting ways that music

• 03:50

has helped people through healthcare.

• 03:51

So I was thinking that might be an interesting way to combine

• 03:54

those two bachelor's degrees.

• 03:56

And in the end, I would have had to get like a master's in order to be in

• 04:00

healthcare administration anyway.

• 04:01

Um, but whilst I was going to college, um, I got really lucky in the sense that,

• 04:09

uh, timing kind of worked out where I ended up getting a job in the industry.

• 04:14

Um, I didn't, I did finish my degrees just because it was like, why not?

• 04:18

I'm so close.

• 04:19

It'd be stupid not to.

• 04:20

Um, even knowing that I would not be using them, which is strange, but at

• 04:24

least I feel like when I start something, I like finishing it.

• 04:27

I'm a finisher.

• 04:28

I don't like starting a project.

• 04:29

I'm leaving it there. I really just want to see it through.

• 04:32

And sometimes it's stupid.

• 04:33

I just should just let it go.

• 04:34

Um, but in this case, I spent way too much money to let it go.

• 04:38

Uh, but yeah, I, my early career was really interesting because I am a huge gamer.

• 04:45

I was playing a lot of games.

• 04:47

I was like a tournament champion in a game.

• 04:50

And I got invited to be part of a podcast.

• 04:52

So much what you guys are doing here, where we talked about a lot of

• 04:56

games and game systems.

• 04:57

And, um, the podcast started getting a lot of notoriety and we started getting

• 05:01

sponsors and then we got sent to some events and at one of these events, some

• 05:06

of the developers were talking to us and saying, you know, you have a really

• 05:11

interesting mindset, like you could be a game designer for my co-hosts.

• 05:16

Cause like, you're like, what about me?

• 05:20

I was like, I mean, of course everybody would, you know, wants to be a game

• 05:23

designer.

• 05:24

So when they're like, have you thought about that before? I was like, yeah, I mean, every kid

• 05:28

who loves games is like, I want to make my own game.

• 05:31

In fact, as a child, I have made little board games.

• 05:34

I don't know if anyone else did that, but me and my cousins definitely did.

• 05:37

And so, yeah, it was something that I was interested in and they said, Hey, we're

• 05:41

going to be hiring some QA positions and then opening up some apprenticeships for

• 05:45

those positions if you're interested.

• 05:47

And you know, I applied, I got the QA position and I got a job.

• 05:51

I applied, I got the QA position and I kind of moved my way up through the ranks from there.

• 05:58

That's really cool.

• 05:58

That is so awesome.

• 06:00

I'd say that was very long.

• 06:01

That was a tangent.

• 06:02

No, that was good.

• 06:03

That's good.

• 06:04

I too was in a band when I was in high school.

• 06:07

I was in, well, actually it was towards the end.

• 06:09

It was, we were a death metal band, it was Meeting House Massacre.

• 06:12

So now I have to ask, what is your favorite or not favorite metal band, but what are

• 06:17

some metal bands that you're listening to now?

• 06:18

Oh, well, my favorite band is Tool.

• 06:20

So, but Blind Guardian I really like, Mused.

• 06:29

I mean, I can go on.

• 06:30

There's a lot.

• 06:31

There's a lot of bands.

• 06:32

I like them.

• 06:33

They're awesome.

• 06:34

Good stuff.

• 06:34

Music is, music is, you know, a whole other love that I think that is important.

• 06:40

And for those of you who are gamers, they, you think about games with iconic music and

• 06:46

iconic sounds.

• 06:47

I think that for me, those things still hand in hand.

• 06:50

They definitely do.

• 06:50

For sure.

• 06:51

I definitely found this because you said that, like, you're kind of trying to find, like,

• 06:54

like obviously, because music therapy is a thing.

• 06:56

So like finding, I like that when people can find like these two different things that

• 07:00

they're kind of passionate about and try to blend that together and find something to

• 07:02

do with that.

• 07:03

That's really cool of just kind of seeing that and like thinking like, how can I like

• 07:08

put these multiple things together to create something else out of it?

• 07:11

And like you had mentioned that you kind of wanted to get in something that brought people

• 07:15

together or helps people.

• 07:16

And I think that's something that we really see a lot of with you being part of Intrepid,

• 07:23

like kind of being that face.

• 07:25

Because I think it was something that actually influenced the way that we want to run things

• 07:29

because when we watch the streams and everything, you guys tend to have a very positive outlook.

• 07:35

You're very upbeat.

• 07:36

It's nice because like how much cynicism and stuff can be on the internet that like just

• 07:41

seeing that and like, like the thing, like we, we light it up every time we watch a dev

• 07:45

stream and stuff like we cannot wait to like see you and Steven hanging out and talking.

• 07:50

And that was something that we kind of wanted to portray.

• 07:52

Like we wanted to have that, like create that community and things that brings people together

• 07:57

and, you know, I, I occasionally I can be mildly inflammatory.

• 08:01

I wouldn't say like a ton but I was like, past me, it would definitely like, it was

• 08:07

not, it was a lot more confrontational.

• 08:09

I was like, I'm not, I'm not bringing that when we do stuff.

• 08:11

Like I want to have that as part of our brand and kind of like seeing that and wanting to

• 08:16

emulate that.

• 08:17

So that was something that we, we, we recognize because like literally every time that we

• 08:23

see you guys come on, like you are like this, this shining beacon of just like awesomeness

• 08:30

and this is why I feel that way.

• 08:34

And I would definitely say Steven is the face.

• 08:36

I'm just here to supplement.

• 08:38

Oh, no way.

• 08:39

You're definitely a huge part of it.

• 08:42

I think that for me, you know, I am happy being behind the scenes at most places that

• 08:48

I've been previously.

• 08:49

That was, I was running a lot of the behind the scenes things.

• 08:53

I apparently people like when I talk, so I try to help and then some people don't.

• 08:57

I also get hate emails every single time I'm on stream where people just are like, shut

• 09:01

up.

• 09:02

I just want to hear Steven talk and that's okay too.

• 09:04

No, that's awful.

• 09:05

But that's the other side of it.

• 09:07

I think people see like the, they think about people who are on camera or in the spotlight

• 09:14

and they think like, oh, that's what they want.

• 09:15

They are, you know, like the narcissism behind it's like definitely not.

• 09:21

There's a lot of negativity that comes with being on camera.

• 09:23

And you know, you also have to be conscious of what you're saying all the time.

• 09:27

People clip it, it's out there.

• 09:29

Yep.

• 09:30

Especially if it's out of context too, I imagine.

• 09:32

And that happens all the time.

• 09:34

People take stuff out of context or even in context.

• 09:37

It doesn't matter.

• 09:38

They'll take in context stuff and make it out of context.

• 09:43

Exactly.

• 09:44

Yeah.

• 09:45

Like I would imagine too that with everything being in the open and like with open development,

• 09:50

that's gotta be add, have that added stress.

• 09:52

Like I can't even imagine the amount of additional stress that comes with having pretty much

• 09:56

everyone having their eyes on the development process in like nitpicking and kind of pulling

• 10:02

things apart.

• 10:03

Like, do you find that's a lot more stressful kind of working in that environment?

• 10:07

I mean, it's very interesting, right?

• 10:10

I've worked on a lot of projects where we don't share anything until the product is

• 10:15

completely done.

• 10:16

Right.

• 10:17

And then we go into our alphas and our betas and we're sharing that, you know, product

• 10:21

along with people.

• 10:22

But this has been, you know, a whole other thing where it's, you know, we don't, we're

• 10:27

creating a product and alongside that sharing that journey with everybody.

• 10:31

So yeah, there's cool things about it.

• 10:33

The cool thing is that we get to share that journey.

• 10:35

We get to get feedback along the way.

• 10:37

Sorry, my cat's yelling in the background.

• 10:39

That's okay.

• 10:40

I hear that.

• 10:41

He's just pouncing in the song with the people.

• 10:43

I think he's actually yelling at his fish.

• 10:45

He likes to take this big fish and like throw it in the air and then scream at it.

• 10:50

Like I don't know what the goal is there, but that's his prerogative.

• 10:54

Can you please like film that sometime?

• 10:57

Yeah, we need to drill that up in like 20.

• 11:00

The problem is as soon as the camera goes on, they're like, what?

• 11:02

Oh, 100%.

• 11:03

You know, it's like you have to like somehow like paparazzi sneak around and get camera

• 11:08

of them.

• 11:09

But yeah, I think that there are pros and cons to both sides, right?

• 11:14

One is you get to build your community, share the journey along the way, but games take

• 11:18

a long time to make and MMOs take a very long time to make.

• 11:21

And so the other side, the difficulty side of that is the retention of users and keeping

• 11:26

people's attention when they have the patience and attention span that's like this big is

• 11:34

hard.

• 11:35

So it's finding that balance, but there are pros and cons to both sides of sharing it

• 11:40

and not.

• 11:41

I imagine too, like I feel like there are some people that come in and see it and are

• 11:47

expecting like, because you guys have mentioned a few times before of like, you know, that

• 11:53

this is like a true alpha and it'll be true beta and stuff, so people aren't quite used

• 11:57

to that.

• 11:58

And I think it does take like someone who's kind of educated a bit with at least some

• 12:02

type of development, like the games or anything to kind of understand like how things actually

• 12:08

get created and the amount of time it takes for certain things.

• 12:11

So I do feel like there's a fan base that like really understands like we expect like

• 12:16

we're not going to see this for a while.

• 12:17

And then you have the other ones who are like, well, last time someone else was in the beta.

• 12:20

Right, they're like, I don't understand why an alpha is taking so long.

• 12:24

Like it's the crazy thing to us who is like, you normally don't see the stuff that you

• 12:29

guys are showing us.

• 12:31

And like, I'm almost spoiled to the point where, like, if I hear about a game and it's

• 12:36

going to be coming out within like the next three months, I don't even want to set eyes

• 12:39

on it because I'm like, I don't know anything about like, I almost feel you weren't a part

• 12:43

of it.

• 12:44

Yeah, right.

• 12:45

Like, there's some at least for at least for us, there's like something that there's almost

• 12:48

like a I wouldn't say like an ownership thing, but like you feel like you're connected to

• 12:53

way more because you have been at the start of this process and watching everything.

• 12:58

So you kind of bond with it, whereas like you hear about something else that's just

• 13:02

coming out.

• 13:03

And I feel like I'm like, I don't know what that is.

• 13:07

Like I don't I'll wait.

• 13:08

I'll wait for that to come out.

• 13:09

But with with this and actually being able to see like every iteration and all these

• 13:12

new things, it's definitely I think it's spoiled me a lot for like, where I guess it's a really

• 13:18

ruined me for other companies because I'm like, nah, not interested.

• 13:22

I saw something funny.

• 13:24

No, go ahead.

• 13:28

I saw something funny that was saying that we're currently in the microwave generation.

• 13:31

Yes.

• 13:32

Where everyone wants it now.

• 13:35

Well, I mean, we we live in such a like accessible culture, right?

• 13:40

Where I mean, some of us I'm much older.

• 13:43

So for me, I got I was like, when I wanted to see if someone was home, I had to go walk

• 13:48

to their house and knock on their door.

• 13:50

And I'm like, Hey, is Johnny home?

• 13:51

No, he's not.

• 13:52

Now I have to walk all the way back home again.

• 13:54

So here it's like I just I pull up my Star Trek device and I'm like, Hello, Johnny.

• 14:00

Like it's crazy how you know, accessible things are and accessible people are and just technology

• 14:07

is just insane in that regard.

• 14:10

And so people have this semblance of like, well, I can get that.

• 14:13

Why can't I get this?

• 14:14

Right? There's some type of entitlement that's now come with that because you're so used

• 14:20

to having everything like handed to you or at like your fingertips that you expect.

• 14:25

Like, well, this should be here now.

• 14:26

It was actually funny because I was talking to my daughter.

• 14:29

She was asking me something about the internet.

• 14:31

And I'm like, we it was barely a thing when I was your age.

• 14:34

Like I didn't have that.

• 14:35

She was blown away.

• 14:38

I literally was showing her like,

• 14:39

you don't realize there's like a whole generation that didn't live with the internet is just wild.

• 14:45

It did not.

• 14:46

It was not.

• 14:47

It has not been a thing for that long.

• 14:48

No, I know.

• 14:49

And it's insane.

• 14:50

And because I think I think we were my daughter and I were kind of talking about AI and how

• 14:55

fast it's exploding.

• 14:56

And then I was showing her some other things where I'm like, this is a technology that

• 15:00

dad had when I was your age.

• 15:01

Like I did not like games.

• 15:03

Oh, yeah.

• 15:04

It's like going back and she's like, these are terrible.

• 15:07

Oh, yeah, we went through like I was showing her all like the 90s like club songs.

• 15:11

Yeah, like I was showing her.

• 15:13

Yeah, I brought up like the the old doom.

• 15:16

Like I was telling her to like you booted up in MS-DOS and she's like, what's that?

• 15:19

I was like, I can't explain anything to see you right now.

• 15:23

I love watching those videos of like where they put they'll put like a Nintendo in front

• 15:28

of somebody be like, try to make it try to turn it on.

• 15:31

It's just like funny.

• 15:32

Put put a game on and just seeing like how they interact with it.

• 15:36

It cracks me up and I'm like, oh, gosh, I'm a home.

• 15:40

I think you just gave me an idea of how to see I think that just gave me an idea of what

• 15:45

to do with the kids.

• 15:46

We'll get a VCR and I'll just record everything to VCR.

• 15:49

So that way if they want to actually use the TV, like, oh, you're gonna need my help to

• 15:52

get that on.

• 15:53

That's a brain power.

• 15:54

Let's get it started.

• 15:55

Too good.

• 15:56

All right.

• 15:57

See, so we kind of talked about a lot of that stuff.

• 16:03

I so I'm gonna be real honest with you.

• 16:05

We don't do a run of show or like plan anything.

• 16:10

Thus the tangents because I like to kind of like freeform everything.

• 16:14

So I like to thrive in the chaos.

• 16:17

So I'm kind of looking over at some of the questions I'd sent because I think we kind

• 16:21

of answered like every single one for that first part.

• 16:25

So I can't I can't remember, but I thought you had said it once and I apologize if I

• 16:31

was wrong on it.

• 16:32

Did you say that during one of the streams that you grew up as an army brat?

• 16:36

I was I grew up as an Air Force brat.

• 16:38

Air Force.

• 16:39

Okay.

• 16:40

There you go.

• 16:42

So do you did that influence any of your like interests and hobbies?

• 16:47

Interests and hobbies?

• 16:48

I don't think so.

• 16:49

But I think it definitely changed the way that I interact with people and also drove

• 16:56

me to be a little bit more engaged with online stuff.

• 17:00

Back in the day before email was really a thing.

• 17:04

I did have a pen pal who I wrote to.

• 17:09

And I think for me what that was, it was really I just moved a lot.

• 17:14

I didn't really have friends who I could be friends with for long periods of time just

• 17:19

because we would be in a country and then be in another country and then be in another

• 17:23

state and then be in another state.

• 17:25

And so moving around a lot just meant that I didn't really have that like I see my other

• 17:31

friends who are like, oh, I've had this same friend since I was in kindergarten.

• 17:35

And I would dream of having friendships like that.

• 17:38

I see people who are just have these besties.

• 17:41

And I think that part of me envies that life that someone else lives.

• 17:47

So I think that it was more of the relationships that it affected and not necessarily my hobbies.

• 17:52

I actually think that games were easy for me to be part of because it wasn't something

• 17:58

where I needed other people, right?

• 17:59

I could just play with myself, like play with a game by myself or, you know, find, you know,

• 18:05

friends online.

• 18:06

And that's kind of where I made a lot of my friends was online.

• 18:08

And I created a lot of friendships through online friendships just because that was a

• 18:13

friendship that could last for long times.

• 18:16

And honestly, my longest lasting friendships are those that I created with guild mates

• 18:21

forever ago before I even started in the industry.

• 18:24

And that's actually good.

• 18:26

Empathize a lot with that because my parents, I think from the age I was six until I moved

• 18:31

out at 18 or 19, we moved 16 times that I remember.

• 18:37

So we were, I mean, fortunately it was all over the state of New Hampshire for the most

• 18:41

part.

• 18:42

So it wasn't like super far, but like I get that with feeling like you don't really put

• 18:47

down roots and like, you don't really keep friends for very long.

• 18:51

Yeah.

• 18:52

It's hard.

• 18:54

And I hope that I can give my kids a little bit more of like that stability and let them

• 18:59

have that opportunity to have friends for a long time.

• 19:02

That's what I would like to be able to do and provide for them someday.

• 19:05

So I really think it helps with adaptability though, at least in my case, like I feel like

• 19:10

I have a much easier time adapting to new situations than the average person.

• 19:14

Yeah.

• 19:15

You have to be flexible.

• 19:16

You have to adapt.

• 19:17

And what I like to call the chameleon effect, I just, I can kind of just vibe with anybody,

• 19:22

which is a skill set within itself, I suppose.

• 19:27

Silver linings, I suppose.

• 19:29

Yeah.

• 19:30

So I can relate to that kind of, not in the regard of like moving around everything, but

• 19:37

I have social anxiety.

• 19:39

So it's weird because like when I'm in, like when I'm there, when I'm doing something,

• 19:45

I'm fine.

• 19:46

I don't have to have like a physical experience to build up to it.

• 19:47

Like I get such bad anxiety where like, I'll just decide not to go.

• 19:50

But it was kind of a similar thing where I found it a lot easier to at least talk to

• 19:56

people over like, I almost viewed because I'm old enough to remember AOL instant messenger.

• 20:03

So like, that's almost like how older MMOs were, where like, it was almost like a place

• 20:08

where you could just go and virtually chat with people.

• 20:10

Like I remember like just hanging out in World of Warcraft in like Orgrimmar and literally

• 20:14

just sitting there just typing and talking to people back and forth, which was where

• 20:19

I was kind of getting with the Air Force brat question was if that had kind of introduced

• 20:26

you to those things or if you found yourself kind of gravitating towards MMOs, like would

• 20:32

you say that that kind of had, kind of was what led you there?

• 20:36

Were you kind of interested in that like prior or do you think that's kind of like a chicken

• 20:41

and the egg kind of thing?

• 20:42

I don't know.

• 20:43

I think I've just always been interested in games and playing games and MMOs are a game

• 20:48

where you get to interact with more people, which has been really cool.

• 20:51

I don't know if that was if there's some kind of like, you know, coalition there between

• 20:57

the two of them.

• 20:58

That would take some deeper dive, I guess, into my mental capacity.

• 21:04

But I think that our mental psyche, I should say, but I think that the beauty of MMOs and

• 21:10

the reason why I do tend to gravitate toward them is because of the community.

• 21:14

I think there's some really cool things that you can do with a group of people and being

• 21:18

able to, you know, down a boss or build a guild hall or whatever it might be.

• 21:25

Like those moments are just really memorable for me.

• 21:28

And I don't know, I love that element of coordinating with people versus a single player game.

• 21:34

All those single player games can also have really cool stories and exciting journeys

• 21:38

that you go on.

• 21:41

You know, there's there's beauties to both sides of the world.

• 21:43

But I think that MMOs are very intriguing to me just because of that factor that you

• 21:47

have players who you get to meet and experience.

• 21:53

It's just very interesting.

• 21:54

Yeah, I do find that MMO players tend to be like a not a specific type of, excuse me,

• 22:01

specific type of gamer, but it is like a certain person that seems gravitated towards those

• 22:05

because I feel like aside from being like more of a casual player that dips their toes

• 22:10

in that a lot of MMO players seem like they want to at least find a game where they can

• 22:14

make their home.

• 22:16

So that's where like all their guild mates are, where all their friends are.

• 22:19

And you spend a lot of time hanging out there and being with those people.

• 22:25

So I did that's kind of why I want to ask that question, because it seems like obviously

• 22:32

online games is already a niche, but then when you throw MMOs in there and it's like

• 22:34

a niche within a niche.

• 22:36

So that's interesting in your perspective.

• 22:39

But even MMOs have not been around for that long.

• 22:42

No, they really haven't.

• 22:43

Yeah.

• 22:44

So, but yes, my adulthood has been a lot of playing MMOs.

• 22:48

I've played a variety of them and the groups of people that I've played with, we usually

• 22:52

have stuck together and then we play the next game together and we rule the new world.

• 22:57

So it's kind of a very fun, exciting thing to do together with a group of friends.

• 23:03

And especially when you make long-term friends who you're really good at coordinating with,

• 23:08

especially when it comes to like raiding, I think raiding siege, things like that, anything

• 23:13

that takes like high levels of coordination.

• 23:15

I think those are the things that drive me and excite me because I like the challenge

• 23:20

element of that versus yeah, we just go in and we murder a bunch of stuff.

• 23:24

It's not as fun as like, Hey, we actually have to think about the strategy behind who's

• 23:29

healing who and who's standing where and how are we DPSing and who's going to take that

• 23:34

debuff so that they can run over to that thing and disperse it over there.

• 23:37

Right?

• 23:38

Like I love the challenge and coordination that is required with those things.

• 23:42

And when you find a tight knit group who are badasses when it comes to that, I think it

• 23:46

just makes it really exciting to puzzle piece and figure out things together as a team.

• 23:51

Yeah, Annie and I used to raid lead together.

• 23:55

I think we, the last MMO that we really dived into really hard was World of Warcraft.

• 24:01

And I believe we kind of dropped off about midway through Warlords of Draenor, but like

• 24:05

it's, I think raiding is also one of my favorite things to do is just taking all these people,

• 24:11

especially like I would like to find players that had a difficult time getting into raids.

• 24:16

And I'm like, nah, we're going to work on this.

• 24:17

Like you're going to come with me.

• 24:18

I'm going to teach you how to do your rotation.

• 24:20

We're going to do this.

• 24:21

Like I'm going to build you up because I need you to be able to do this.

• 24:25

So it's always fun like finding people and like kind of like taking them in like, okay,

• 24:28

let's, let's figure this out.

• 24:29

And like, at least the people that were willing to, cause you do have some people where you

• 24:32

kind of give a bit of criticism, they just blow up and I'm like, ah, okay, hold on a

• 24:36

little.

• 24:37

I'm not trying to be mean.

• 24:38

Yeah.

• 24:39

So it's like, all right, that's the other thing too.

• 24:40

We like to keep everything really relaxed.

• 24:41

We had like an initiation phase where if you joined our guild, you had a period of time,

• 24:47

I think it was like two weeks or something like that, where we basically were training

• 24:51

you and mentoring you and hopefully, you know, you would make it as a full member and then

• 24:57

move your way up the ranks if you were interested in doing that.

• 25:00

And I think that did help a lot weed out like the people who weren't interested or who weren't

• 25:03

willing to take feedback.

• 25:06

But those people who were obviously got much better at playing their class and then also

• 25:11

got to be part of really amazing raids.

• 25:15

I think something that, cause we, we came back and tried out Dragonflight.

• 25:20

We were raiding for a while in there and obviously we didn't keep up with our guild mates.

• 25:26

We have friends that we made, but we didn't keep up with playing other games and a lot

• 25:30

of people also had fallen off.

• 25:31

So like a lot of it now, we were finding there's a lot of like, there's like a very big pug

• 25:37

culture where like you kind of pull people in, you're trying to like get them to hang

• 25:42

out and like come with you every week and try to build that up.

• 25:45

But it almost feels there's like a new challenge for is trying to take random people all the

• 25:50

time and like teaching them how to, how to do these certain things.

• 25:54

But for some reason there's this current meta where people will down a boss and just leave.

• 25:58

So then you're like stuck reforming another group for like 15 minutes and then you'll

• 26:02

look down the next boss, everyone leaves.

• 26:04

And it was like, oh man, like you have to rebuild from the ground up every time.

• 26:08

That's frustrating.

• 26:09

Yeah.

• 26:10

Which is one of the reasons why I'm extremely excited based off of the pillars that Ashes

• 26:14

is being developed on where there's not going to be a lot of those convenience things that

• 26:17

I feel like kind of ruined a lot of the games where you can kind of just drop in at like

• 26:22

a moment's notice and then drop out.

• 26:24

Which I think kind of goes back to that whole week cause we brought up the microwave culture,

• 26:29

the people wanting something now where I kind of feel like that's kind of bled into a lot

• 26:33

of environments, which is unfortunate because those were like the things that I really enjoyed

• 26:40

was you'd all work together to at least get towards, hopefully spend at least like two

• 26:45

or three hours trying to get towards the end of the raid.

• 26:48

And now you're going down something and they're like, where'd you guys leave?

• 26:52

Like what happened?

• 26:53

Why are we doing this?

• 26:55

It's usually culture that the community builds to, right?

• 26:58

So it's not just the game systems and the game that builds that it's the culture of

• 27:02

the community of that game.

• 27:05

You know, I think that there is a lot that goes into that.

• 27:09

And so if you as players don't want that experience, you need to drive that and like encourage

• 27:13

others to not do that, which I know can be hard whenever like millions of people already

• 27:17

made that precedence.

• 27:18

But you know, as we move into new games like Ashes of Creation and so on and so forth,

• 27:25

it's you have kind of an almost a new start in creating that.

• 27:29

And it's one of the reasons why I constantly always tell people is I know it's easy to

• 27:34

just be a jerk or a troll to new people when they're coming into a community.

• 27:37

But honestly, like MMOs thrive off of people.

• 27:40

So if you're mean to somebody and their first experience is that they're gonna be like,

• 27:44

well, I really want to be part of this and they're gonna leave.

• 27:47

And that is not what we need, right?

• 27:50

We need more people.

• 27:51

So right.

• 27:52

Absolutely.

• 27:53

Right.

• 27:54

I worked on Planet Dye 2, which was a full PvP game.

• 27:55

But when it came to that kind of stuff, we all as a community were friendly and inviting

• 28:01

and driving people to, hey, go check out this outfit or whatever it might be in order to

• 28:05

get people into the system versus and then you save the shit talking and the trolling

• 28:10

for in game, you know, that's when you can do that.

• 28:13

But it's as people are driving people to the game that you don't want to like push them

• 28:18

away.

• 28:19

Very interesting.

• 28:20

It's a hard thing to kind of change, especially when that culture has already been set for

• 28:24

you.

• 28:25

I think that's one of the fun things too.

• 28:26

Set by example.

• 28:27

Well, I think it's really fun about being part of the this early time with Ashes development

• 28:35

is like building up those relationships and stuff prior to that.

• 28:38

And like getting to know people and us deciding to create a podcast and stream and kind of

• 28:43

starting to build up our own community and have those people.

• 28:45

So that way, hopefully when we got to play, we'll have those people to hang out with.

• 28:50

I had a train of thought and I just I just lost it.

• 28:53

It was something.

• 28:54

That's the whole reason we're doing this.

• 28:58

So we have friends to play.

• 29:01

I had like a good follow up.

• 29:02

And I am Oh, you mentioned how my plants I too is a full PvP game.

• 29:07

And I feel like that's something that's also been like PvP has almost become like a four

• 29:13

letter word where it's almost feels very dirty to some people.

• 29:17

I think that because of some of the culture surrounded by a lot of the the a lot of games.

• 29:25

Although it's odd because there are so many games that have PvP where it's not as like

• 29:32

freaked out about I guess as it is an MMOs in like we've talked about this on previous

• 29:37

podcasts and trying to really understand like, why is it that that tends to be MMO players

• 29:44

that really have have a hard time with with not all PvP not all MMO players, but a lot

• 29:51

of MMO players like they see PvP and this is an instant no for them.

• 29:56

And I think it's because a lot of PvP doesn't allow for fair gameplay, right?

• 30:01

There is a lot of element of the fact that it isn't fair and PvP often is not your one

• 30:07

person there's a group of eight people who come and they just like murder you while you're

• 30:11

just trying to complete a quest that sucks, right?

• 30:14

My favorite thing ever.

• 30:16

Yeah, I think it's the experience.

• 30:17

I think it's when there are situations that can be set that are just not great experiences

• 30:22

and there's no repercussions to those experiences.

• 30:25

I think that's where that comes from.

• 30:27

And most MMOs have that experience.

• 30:29

They have experience where I'm a I'm a player who's just trying to complete something and

• 30:35

I have to deal with these people who are harassing me and there's no repercussion for them harassing

• 30:39

me and really the only option for me to deal with that is to go find a place that PvP is

• 30:46

not allowed or to log off and those are not great experiences for people right?

• 30:52

So I feel like more people need to create systems that have I mean, maybe not repercussions

• 30:58

in the same way because I think PvP is great and fun and I love PvP.

• 31:02

It's one of my favorite things to do.

• 31:04

But it has to be kind of almost a mutual expectation of like, hey, we're both coming into this

• 31:08

with the expectation that PvP is on the table.

• 31:11

Yeah, I think that's kind of where we land when we talked about a previous podcast is

• 31:16

that it does kind of seem like as we were kind of going over some games and thinking

• 31:18

of like, well, what what were like the repercussions for ganking someone or doing something and

• 31:24

it tends to be there really is no player protection in those things where Ashe is going to have

• 31:29

you know, the corruption system and things like that.

• 31:32

And I feel like a lot of players probably got a lot of their their PvP experience and

• 31:38

not not a lot but World of Warcraft having what I think they had 14 million I think players

• 31:43

at one point or something like that.

• 31:45

So like I feel like a lot of people had had their taste of that system and there really

• 31:50

is nothing to stop other than going to complete PvE server.

• 31:55

And I know myself I didn't until probably the last year to really involve myself in

• 32:01

PvP.

• 32:02

I've always been kind of more of a PvE player.

• 32:05

And then most recently, I've been actually like making myself anytime there's PvP in

• 32:09

a game like okay, we're gonna do this.

• 32:11

And then I learned that I'm a sweaty neck beard and if I see a red name tag, I'm gonna

• 32:16

go after it.

• 32:17

So luckily for Ashe's red is gonna mean they're corrupted so I could bounty hunter do something

• 32:22

like that.

• 32:23

Unfortunately World of Warcraft I realized I just killed the level, you know, level five

• 32:26

and I'm like, oh crap.

• 32:27

I was like, I just saw red.

• 32:29

I just I thought it was supposed to hit it.

• 32:31

If we be questing together and I'm like having to like keep them back on track.

• 32:35

I'm like, no, they're like 10 levels below you.

• 32:38

Like we're going this way, leave them alone.

• 32:40

But I found there is a law of enjoyment in PvP and that's something that I'm really excited

• 32:44

for.

• 32:45

And but I do I do see it from the other side too of like that mentality of well, I just

• 32:51

want to go and do my own thing.

• 32:53

I want to and I think it's that kind of that solo player that's kind of started to come

• 32:57

into the genre like over the last because I remember when we first and I first started

• 33:03

playing MMOs like that the idea of you played this game by yourself like it was kind of

• 33:08

like not unheard of but it was it was the outlier was like, oh, why are you playing

• 33:13

by like come play with us?

• 33:14

Like why are you doing this?

• 33:15

And now it seems like a lot of people do want to have like this almost like a parallel play

• 33:20

like they want to have this solo experience but at least have the world feel real where

• 33:23

there's a lot of people running around in it.

• 33:25

So I think like the the concept it like is one of the one of the other reasons everything

• 33:31

gets me excited.

• 33:32

But then one of the other reasons I'm really excited about Ashes coming out is going back

• 33:35

to a lot of those older pillars and a lot of those things that made a lot of the older

• 33:39

MMOs like really special and really fun.

• 33:42

So like the idea of well you need people with you like you can't just if you're going to

• 33:47

go run off and do this there is a high risk to that and like that's an awesome thing too

• 33:51

is because we've brought up on the podcast before that for something to feel rewarding

• 33:56

like there needs to be a good amount of suck to it like parts of it have to suck for the

• 34:00

good part to feel good like because I do I lift weights and stuff and I mentioned I think

• 34:06

it was a previous stream that for a long time I was trying to deadlift like around 500 pounds

• 34:12

and like I was just stuck at like for something for like three years and I just kept pushing

• 34:17

and pushing and pushing until finally like I learned how to shift things and get things

• 34:22

moving to like where I needed them to go in like that made that moment when I actually

• 34:26

hit the number I was going for like once I hit it like literally tearing up and feeling

• 34:30

like awesome about this thing because the last three years sucked like every time I

• 34:35

went to the gym it fucking sucked.

• 34:37

So like to actually like have that it's interesting because like I feel like there's a lot of

• 34:42

people that don't like they want to sit down they don't want to have the parts that suck

• 34:48

where it's like but if you give it if you get a bit of like time and like experience

• 34:52

that and like you get that like really good reward and I think that's another thing too

• 34:56

is that you have a lot of games that kind of just throw stuff at you so like you walk

• 35:00

five steps and like I just leveled up for no reason because I found a spot but like

• 35:04

you just get all these like I don't think things have to suck or be lame in order for

• 35:15

it to drive that that association that you have with like excitement and reward.

• 35:21

I think that what it needs to do is drive you to want to and need to be grouping with

• 35:27

other people or engaging with other users.

• 35:31

That's more so I think what needs to happen to guide that.

• 35:35

I think there can be an element of that where you can be like hey make this really suck

• 35:39

so people have to do this thing.

• 35:41

That is an option but I think the other way to make it work and be something that you

• 35:46

know is more exciting is that yeah there are things that you can do solo and there are

• 35:50

things that are exciting here but there are also ways that you'll want to elevate that

• 35:56

solo gameplay in order to do better and greater things and get cooler rewards but those things

• 36:02

require you to engage and interact with other users in different ways and I think like that

• 36:08

to me is how you build those relationships is by making it so that you have to interact

• 36:13

with people through these different forms in order to you know gain higher reward from

• 36:19

systems or higher reward from items or higher reward from content.

• 36:24

It doesn't have to be that everything has to suck for you to be that to drive you to

• 36:28

that but that is a lot of games do it.

• 36:30

A lot of games are like we're just going to make this horrible in order for you to have

• 36:34

to go do this other thing and that is a strategy for sure.

• 36:38

So what I'm saying suck and I don't mean like it's like actually sucks so I might be using

• 36:43

too harsh of a word there but there has to be.

• 36:45

I do think that games do that dudes.

• 36:46

I do.

• 36:47

There definitely are some games I like and normally they come with some type of pay to

• 36:52

go in cash shop where you're like well this is terrible I guess I'll pay for this.

• 36:56

Oh yeah you mean when they make it really great.

• 37:00

You were talking about last episode about inventory space right.

• 37:04

Yeah absolutely.

• 37:05

How some games make you pay for that.

• 37:07

Right right.

• 37:08

Totally.

• 37:09

I think was it Path of Exiles where you have to get more to get although they are free

• 37:13

games so I guess that's not too bad.

• 37:15

But yeah so like I guess when I'm saying suck like there just needs for me I find difficulty

• 37:22

and challenge to be something that's very exciting that leads to having that like that

• 37:29

big rush of like this was great I accomplished that.

• 37:33

So when I'm saying suck I don't mean like the whole lifting thing I might have been

• 37:36

a little bad because the three years is pretty bad but like something at least taking a bit

• 37:41

of effort.

• 37:42

So like having a certain amount of effort put into something to get that reward where

• 37:48

there are.

• 37:49

A challenge.

• 37:50

You get it right.

• 37:51

Challenging.

• 37:52

Yeah.

• 37:53

And then some games like you literally can just I think Steven even said that the last

• 37:57

stream like you whack something and then it's a trash mob everyone's freaking out.

• 38:02

It's a loopinata.

• 38:03

Yeah everything's a loopinata.

• 38:04

Yes.

• 38:05

And I think we had talked about that on our previous episode.

• 38:11

We were talking about how oh my god I just lost it again.

• 38:14

Hold on.

• 38:15

Oh my god.

• 38:16

I hope that stops.

• 38:17

I lost it.

• 38:18

Damn it.

• 38:19

I had it and it's gone.

• 38:20

And he saved me.

• 38:24

Well I definitely think challenging is the word you're looking for.

• 38:28

Yes challenging would be a much better.

• 38:29

Like one thing that stands out to me was way back in our World of Warcraft days grinding

• 38:36

for the anixia mount.

• 38:39

I would do that every single week which of course grinding isn't very fun but it was

• 38:43

pretty cool when after like a year and a half of grinding that every single week like I

• 38:47

finally got it and I still like love that mount so much even though now everybody has

• 38:51

it because it's been quite a bit of time but.

• 38:54

So that was what I was thinking of because when we came back to Dragonflight and we were

• 38:59

doing all these different progressions they gave you so many different avenues for getting

• 39:03

gear that by the time that you finally go and raid it was like everything just halts.

• 39:10

It went from like it was really fun because you're like you know you're kind of tricking

• 39:14

yourself and I think this is great this is great this is great and then all of a sudden

• 39:16

it's like I haven't got a piece of gear in three weeks and like I'm gonna lose my like

• 39:22

I'm going to freak out because I keep doing the same content over and over and over and

• 39:27

now I'm not getting like any reward from that so I do think like that's that's also like

• 39:31

a poor design where you know you kind of give everything at the front and then it's drastically

• 39:36

slows down to where it's like we ended up I think we we haven't touched it for like

• 39:41

what like two three months now because I think we came in like when it first like launched

• 39:46

then we did the first raid and everything and then like we kind of got to a point where

• 39:50

I was like just got too grindy yeah just started feeling like it was not respecting our time

• 39:55

so then we moved on.

• 39:58

Yeah unfortunately that's that's been an experience too is like finding that there there are a

• 40:01

lot of games that don't really seem to respect your time or the way that they do kind of

• 40:06

try to seem like they're respecting your time is by offering some type of pay to win so

• 40:11

that way you'll spend more money so that way you feel like you're getting somewhere and

• 40:14

then once that runs out you're like oh I guess I don't go back and like I guess that's kind

• 40:17

of the cycle that they're trying to kind of hook you on is that you're like all right

• 40:20

well I need that power increase so I'll do this again and go back which is really interesting

• 40:27

to see like games turning into a service like that that's something that's kind of been

• 40:32

disheartening like kind of watching that happen like over the years like you know like Annie

• 40:38

and I used to play Modern Warfare 2 like crazy like that was like our game and then like

• 40:43

kind of seeing like how that's progressed now or it's like yeah if you want to unlock

• 40:46

any of this you just have to keep paying for it and it's like why like why does it have

• 40:51

to be like that like I'm completely cool.

• 40:54

It doesn't have to be.

• 40:56

Free to play has become very widely spread I mean it started you know in eastern culture

• 41:03

and and we kind of has moved right around so we've seen a lot of it happen but it's

• 41:10

a different type of monetization strategy right every game company needs to be able

• 41:15

to pay for the content that you're experiencing the the servers that you're playing on I get

• 41:22

I get the why part of it but I do agree with you that you lose some a little bit of that

• 41:27

heart depending on how you're implementing it which I get completely so it's kind of

• 41:33

finding that reward economic balance right which I think is very very intriguing and

• 41:39

that's a whole itemization job when it comes to MMOs understanding like those loot tables

• 41:45

and what what the cadence of those should be and and how what the percentage drop should

• 41:50

be whether that's you know the rare items that you don't want to be accessible to everybody

• 41:55

all the time and how those engage you know over time because as you get to new content

• 42:01

maybe you want those tables to be lower you know higher percentage drops because you want

• 42:06

people to get to the end content faster right so very interesting how people implement that

• 42:10

and did and design it and there's bad ways to do it and good ways to do it and I think

• 42:16

we've all experienced both sides of those things as we as we played games similar to

• 42:22

class balance I think both of those things are a lot take a lot of fine tuning and work

• 42:27

and they're not always going to be perfect especially when you have big big games with

• 42:31

lots of content and lots of classes I think it's it's interesting too because like when

• 42:37

because obviously we've been playing games for like for the last like 30 years and when

• 42:43

free to play kind of came out like you would those were almost the games you avoided because

• 42:47

you're like oh okay like I know what that's going to be like I'm not going to touch that

• 42:50

and it seems like yeah there there's been a big shift of like now most games are free

• 42:55

to play and have some type of monetization system built within that in which I feel like

• 43:00

there's quite a few that are aggressive now in the way that they do it and like I can

• 43:05

understand too like there's a few things where you know certain games where we play where

• 43:09

there there may be like a shop that's got cosmetics and stuff and like I have no problem

• 43:13

with that like I've never had a problem with cosmetics I always viewed them as transmogs

• 43:17

I know people get weird about transmogs too and I never really got that like if you want

• 43:21

your character to look cool like I don't care like just do it like I just I've never been

• 43:25

I've had always had like a hard time like trying to relate to the like I guess it's

• 43:29

the people that really like collecting things but at the same time I'm like well it's a

• 43:32

different type of thing.

• 43:33

Well people like when people see them that they can tell that they've achieved something

• 43:38

right I get the element of that that is you know in a game especially where like you said

• 43:44

you you have a challenge and you've beaten that challenge and now you want to showcase

• 43:49

that you have done that and I think that even when it's cosmetic shops you can still have

• 43:55

that because those items for that should be unique to that and not be something that you

• 44:00

can purchase through the cosmetics shop but there are some games that do give you that

• 44:05

item so I get the anger when it comes to those type of things where you're getting the item

• 44:10

that everyone worked really hard to achieve that's hard I get but when it's just cosmetic

• 44:15

I'm like you still can have the notoriety if you go work hard and do the thing right.

• 44:21

That's how I've seen it where like if something is just a purely cosmetic I'm like why do

• 44:24

I why do I care that they have a costume on like I don't that literally has nothing to

• 44:28

do with my gameplay so if I had a hard time relating with with that side of it where or

• 44:33

like there's a certain group people that also get upset by transmogs I'm like I just can't

• 44:37

understand those people at least went and got the gear and it's all old year like why

• 44:40

are you getting upset there's something put your energy into something else like it's

• 44:44

so so random but like yeah for games where you can just actually buy the item like there's

• 44:49

a we watch a YouTube channel called Viva la Dirt League and they do a lot of really funny

• 44:54

skits based on video games and in one of them it's kind of same situation where they're

• 45:00

in this MMO and they're this this person's a new player all of a sudden he's dropping

• 45:05

in with this really great gear he's talking to his friend she's like how do you get that

• 45:09

and so he gives this whole sob story of like you know god forbid I work 40 hours a week

• 45:13

I've got three kids I just want to look really cool and have something and she's like okay

• 45:17

I get it and then he pulls out this massive flaming sword he's like yeah I also got this

• 45:21

I guess you can one shot a dragon with it she's like all right I quit so like I feel

• 45:26

like you do have like those two different sides we're like yeah cosmetic is fine but

• 45:29

as soon as you add that like power thing to it like that's when it starts getting problematic

• 45:33

absolutely not for some people no that is true and here's the thing as consumers you

• 45:40

have the power to drive the culture if no one was buying those things people would not

• 45:46

sell them exactly so like that's another thing too is like I like the idea of people having

• 45:51

like competition within markets like the the idea that you know Ashes is going to be this

• 45:58

PVX game that's gonna have a subscription and it's going to have a cosmetic shop versus

• 46:06

like you might have another game that's free to play who can get all the power that you

• 46:11

want out of it and do whatever like I like the idea that people have that variety and

• 46:16

then they can go like this fits me like this is what I want to do and that's something

• 46:19

that I try to like when people have asked me to like or when I've heard people say like

• 46:25

oh there you know Ashes isn't gonna make it because of XYZ like people don't want it and

• 46:29

it's like but there are there's like a huge subset of people that currently don't feel

• 46:34

like we have a home because we want to have you know the PVX game we want to have some

• 46:40

of the older systems in there but we want to have it have like a modern facelift like

• 46:43

there's a and I feel like and I don't know what your demographic looks like but I do

• 46:47

feel because I think what did Steven called the golden cohort like I feel like it's us

• 46:52

the 30 year olds who are like I just want to have my game back that doesn't exist anymore

• 46:57

because I feel like the market isn't there like that's that's kind of like how at least

• 47:02

I'm looking at it because I do like kind of I'll go and try these other MMOs and like

• 47:06

I just don't it doesn't have what I'm looking for and I think that's one of the reasons

• 47:10

why we've been so passionate about following Ashes and things like that because like it

• 47:14

has it hits a lot of those ticks a lot of boxes of what we've been looking for out of

• 47:20

a game and why you know we spent our time making content and stuff for it because we

• 47:25

are looking for that home of like you know we miss certain type of things or we have

• 47:31

a preference for other things so like the idea that one of the things I think that's

• 47:34

actually really cool that seems to be coming out of this is that there's like this seems

• 47:38

like there's almost a renaissance of MMOs like there's everyone and their cousin is

• 47:42

making an MMO currently and I think that's awesome like I'm like that is so freaking

• 47:47

cool like I'm like up here like oh well XYZ is gonna kill whatever it's like no it's not

• 47:51

like it's not it's never worked that way no game has ever killed another game the only

• 47:56

way a game kills itself like kills off is by killing itself like that's that's how it's

• 47:59

always been or like it wasn't good enough to sustain its player base or it has like

• 48:04

a smaller concurrent player base that enjoys the game and that's awesome like I love the

• 48:09

idea of like I'm really into like different like niche things obviously like being a metal

• 48:13

head and stuff like I always make that comparison you know I love cannibal corpse but obviously

• 48:17

Britney Spears is way popular it doesn't mean that either one is the same like people like

• 48:22

different things so there's a lot that's coming out of this that's really really cool to see

• 48:27

and I love the idea of people having all this variation and all these different markets

• 48:32

and having different monetization styles and everything and because it almost felt like

• 48:37

for a while we're kind of pigeonholed into like you're either doing this or you're doing

• 48:42

this and it's nice to see like something kind of disrupt that absolutely I think I just

• 48:50

went on a tangent right yeah I'd try a time travel for a bit I'm sorry that's like breeze

• 48:58

they're used to the rants they know they happen from time to time yeah I mean there are a

• 49:07

group of people who are interested in the product that we're creating and that's who

• 49:10

are creating it for and I think a lot of the developers that are working on it this is

• 49:15

what we've dreamed of we want this game as much as I think the players and that's gonna

• 49:19

be really easy to see as we move forward and you know when you think about what Stephen

• 49:25

wants this is his dream right like he's creating his dream game what what gamer wouldn't want

• 49:30

to be able to do that and create their dream product so it's so cool that like I think

• 49:35

that was one of the things that to the kind that drove me to want to follow the project

• 49:40

and everything was like the you know that this was a person that you know played MMOs

• 49:46

knows MMOs loves MMOs hiring people that also love MMOs and like to see that and like even

• 49:53

when you guys have the other developers on and talking like you get that from everyone

• 49:59

which is just really nice like it's very nice to when you guys give your presentations and

• 50:04

talk that everything feels very genuine like that so many times it's just like a talking

• 50:10

corporate head where you can tell if it's scripted that someone handed something and

• 50:15

that person may or may not have ever touched the product or even know what the product's

• 50:18

about it's just amazing because like when when we're able to ask you guys questions

• 50:23

or things like that like he everyone's able to kind of like pull things up and just answer

• 50:28

it like where there's not like oh should we should we check with marketing to see if this

• 50:32

is okay to talk about I'm sure that obviously happens in the back or like panicking because

• 50:36

Steven decided to leak something again but it's it's really learned it as we talked about

• 50:44

earlier but yeah I think that that is a beautiful side of it is that we are able to create a

• 50:52

game that we're all passionate about I think the hardest part of that is when you know

• 50:56

you have people who are like a dead game or oh this isn't gonna make it and it's like

• 51:00

homies we're we're working so hard and you know when people say things like oh they don't

• 51:07

care and I think that's that's the hard part is when you are passionate and you do care

• 51:11

and you work really hard and you're showcasing it on a monthly basis the progression of your

• 51:15

product when it's in development that those can be hard words demotivating words for developers

• 51:22

especially when you have this long list of developers who are working really hard but

• 51:28

it's not going to deter us like Steven said and several times it's one of those things

• 51:32

where when you you get used to negativity to some point because you know that down the

• 51:38

line when the product is there these these folks who are upset and angry and saying these

• 51:43

things they're spending a lot of their time hating right it's almost like you know they're

• 51:50

still they're still wanting to be part of this and there's some semblance of passion

• 51:54

that's got to be underneath an underlying passion that's the reason why they keep coming

• 51:58

back to check out what's going on so that's almost like how you know you're wrong you

• 52:02

know we'll prove them wrong they'll come around and that's why we always say like hey if develop

• 52:06

if watching development is not for you go away leave us for a little bit come back later

• 52:12

when we have a product for you to like sit and play I was gonna say it's like I don't

• 52:16

I don't think I could handle following development as closely as I have with with ashes with

• 52:23

like another game where I'm like I don't I don't know if my brain could even handle like

• 52:27

because I tend to be a very impatient person in my personal life and like having to have

• 52:33

the patience and like at least like having cuz like you're having those like monthly

• 52:37

streams is really like what kind of like okay okay it's I know it's coming I know I like

• 52:41

all right sweet I can sit watch this or like the cosmetic swap over whatever like I'm gonna

• 52:45

read the lore in this and that's gonna have to satisfy me for a little bit like just having

• 52:49

to go over there yeah Stephen sometimes like oh we shared that in the lore and I'm like

• 52:53

yeah that was so we've definitely been given a lot of tidbits to lore and I know sometimes

• 52:59

people are like oh well this set isn't exciting or this set isn't my jam and it's like that's

• 53:03

okay because these are meant for the developers these are the designers that are creating

• 53:07

these two in order to implement these things into the game they need these these costumes

• 53:11

they need these buildings they need these caravans for whatever it is that they're implementing

• 53:16

into the game that's going to help make it a living breathing world and you're getting

• 53:20

like a version of it right so that I get why some people don't like it I get why some people

• 53:27

do like it I can understand the perspective of both sides of that you know I'm just doing

• 53:32

my job homies on my front and yeah I think it's exciting it's exciting sharing development

• 53:41

I don't think a lot of people get a little peek at the insides of how games work and

• 53:46

knowing the insides and outsides of like the process for things and we've been trying to

• 53:51

share a lot of that and sometimes that comes with weird technical words so I try to be

• 53:57

like hey can you word that for like drift breathe that for people who maybe don't understand

• 54:01

it so hopefully that gives people a little bit more understanding of how those things

• 54:06

work but there's just so much that goes into creating a game that it it would take ages

• 54:12

and ages to sit and walk walk people through that so I really enjoy processes and things

• 54:20

like that like a lot of places I've worked we've done lean or six sigma or the things

• 54:24

of that nature and then when you guys have dropped that you use an agile system like

• 54:28

I was like losing my mind where I'm like I'm sure there's like half the people watching

• 54:31

don't know what that is but I'm like I know what this is like I was like that's so cool

• 54:35

like like because I've been like kind of watching for a while like trying to like what kind

• 54:39

of like process system like are you guys using and I heard that I'm like the because I do

• 54:44

facility management so like the manager my head count like went off and I'm like this

• 54:49

is awesome I was like this is great I love like learning about the different technical

• 54:52

things and I know like sometimes you guys will show like the engineering things or talk

• 54:56

about the engineering things like I love when you guys get dive into that I know it's not

• 55:00

everybody's favorite thing because it's not as flashy as seeing like a new class or something

• 55:05

like that right because we can't show you that stuff for security purposes but really

• 55:11

there's a lot of engineering that goes into every single thing that gets in that's in

• 55:14

the game whether it's UI or a system or the mechanics of creating an ability or movement

• 55:21

I mean all of that stuff there's little glues and pieces together from every department

• 55:28

so even though we spotlight certain departments it's really a team effort to create those

• 55:32

things and then it took a while for me it's like make that connection like is because

• 55:38

obviously you guys had talked about on stream multiple times like saying like you know you

• 55:42

guys are like with the cosmic bags we're helping with building out the assets and things like

• 55:46

that and then it wasn't until like we started doing our podcast because anytime they release

• 55:52

we do a whole we'll read through all the lore and everything and I was like man I have months

• 55:57

of stuff that I did not read that I need to go back I keep saying we're gonna do it that

• 56:01

we're gonna like go back and like dive through everything I haven't yet done that but I'm

• 56:04

like there are so many resources are there that I want to dive into and I don't know

• 56:09

if they were sharing a lot of lore stuff prior to me starting because they started doing

• 56:15

the articles because prior to that there weren't really a lot of articles for those things

• 56:20

so you don't have to go too far back just maybe 2019 ish time frame it's been a wild

• 56:28

ride thing that's probably around the time that I really started paying attention because

• 56:31

Annie had found ashes like prior like it was still in Kickstarter when she had found it

• 56:37

and like I was one of those people where I don't want to hear about it I don't I'm like

• 56:41

it's cool like once it comes out like once it comes out sure I'll check it out in that

• 56:46

way and she's like hey check this out like no no I don't want to and I can't remember

• 56:54

what exactly happened but like like okay and then like start looking into it more I'm like

• 56:58

oh no honestly I think it was when they launched the apocalypse thing yeah I think that's around

• 57:03

right yeah I believe so that's where like but like that's when like things kind of clicked

• 57:09

for me and like I know how long MMOs take to develop like I understand like that like

• 57:14

some of the aspects of game development so I was like this game could take like upwards

• 57:19

to 10 years and like I'm seeing it right at the beginning I was like this is it's like

• 57:24

I made the joke before that like every time that we that we were expecting a child like

• 57:30

we we almost found out like the the earliest possible so it's like we went it wasn't like

• 57:36

three months in that we found out it was like the day and it's like okay well we have nine

• 57:41

months like I have nine months it's not like I can skip any any of this we're in it for

• 57:45

the long haul so that was a so Annie was definitely a much earlier adopter than me but yeah that's

• 57:51

definitely right around the time that I kind of fell into it absolutely Margaret I wanted

• 57:57

to ask you because it is a it is a journey we appreciate everybody following us following

• 58:03

along with us and obviously we're working hard we can only share so much but we we definitely

• 58:11

share what we can every month and sometimes little tidbits in between so keep an eye out

• 58:16

for those and then you said you were like Easter eggs and you said you had a question

• 58:21

I was gonna ask what is your favorite gaming memory favorite gaming memory probably have

• 58:27

quite a few but I think some of them there's a couple so there are a few rating experiences

• 58:36

that were really exciting for me primarily because it's a challenge right you have to

• 58:40

get everybody together you're you fight through all of these boss fights and now you're at

• 58:44

the final one and it's just this struggle and balance of trying to keep everybody alive

• 58:50

I'm usually either a tank or healer so I always have a very exciting journey whenever we're

• 58:56

playing those and then I think the other side of it too would probably be on the FPS side

• 59:01

FPS MMO side which you know original planet side I had some really amazing like raids

• 59:07

in regards to like army raids because we had an air division a ground division and infantry

• 59:12

and we would just take over places and it was really really fun I would love to see

• 59:18

some of that style of PvP show up in an MMO world would be really neat but yeah I don't

• 59:25

know I think there's too many I would be sitting here forever yes lines that I've been on that

• 59:30

I really love that were challenging but I think it's always kind of goes back to what

• 59:35

Jamie was talking about it's always something where it was a super challenging thing that

• 59:39

we were doing in order to accomplish those things but if I could pick something that

• 59:44

would be like my favorite experience I would say if I could have like Warhammer PvP and

• 59:51

dayaq PvP married together that would be like my dream oh absolutely pretty soon that experience

• 59:59

like some of those maps were really amazing and like the way that the classes work together

• 1:00:03

in PvP were just really really cool love me some Warhammer oh now that we so now we're

• 1:00:12

kind of even touching like getting towards tabletop stuff now so I know that you wear

• 1:00:19

multiple hats and one of them let me see if I have this on my notes somewhere oh my gosh

• 1:00:25

I know that's here so you you are the chief marketing officer is that what the CMO stands

• 1:00:31

for for roll for it yeah do you want to talk about that a little bit sure you know we like

• 1:00:38

playing tabletop RPGs and we play tabletop RPGs and we get paid to do it it's pretty

• 1:00:43

cool I think for us it's really about telling stories and using the games as kind of a system

• 1:00:51

to tell the story and really we focus on it's almost like improv acting which is really

• 1:00:57

really fun and so if you love characters you like getting into worlds and experiencing

• 1:01:03

those I think you will really enjoy it there's a lot of our peers out there in the MMO world

• 1:01:09

I think you'll understand the love of that and I think that you know those things can

• 1:01:13

tie in together sometimes yeah that's what I love doing it's fun you get to play a lot

• 1:01:18

of different systems tell a lot of cool stories unfortunately get to get paid to do another

• 1:01:25

hobby it's always a plus yeah right there was always my thing is that be due to having

• 1:01:33

like social anxiety was always hard for me to want to go to like a game shop to actually

• 1:01:37

like play Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder so like it's always kind of like an ongoing

• 1:01:41

joke for us that the reason we had kids is like now I can like have them like play the

• 1:01:45

game which they're finally getting to the ages we're like because I got a VTD foundry

• 1:01:51

or something like that so like we can I can put it up on the TV and like everyone's got

• 1:01:54

their own character and stuff like I'm pretty much a forever DM so it was it's been really

• 1:01:59

fun like exposing them and like is we have we have two daughters and then our youngest

• 1:02:04

their son but it's been like our whole family is a bunch of fantasy nerds it's been really

• 1:02:09

cool like exposing them to that and man I'm just losing I dream of the day that I get

• 1:02:17

to have my kids come play games with me I think that that will be really fun or maybe

• 1:02:22

they won't like them I don't know they'll be like it works on games I don't want to

• 1:02:25

be part of that who knows right I don't know I hope that they would like it and enjoy it

• 1:02:32

but I would recommend for you the My Little Pony tabletop game RPG game is so good here's

• 1:02:39

the reason why the system is just amazing the person who made Warhammer like the the

• 1:02:45

tabletop RPG yeah he actually made the My Little Pony game for his children

• 1:02:51

oh that's awesome that's why the systems are so freaking good in this game like as adults

• 1:02:58

we enjoyed playing it so I think that's really cool I would highly recommend it I played

• 1:03:02

it a bunch with I volunteer like for a hospital to play with like some kids and it's very

• 1:03:08

fun we always have a good time yeah we honestly our middle child would probably love that

• 1:03:13

oh she thinks her mind that's because I pretty much draw their own little pony too and what

• 1:03:18

it looks like and they're keeping markets fun I love that because I pretty much have

• 1:03:23

been like kind of streamlining Pathfinder 2 for them and like kind of like okay yeah

• 1:03:27

sure that's how that works like go ahead but but yeah that would actually be really cool

• 1:03:31

so we have to check that out yeah oh I was gonna ask way earlier with like the first

• 1:03:37

question or I guess second question we asked because you said you had your you know all

• 1:03:43

your involvement in healthcare and everything is that kind of what sparked doing the extra

• 1:03:47

life fundraisers every no I mean I've been doing extra life stuff prior to working at

• 1:03:53

Intrepid and they were doing it before I joined Intrepid as well and I've also done a lot

• 1:03:59

of stuff with St. Jude and a lot of other hospitals I think charity work is just good

• 1:04:04

things to do it's a good thing to spread and I love the fact that they were already doing

• 1:04:08

it before I even came to the company I just helped organize it a little bit so we could

• 1:04:12

hit higher goals yeah and I think that it's just fun like I think that you know being

• 1:04:20

able to bring your community together for a good cause if you if you if you have the

• 1:04:24

ability to why not I think a lot of people use their influence to do lots of bad things

• 1:04:30

why can't we use our influence to do good things right so I like that a lot because

• 1:04:35

this was I guess last year was our first year doing extra life because we ran alongside

• 1:04:41

you guys and it was just a blast and like it and we had like I had personally known

• 1:04:47

someone who who was at the children hospital with with their child and stuff and just knowing

• 1:04:53

like you know the the money that we were raising was also going to help like to go towards

• 1:04:56

that and you just get like this really good feeling of like man I'm just I'm just sitting

• 1:05:00

here entertaining and we're getting these these you know the doing the fundraising and

• 1:05:04

everything and like then getting the emails back from like the hospital and stuff or like

• 1:05:08

just the thank you notes and stuff I'm like god like I can't wait to do this next year

• 1:05:12

like it was just I've always done like a lot of volunteer work with like in like elementary

• 1:05:19

and things like that I think especially I kind of started doing that like when it was

• 1:05:24

high school because we had to do a certain amount of volunteer hours so I would go to

• 1:05:28

let down to like the the first first grade and kind of help and out there I've always

• 1:05:32

really enjoyed that doing that kind of work so it was nice like finding some a way where

• 1:05:37

because life can kind of get busy where I can still virtually be able to be somewhere

• 1:05:43

and do these things and help and make some type of impact like there's a lot of fun and

• 1:05:47

it's really cool seeing like you guys do that like that that was like there's all there's

• 1:05:51

all these like things that aren't televised right we do a lot of other stuff that's like

• 1:05:55

behind the scenes so it's not necessarily you know I do think that sometimes people

• 1:06:01

use those things for PR publicity which there is an element of that for sure for some of

• 1:06:07

these folks but I think like a lot of it we do off camera too but the whole beauty of

• 1:06:13

extra life the whole point of it is to share that with your community to build it and you

• 1:06:17

know we definitely do some weird challenges yeah we drank raw egg yeah there are some

• 1:06:27

weird ones out there we'll see what challenges are in store for us this year though do not

• 1:06:32

recommend the raw egg it was terrible oh you're fine well some people drink raw eggs all the

• 1:06:37

time I see I can hear no problem yeah like sometimes it's fine I'm like okay I'm sure

• 1:06:44

it's not that bad it nope nope it was bad it was just like you like spit it back in

• 1:06:51

the cup I don't know why no I didn't I didn't I did not spit it back in the cup I almost

• 1:06:56

did but I don't know it went down but I did not want it I watched someone eat a live spider

• 1:07:00

so that's like a whole other experience not for not for our extra life bird just because

• 1:07:06

a friend I was like that is and she was like into it I said oh my god yeah it was like

• 1:07:15

I uh it was wild I had uh I had some Cambodian friends and they would talk about how they

• 1:07:20

would eat um spider and stuff and I was like they're like oh it's really good I'm like

• 1:07:24

I'm gonna have to trust you on that because I would never help you know like I'm not

• 1:07:29

eight legs I just stay away oh that's like they have those like deep fried grasshoppers

• 1:07:35

I've never had them but I've had people who do and they're gross what were they there's

• 1:07:41

some like weird things I've had there was like a sour cream and onion crickets or grass

• 1:07:45

maybe it was grasshoppers or I was like this is a weird like crickets or grasshoppers it's

• 1:07:49

like no I feel like people are putting them in all kinds of things now and it's like now

• 1:07:54

this fancy thing they're like fancy we're making you pay extra money to eat and I'm

• 1:07:58

like no I'm not I'm not gonna pay you extra money you're gonna pay me money to make me

• 1:08:04

that they already did with fish eggs so like why not do with other things it's like the

• 1:08:11

shakes are different like they add like a like a salty element to a meal see I can't

• 1:08:16

see I'm originally from New England and like all of my family loves like fish and and stuff

• 1:08:20

like that I'm like I cannot I if it doesn't if it's not and have like on land and eat

• 1:08:26

grass I don't I don't want it looks like I don't know what it is like fish like at all

• 1:08:32

no he's good good everyone says that was the same way he was not a fish guy but now he's

• 1:08:39

still I like I like that's a fish meal a week see I think that would be good because you

• 1:08:46

get a lot of like to get a set the mess it up now so mega six right and because I'm like

• 1:08:52

a three yeah yeah see a lot of good I know there's like an imbalance causes inflammation

• 1:09:02

yeah like for like a long like for like almost a year I lied to myself that shrimp was good

• 1:09:07

and I was like I was like I because we were so much protein I'm also I'm also lifting

• 1:09:13

I have been doing it since November so I understand your need for protein and shrimp actually

• 1:09:18

has like good protein but I'm not a big shrimp fan either I try because it was like the one

• 1:09:22

thing where I'm like I like shrimp a lot it's like the texture it's just thinking about

• 1:09:26

it is like maybe my skin crawl I'm selective on it can't be super fishy or else I won't

• 1:09:30

like it well that just means it's probably not good I don't mind the little ones but

• 1:09:39

like the bigger the shrimp is the more like fishy it tastes at least to me I like the

• 1:09:44

little mini shrimps well and that's not what I go for mushrooms are something Jamie does

• 1:09:51

not like that I've made him start like mushrooms are so good they just taste like whatever

• 1:09:55

you put them in see it's not that it's the texture of them the tech texture is just like

• 1:09:59

eyes like it's like soft styrofoam or something like I just I'd eat them now I eat them now

• 1:10:05

because she puts it in everything but I was like I can't I understand that I hate peas

• 1:10:09

because peas have like this outer structure and then when you bite into it like gross

• 1:10:14

stuff comes out of it I'm just not a I love peas so I was gonna say I don't want peas

• 1:10:18

peas would be okay I don't like pea soup when it's like all mushed and it's all one

• 1:10:22

texture pea soup is for you but when it's all the mushed just peas buy them like when

• 1:10:26

it's like hmm here's some peas I'm like oh no I don't want to eat that everyone's yelling

• 1:10:31

in me in chat that it was omega-3 I knew it was omega-3 like I've been so like nutrition

• 1:10:36

and fitness like it was like pretty much my life for like a long period of time before

• 1:10:40

we end up moving and I didn't have access to my home gym for a while but that was that

• 1:10:44

was one thing I saw that you would start doing your fitness journey I was like I was like

• 1:10:48

I'm so excited because I was like I love following crazy yeah it's been good I feel better and

• 1:10:56

it's not only been a physical fitness journey for me with nutrition and PT but also mental

• 1:11:03

journey for me I basically was going through a weird phase in my life where you know I

• 1:11:09

was just waking up doing the thing going like going on repeat like a robot you know sometimes

• 1:11:14

when you look at you feel like you're a third person watching someone else's life going

• 1:11:18

through it and I realized you know I took a moment because I got really stressed out

• 1:11:23

and I started getting like eggs in my eyes and I couldn't like really open my eyes very

• 1:11:26

well and I was like what's happening and I went into the doctor and they're just like

• 1:11:29

this is stress you're just stressed you need to chill out and I really reassessed my life

• 1:11:36

and kind of put made a list and I was like what are my priorities in life and really

• 1:11:40

I had work as like the top priority in my life and all the additional projects I had

• 1:11:45

and then then it was relationships and I had me as like number nine on that list and I

• 1:11:49

realized very quickly like why how can I give to my give myself to all these other you know

• 1:11:54

places without first understanding myself and I think that you when you're someone who

• 1:12:00

doesn't want to think about yourself it's hard to to move yourself back up to the top

• 1:12:05

of that list and I definitely did that and life has changed drastically since then in

• 1:12:10

a very positive way it definitely does I I have a similar situation where like I'm for

• 1:12:17

a long time to like I kind of never really like put myself first and like I was I remember

• 1:12:22

I was highly depressed for like a very long time like lifting was kind of like it was

• 1:12:27

kind of my introduction of like sorting things out like originally it was kind of like a

• 1:12:32

form of like anger management like I've been lifting for like over 10 years now and like

• 1:12:36

he I remember there was a point where like I was in the gym one day and it's just I wasn't

• 1:12:41

pissed and I'm like what what do I do I was like I don't I don't know where to find that

• 1:12:46

like drive now but like I was at a similar like kind of revelation like when I was like

• 1:12:53

I think I hit 30 and I kind of woke up and I'm like kind of looking in the mirror I'm

• 1:12:57

like what are you doing like whose life is this because like I I kind of stopped chasing

• 1:13:02

after risks or like I kind of stopped going after opportunities in like I was like man

• 1:13:08

like I don't like the last 10 years of my life has kind of been a blur because I was

• 1:13:12

like the same thing like it kind of just I'd wake up I go to work and I do this and like

• 1:13:17

I was realizing that it's hard to when you love what you do for work like for me I would

• 1:13:22

just like and like put everything into it and so it became like what I was was my work

• 1:13:30

to the extent where it's like who am I and kind of just you know disconnecting yourself

• 1:13:36

from that and finding that work-life balance for me has been very important and in a good

• 1:13:41

way and sleep yes I mean for someone else someone would think in chat sleep but I think

• 1:13:46

that sleep is so important interesting fact a lot of people don't realize the the time

• 1:13:52

that you build muscle the most is when you're sleeping in your REM sleep so it is so important

• 1:13:56

to get good sleep especially if you're trying to like get that six-pack for your summer

• 1:14:00

bod whatever it is you know when you're working out you're tearing down your muscle and when

• 1:14:05

you're sleeping that's when you're repairing it and that really only happens during REM

• 1:14:08

sleep so that means you need to be getting like some good deep sleep yeah yeah yeah it's

• 1:14:12

hard yeah it's I have the same thing because I think part of trying to get eight hours

• 1:14:16

of sleep and it's very hard like get eight hours of sleep I was like how is this so why

• 1:14:22

is this so hard it's very difficult because I only sleep anywhere from like five to six

• 1:14:27

hours a night and like it's just that's that's when I but I have a sleep tracker so I do

• 1:14:33

look I do hit quite a bit of REM sleep yeah so like I do track it I got my smart watch

• 1:14:38

and that's what I realized I was sleeping without this thing I got this thing when I

• 1:14:42

started my health journey and I was like how did I live without this before it's awesome

• 1:14:46

like just having the statistics to look at like how did I sleep?

• 1:14:50

I think I love that yeah I was tracking my sleep and I I get a lot of sleep like I get

• 1:14:59

what's considered like the normal like healthy about but my quality of sleep was garbage

• 1:15:03

like I only get like under 10 minutes of deep sleep a night then like everything else would

• 1:15:08

just be light sleep and like a smidge of REM sleep and I was like well no wonder I'm so

• 1:15:12

tired all the time so then we started like exploring vitamins yeah yeah like melatonin

• 1:15:17

women are weird too because we have a whole bunch of other hormones that men don't have

• 1:15:23

that we have to deal with and actually women need eight to ten hours of sleep versus like

• 1:15:28

men can go on six to eight hours of sleep it's wild there are differences and it is

• 1:15:34

crazy especially when we're on our lady time and we're losing all our blood it is really

• 1:15:39

interesting because that was something I dived into a little a little bit was just looking

• 1:15:43

at like the differences because I've been training Annie in the gym and stuff and like

• 1:15:49

having to like plan around like when do I deload you when do we do this like based off

• 1:15:54

of like that cycle and like there is like there's certain like phases where you might

• 1:15:58

see like an increase in strength or a decrease or an increase in pain tolerance or a decrease

• 1:16:03

in pain tolerance and stuff based off of that so like even like having because most the

• 1:16:08

most of people have actually trained in the gym were women so it's always been really

• 1:16:10

interesting and like trying to adapt like what I do to to that and like how the biology

• 1:16:15

is different and like when you really dive into it and like seeing like oh my god you

• 1:16:19

guys have so much more to micromanage than I do like what's going on I can mess up for

• 1:16:23

a whole week and I might be okay during different times of the month so like if you're if the

• 1:16:28

week before building up and the week after and the week during our period it's like a

• 1:16:32

whole hot mess of things that can be changing your body and so your your your measurements

• 1:16:37

are going to be different because of that the types of things you eat and the way that

• 1:16:41

you have to eat is differently it's just it's wild but I think for me it has been really

• 1:16:46

cool seeing that like being able to look at the analytic data of like what I'm eating

• 1:16:52

and what I'm you know how much sleep I'm getting and kind of figuring out those macros that

• 1:16:58

work well for me or changing out my workouts as I move each move through each week has

• 1:17:03

been really cool to see that information and analyze it yeah it is it is a thing and what

• 1:17:11

I would say is there's not like there are probably some people who are like yeah I love

• 1:17:15

working out but there are also a lot of people like me who that is not what they want to

• 1:17:19

do I would love to eat all the disgusting tasty food that is probably terrible for me

• 1:17:24

but it's me it's not motivation it's discipline it is making sure that you build the habits

• 1:17:30

to do the thing that is important to you if health is important to you you have to just

• 1:17:35

be disciplined in making sure that you do those things that was always the thing that

• 1:17:39

like that I try to teach people to it's you have to build these habits and then get in

• 1:17:43

the discipline of it because like there's going to be days you don't want to do it and

• 1:17:46

that those days are like the days where you need to have the discipline to be able to

• 1:17:49

like which pass that because motivation is a is a external like stem factor so like needing

• 1:17:56

to have something to motivate you as opposed to you being more disciplined and doing that

• 1:18:00

like there's a massive amount of massive difference between those two things and there can be

• 1:18:05

motivation there but I think like discipline is the thing that's going to drive you way

• 1:18:10

farther than anything motivation can do for you in my opinion that's that's that's my

• 1:18:17

opinion from my experience so far is just do the thing as much as you don't want to

• 1:18:22

and you know it's the most important thing in the day for you is making sure that you

• 1:18:27

are healthy and that should be number one on your list get rid of it right away the

• 1:18:30

first thing in the morning and then you're done and you don't have to think about it

• 1:18:33

and you've achieved something already before you even go to work it's very I don't know

• 1:18:38

how to like a very satisfying yeah that was something that I used to do was I would do

• 1:18:43

all my lifts and stuff before I would go to work and there was there's just something

• 1:18:47

cool about where it's like well I already hit like some really cool PRs I did some really

• 1:18:51

cool stuff in the gym so it's like going to work now I'm like I'm ready for whatever like

• 1:18:55

I mean I just had a great day like I feel great my body feels awesome my mind's ready

• 1:18:59

so it's like whenever it gets thrown at me later like it's whatever because like I'm

• 1:19:03

already feeling like really good about where I'm at we for a little while we were there

• 1:19:09

was a there's a there's a book out there called the miracle morning and it's it talks about

• 1:19:14

like getting up at 5 a.m. and then doing like visualization and doing words of affirmation

• 1:19:19

and then doing a bit of exercise and reading and all these things and kind of building

• 1:19:22

up those habits and then we stuck to it for a little while until like I kind of like adapted

• 1:19:27

it to how I wanted like a fit for me but like realizing that I had now just done more things

• 1:19:35

in the first like hour and a half of my day than most people will like was there still

• 1:19:39

like slowly getting up and like trying to get their coffee and you know pick out an

• 1:19:42

outfit and like slowly getting out of bed it was just one of those things where it's

• 1:19:46

like I already feel like I have an edge because I'm already up I'm already doing these things

• 1:19:49

and it was like always that good feeling where it's like why aren't you such good mood it's

• 1:19:53

like could I be up since 5 a.m. well yeah you started it productively you didn't resist

• 1:19:58

your day at 9 30 you're like I'm tired oh yeah absolutely I get up at 6 a.m. I I usually

• 1:20:08

work out we'll have like a banana or something and then I feed the cats and then by that

• 1:20:13

time I feel like that banana has digested to some point where I can work out and have

• 1:20:17

some some loads of energy and then after that it's like making myself my breakfast which

• 1:20:22

includes lots of protein and then I do while I'm eating my breakfast do you kind of a reflection

• 1:20:30

which is more of what I'm what I was grateful for or what I'm grateful for so that I come

• 1:20:34

into the day with something grateful this is something that I just started doing about

• 1:20:38

six months ago and I've actually found that it just makes me really thankful for the things

• 1:20:42

that are around me like just little things like even your significant other or your cat

• 1:20:46

or your food or whatever it is that like you're grateful for that that day it just makes you

• 1:20:51

think about those things or or like one thing that happened that day or the day before that

• 1:20:59

you're that you experienced that was like a good thing like a good experience that you

• 1:21:03

had whether that's you know someone else doing something or something that you did whatever

• 1:21:07

it is and then I do a lot of gardening I just go through water on my plants a little sunlight

• 1:21:12

you know and then I'm off to work so it's you when you achieve a bunch of things at

• 1:21:18

the beginning of the day that's like for you you come into it with like hey I already did

• 1:21:22

all the things that I cared about for me now let's do the thing that I have to do for my

• 1:21:26

work and my career and my life and succeed in that way yeah going back to the way oh

• 1:21:32

go ahead I was just gonna say we do we do that at dinner with our kids where we we do

• 1:21:39

high points it used to be high points and low points sometimes we do both but yeah everybody

• 1:21:44

just goes around and talks about their high point of their day and yeah it's cool making

• 1:21:49

like our our oldest definitely she struggles a bit with like anxiety and kind of definitely

• 1:21:54

being a glass half empty kind of person so sometimes it takes a minute to see negative

• 1:22:00

things right so sometimes it's good to like reflect on like one thing that was good and

• 1:22:07

I used to not be a morning person I'm I very much was a night owl and it is one of those

• 1:22:11

things where you have to force yourself to do it and one of the things that my physical

• 1:22:17

trainer said is like immediately when you wake up go outside get some sunlight because

• 1:22:22

yeah it'll just be kind of wakes your brain up and everything psychedia rhythm something

• 1:22:26

about it is like when you force yourself into the sunlight I don't know now you're starting

• 1:22:30

to wake up like yeah yeah your brain wakes up a lot more from the blue light and everything

• 1:22:35

I wake up before my alarm it might also be because I'm old and I have to pee but that's

• 1:22:39

what happens yeah you had said that like you you had started putting yourself first and

• 1:22:45

I think it that's a it's it's almost counterintuitive with like what I think our generation was

• 1:22:51

taught like when we were growing up was like you know it's selfish to only think of yourself

• 1:22:54

and you think of other people and all these things for long as time I did not do that

• 1:22:58

I think right and that was something like trying now to teach to my kids like when you

• 1:23:02

are younger like you need to focus on yourself like you need like you just need to go after

• 1:23:09

what you want because that there was a thing of like I can't remember what podcast is listening

• 1:23:14

to but they're talking about you know like you know where they might have friends that

• 1:23:18

could potentially get them in trouble or bring them down or or whatever and it's like you're

• 1:23:22

gonna like put your neck out for these people but like by the time you're an adult a lot

• 1:23:26

of those people probably won't be around so it's like you need to when you're like younger

• 1:23:30

and like you have so much potential to like really focus on yourself and like especially

• 1:23:34

like I think if a lot of us had I see it's always like a double-edged sword because it's

• 1:23:38

like if I didn't go through the stuff I went through I don't know if I would would be a

• 1:23:41

successful but I think like because I've had a conversation and she's like yeah you might

• 1:23:45

be a more successful though if you had actually like not gone through this things where you

• 1:23:51

could go down very different paths I think I grew up with a really shitty childhood but

• 1:23:57

I think that that childhood has made as much as I wonder about what it would be like to

• 1:24:02

have a different childhood I think that it has made me who I am and I am and I don't

• 1:24:07

think I would appreciate the things that I appreciate and I don't think I would have

• 1:24:11

had the drive that I have now or I mean it's nice to always think like oh maybe I would

• 1:24:15

have been better right because I would have had more opportunities right but I don't know

• 1:24:20

so I think it's a balance that's that's kind of where we were on the point of on the point

• 1:24:24

of like this generation and people being like oh don't think about yourself I think that

• 1:24:30

there's a semblance of it that I do agree with which is being selfish is not necessarily

• 1:24:35

a good thing and I think teaching people to not be selfish is important I think people

• 1:24:39

teaching people to not be narcissistic is important but I think there is an element

• 1:24:43

of loving and caring for yourself and knowing how to nurture yourself and what your what

• 1:24:48

yourself needs that's important and understanding like where your gut is right like what what

• 1:24:55

is driving you to be worried and and making sure that you're acting upon those worries

• 1:25:00

or acting upon those those things that you care about so to me I think it's a balance

• 1:25:04

but it's hard it's hard to explain that to a child too right and like trying to like

• 1:25:10

yeah like yeah how do you go and say like yeah you need to focus on yourself but also

• 1:25:15

like don't don't be a dick like you gotta like you have to figure out that yeah I mean

• 1:25:21

it's fair it's it's hard because I do see people who love and care about themselves

• 1:25:25

like so much that it becomes to the point where it's just this you're like oh I don't

• 1:25:30

want to be around that right where there's like there's no humbleness to it where it's

• 1:25:33

like all right on the brakes there buddy but yeah so like humility is so important for

• 1:25:40

people to just anybody here humility is so important to learn because no matter who you

• 1:25:47

are no matter how much power or authority you have there's always going to be an opportunity

• 1:25:52

for you to learn I have worked with so many people who have been my superiors or my bosses

• 1:25:57

and they have no humility and it's really it is it is not fun to work with people that

• 1:26:02

like are like that who are like well I know everything I don't need to talk to you right

• 1:26:06

type of thing whereas like me as a leader I always want to be able to learn I think

• 1:26:11

I can learn from people who are associates I can learn from people who are way above

• 1:26:15

me I think just being open-minded and having that humility of like I'm not the smartest

• 1:26:19

person in the room is super super important you to treat other people like humans and

• 1:26:25

not like I had like a pawn in some kind of weird game that you're playing yeah I mean

• 1:26:32

I've had my fair share of bosses and stuff that were that way where it's like you know

• 1:26:37

anything that they said was like that's in stone where and then my most recent job I

• 1:26:44

my boss was completely different we're like he's like I don't care like he's like you

• 1:26:48

know make sure you're on time but like if you're you know if you have things pop up

• 1:26:51

just let me know like we're all human stuff it was just it was such a different environment

• 1:26:55

in the way that he like handled things that it's now affected the way that I also manage

• 1:27:00

and things like that were like you know he would you know he messes like hey like you

• 1:27:05

know someone's out six means like hey are things going okay like how's your family and

• 1:27:08

all these things I'm like I've never had like I'm not I'm not paying it the way that I want

• 1:27:13

to at the moment but like I've never I'd never met someone in that capacity with that level

• 1:27:19

of humility and also like actually seeming like he cared and one of the things that he

• 1:27:23

likes to do is to take people in and you know help to professionally develop them in like

• 1:27:30

you know he like me I'm now I went from being a facility maintenance technician and now

• 1:27:35

a facility manager because he decided that he was gonna invest that time in me and like

• 1:27:41

you know kind of take me on his wing and show me a bunch of different things and how to

• 1:27:45

kind of curve some of the either the bad not bad behaviors but like we you know something

• 1:27:50

would happen and it's like well you know if that were to happen the next time like hopefully

• 1:27:54

we can pivot or whatever and then just like kind of if there was failure the rough edges

• 1:27:59

if there was failure it was like it's seen as an opportunity to learn and to teach and

• 1:28:03

like this is how we could do this better and things like that it was just it was a completely

• 1:28:07

different environment I'd ever been in and I like I cherish that like it's something

• 1:28:12

that it now going forward like it's in the back of my mind of like how do I want to handle

• 1:28:16

the situation where if someone messes up and obviously because some people will take like

• 1:28:21

small mistakes and blow them up into huge things and like kind of looking at them like

• 1:28:26

okay how can we turn this into a teaching moment or a training moment or you know was

• 1:28:30

there something that I did where you weren't trained well enough that I was there something

• 1:28:33

that I lacked in like kind of having that dialogue and completely changing that dynamic

• 1:28:38

and like that same thing like never feeling like trying not to be or to think that you're

• 1:28:44

the smartest person in the room because there's always like things to learn from other people

• 1:28:48

there's a saying at least within like the for like mechanics and stuff is that if you

• 1:28:52

if you want to learn the best way to do something you think is to ask the laziest person in

• 1:28:56

the room and like I've found that from time to time where the guy that you might not think

• 1:29:00

might have a really good idea because he seems to be lazy like you ask him he's like well

• 1:29:04

yeah because he's more efficient he's that's right he's sitting around he knows how to

• 1:29:07

do things so I thought that was something interesting or a cool takeaway yeah yeah obviously

• 1:29:13

their productivity needs to be good though yeah leadership is such a weird thing but

• 1:29:18

I do agree with you that people are people first and that's always been like my motto

• 1:29:22

and I'm glad that you know I get to work for a company that feels that way too and it's

• 1:29:27

you know being understanding of when somebody has a personal thing and then making you know

• 1:29:31

making that time up in other ways and being accommodating for it unless there's a repeat

• 1:29:35

pattern where it seems like this is happening then you know but that's that's on you to

• 1:29:40

have that intuition and insight and foresight to think about those things or have that conversation

• 1:29:44

with somebody but when it comes to people making mistakes everyone makes mistakes I

• 1:29:50

think it's to me what I always tell my staff that is that like we're all gonna make mistakes

• 1:29:54

everyone is I make mistakes everyone else is gonna make mistakes but it's not about

• 1:29:58

the mistake it's about how you deal with it right it's how you fix the mistake and then

• 1:30:04

also how you make sure that retrospectively in the future you don't make that same mistake

• 1:30:09

because to me making a mistake is not a problem but when that mistake becomes a pattern and

• 1:30:13

a habit right now we're in a territory where we're talking about how do we make sure this

• 1:30:22

improvement happens otherwise this isn't a job for you right yeah that's the thing like

• 1:30:27

looking for those red flags of like okay this this is now becoming like a habit we're seeing

• 1:30:31

this pop up a lot versus like okay you had a you know something happened in the family

• 1:30:36

and it's a it's a one-off situation and like having that compassion and to be like okay

• 1:30:41

well we'll figure this out take care of that and then when we come back we'll figure out

• 1:30:44

a plan of how we can you know get everything all buttoned up and the humility of making

• 1:30:50

a small mistake and stepping up about that small mistake and fixing that small mistake

• 1:30:55

means that you won't make a bigger mistake exactly and I think sometimes people get defensive

• 1:30:59

instead of being like oh wow I did do that I'll make sure I won't do it again and here

• 1:31:04

are my steps to ensure that I don't do that again because if you don't do that there's

• 1:31:08

potential you're going to make a much bigger mistake that you know like someone else in

• 1:31:12

chat is talking about that could cost your company thousands of dollars or whatever it

• 1:31:15

might be whatever is important and to the success to the success of whatever it was

• 1:31:19

whatever it is that you were supposed to be doing and that could be far worse for you

• 1:31:24

and you know for your the longevity of your career sometimes those things live on you

• 1:31:30

for a long time yeah yeah yeah I definitely think having ownership of your mistakes is

• 1:31:35

like the high road to take it's also really good humility but yeah equally as important

• 1:31:41

it's also really good for interpersonal relationships as well as to being that was something I recently

• 1:31:47

over the past two years or three years have been working on is knowing when I've fucked

• 1:31:53

up and I'm like okay this is a problem I'm sorry I got I've I've learned relationships

• 1:31:59

too yes they're laughing because deep down they know yeah perfect it seems like they

• 1:32:10

do yes I've been in a relationship for you know we're going on 20 years so I definitely

• 1:32:18

understand communication is super important knowing how to work out of your mistakes it's

• 1:32:23

important knowing how to apologize also important yeah you said oh sorry oh go ahead going on

• 1:32:34

20 years that's awesome I think it's wild sometimes you blink and you go how has this

• 1:32:40

time passed and then like the other part of it's like I feel like I've known you for a

• 1:32:44

thousand years yes go away like we've been together coming up on 13 years and it definitely

• 1:32:51

has that feel to it where it's like it doesn't feel like it's enough but at the same time

• 1:32:55

like that we've always you know like just had our lives together like and that's a cool

• 1:33:00

thing I think for us we have we started as like high school sweethearts and so we have

• 1:33:06

been through the many journeys of growing as people and you know one of the things that

• 1:33:10

I always see people say is that well for why they've separated is they're like oh we we

• 1:33:18

aren't the same people that we were before so that's why we can't we just can't make

• 1:33:22

it work and it's like well Jesus hopefully you aren't the same people that you were 20

• 1:33:27

years ago I really hope that you have grown 20% at least like 1% a year from the time

• 1:33:34

that you have known each other like I think it's wild for people to have this expectation

• 1:33:38

that you meet somebody and they're just gonna be that person for the rest of their life

• 1:33:42

like hell no you're gonna change you should be growing you should be changing what you

• 1:33:46

like doing you should be evolving your mind should change I just think it's wild for people

• 1:33:51

to expect somebody to stay the same for the rest of their life see together as exactly

• 1:33:56

together evolve together because we've said before too like if I was if I'm the same person

• 1:34:02

like five years from now if I look back and I'm the same person I'm like that means I

• 1:34:05

haven't had any growth like I didn't do anything you haven't done anything right you haven't

• 1:34:09

done anything you say at who you were right yeah if you don't look back at like some of

• 1:34:13

your Facebook memories and you're like oh my god I can't believe I have that viewpoint

• 1:34:17

or like I can't believe I posted that I have so many of those where I'm like delete not

• 1:34:21

the other thing you know you talk about that the the cancer culture these days really infuriates

• 1:34:28

me because it's one of those things where it's basically stated stating that someone

• 1:34:32

can't grow and learn right someone makes one mistake oh yeah granted it can be a pretty

• 1:34:37

freaking terrible mistake they should be able to as a human grow and learn and evolve from

• 1:34:42

that mistake and hopefully not ever make that mistake again but the fact that people like

• 1:34:47

now we need to shut them down they can never ever do anything for the rest of their life

• 1:34:50

ever again like that's wild that means that you just expect that person to be that for

• 1:34:55

the rest of their life right so you just I won't pull up like a 10 year old tweet and

• 1:34:58

I'm like man if I look back what I thought like 10 years ago I'd be fucking embarrassed

• 1:35:02

like I'm just I would like that that person it's not it's like it's not even the same

• 1:35:07

part they might have the same face but it's like everything else has changed me you know

• 1:35:11

you don't know what different things they you well the thing is too like you don't know

• 1:35:14

what they're going through when they said certain things or like where they were at

• 1:35:17

in their lives and like in the journey that it took them to get where they are now so

• 1:35:22

I'm on the same it's having compassion towards our other humans in this world is you just

• 1:35:29

have to have that in my opinion as much as it is hard to have compassion towards someone

• 1:35:34

who's a do shiru that's what I like to call people who are not great people you kind of

• 1:35:40

do and because I think that everyone makes mistakes everyone has their moments and you

• 1:35:45

just have to work through it right I mean and then to like you have like you're looking

• 1:35:51

at like stifling people at that point too of like because I get you see like that that

• 1:35:55

kind of backlash to of like well why did I even bother changing or why do you even try

• 1:35:59

that and like kind of having people kind of regress and because you're you're already

• 1:36:02

putting them down almost making like a self-fulfilling prophecy where you're telling these people

• 1:36:06

what they are what what they are and like it's just you do see a lot of that and I think

• 1:36:12

the problem is too is like when with every thing being like the internet's awesome but

• 1:36:18

at the same time like it can be such a bad tool for like people to just like look at

• 1:36:23

everyone based off of like a point in time or like just looking at the life underneath

• 1:36:29

a microscope and like having everything there for such a long period of time it's only what

• 1:36:33

they show right yep you're not even seeing every element of someone's life right right

• 1:36:39

you just say like a snapshot of like a little bit of their life and judging them based on

• 1:36:44

it it's wild the internet is that we're talking about context yes there's no context it is

• 1:36:53

crazy and you know someone in chat was talking about forgiveness and having forgiveness and

• 1:36:56

I think for me there's there's two sides of it right there is a part of you should have

• 1:37:01

the ability to forgive but I don't think you always have to forgive there are some things

• 1:37:06

to me that I don't think are forgivable that have happened to me in my life and I don't

• 1:37:10

forgive the person who did those things to me but I think that it's okay for me to not

• 1:37:15

forgive that person as much as people say like if you can't forgive you're useless I

• 1:37:20

think that that's crazy because there's some things to me that can't be forgiven but it

• 1:37:26

doesn't mean we can't move forward from those things is my opinion being able to move forward

• 1:37:31

and understand that like hey I don't forgive you for that but at the same time I can understand

• 1:37:36

that you know we're gonna move forward from that point and you know move on with our lives

• 1:37:41

because we can't just hold a grudge for the rest of our lives well that's another thing

• 1:37:45

too and like it's also okay to just let some people go like sometimes some relationships

• 1:37:49

just run their course and you know you can kind of make that decision of like this is

• 1:37:53

not a relationship that is helping either one of us or it's only it's a benefit only

• 1:37:59

benefiting one party and it's okay to have those signs where it's like this is not like

• 1:38:03

I guess going back to like really trying to put yourself first and like seeing what's

• 1:38:07

healthy for you or what's not and being like this is not okay for me like this is a relationship

• 1:38:13

you as a as a negative part of your life yeah I agree and it's hard sometimes because that

• 1:38:18

can be someone who's really close to you and maybe it's not letting them go but having

• 1:38:22

a conversation and communicating with them first to let them know like hey this behavior

• 1:38:27

is having a negative effect on me and this is how I feel about the situation and I want

• 1:38:32

to know how we can move forward with that or maybe it is just this relationship is not

• 1:38:36

going to work absolutely I don't think forgiveness means tolerance like like you said setting

• 1:38:42

that boundary when somebody oversteps and does something that could be either needing

• 1:38:47

forgiveness or unforgivable you don't have to have tolerance just because you forgave

• 1:38:51

them you can set that boundary and be like you know in a in a less severe situation like

• 1:38:56

I forgive you but I no longer tolerate you like I can't have you in my life yeah that's

• 1:39:01

fair too yeah and boundaries are very important everyone needs to figure out how wide is your

• 1:39:07

bubble where do you want it to end right and who are you going to let into that bubble

• 1:39:12

um and deciding that it can be hard sometimes or really easy yeah sometimes sometimes it's

• 1:39:18

very obvious and they're like all right you know what yeah yeah like now you come here

• 1:39:23

you're good yeah yeah you know sometimes you meet those people that just like are they're

• 1:39:28

just family and you know that that's going to be someone that's going to be part of your

• 1:39:31

life for a long time and then other times you're like no that's not that's not yeah

• 1:39:36

I don't want that all right all good things all good things trying to see I'm a bad influence

• 1:39:45

because I'm bringing the fulsomeness I'm sorry see I love that's the whole reason I love

• 1:39:50

wholesomeness though like that's the whole reason we're so excited to have you on yeah

• 1:39:54

it's like there that's that's something we joke about is that we want to be the toxic

• 1:39:58

positivity that's on the internet like we want to where it's like you know I feel you

• 1:40:04

because there's just you literally there's so many things where people just freak out

• 1:40:09

for like and it seems like almost no reason and it's like you're you just having a bad

• 1:40:14

day man like what is going like why are you taking all the frustration out here sensitivity

• 1:40:19

level of people these days is wild especially if you're a forward-facing person at a company

• 1:40:24

or a public-facing person anywhere like every little thing you say is under a microscope

• 1:40:30

and it's wild to me and the other side of it is social media I was actually talking

• 1:40:35

to someone else this morning about this is that I have I am I really just only really

• 1:40:40

want to put positivity out there and that's kind of like my drive on social media is to

• 1:40:43

influence people in positive ways and share the positive things in my life I really want

• 1:40:49

to stay away from negative stuff as much as possible and unfollow people who are negative

• 1:40:54

and I'm bringing that into me because you know the law of attraction is really is a

• 1:40:59

thing and so for me I want to attract that positivity I want to attract success I want

• 1:41:03

to attract the things in life that I think are important to me kind of comes back to

• 1:41:07

like the life-changing stuff that I've gone through but I see on social media the things

• 1:41:12

that drive viewership the things that drive numbers and impressions it really is people

• 1:41:19

being negative it's crazy that that's what people want to consume now these controversial

• 1:41:25

negative topics and then if you put something positive out there it gets like very little

• 1:41:29

attraction right I think they've done studies through that show like just the just the human

• 1:41:34

mind in general it will latch on and like remember negative stuff I don't know if it's

• 1:41:39

like part of that lizard brain that's left over to like protect you so it's like if you

• 1:41:43

know these things you can protect yourself but it definitely like there's something where

• 1:41:48

it elicits like this response where if it's something really negative people are like

• 1:41:53

oh yeah I want to jump on that or yeah if you like have something that's really positive

• 1:41:57

like it's just and sometimes there's like weird interactions with that like sure most

• 1:42:02

people know mr. Beast but like anytime like he does something that like seems pretty cool

• 1:42:06

like where I'm like man that is awesome like people are always like there's like a hundred

• 1:42:10

million people are like oh you just do it's like everyone's been asking billionaires

• 1:42:16

to do something with their money this guy goes and does it you're all still fucking

• 1:42:19

pissed like what is going on there's no win so in the end of the day he needs to do what's

• 1:42:26

right for him and for him in his perspective that is sharing his wealth in positive ways

• 1:42:30

and I go for you do it mr. Beast I'm here for it but I you know like a lot of people

• 1:42:36

will judge you and I think as you gain more viewership and impressions on the internet

• 1:42:43

you realize more and more that you have to kind of take a little bit of like for me I

• 1:42:47

like to be really interactive and engaging and get to know the people who are following

• 1:42:51

me but at the same time I realize like there has to be this semblance of bound of a boundary

• 1:42:55

like Annie was talking about because otherwise people feel like they have the right to judge

• 1:43:01

and tell you what to do with your life and it's like no in the end of the day I am me

• 1:43:06

and I get to decide what I do with me in my life and my body and my choices right it's

• 1:43:13

hard to sometimes differentiate the two would you feel like you have to please other people

• 1:43:19

yes yeah it definitely like because I was like I said for a while people please are

• 1:43:26

over here yes person all the time and I realize there's times when I gotta say no yes absolutely

• 1:43:33

it always can feel at least in the start it always feels so uncomfortable because it is

• 1:43:36

so used to like well what are they gonna think if I say no or what of this and it's like

• 1:43:40

it was it was always a weird thing for me because it was there's almost like this duality

• 1:43:44

where like I didn't care but at the same time like depending on what it was I'm like it

• 1:43:49

start eating at me where it's like maybe I should have done that thing but there was

• 1:43:53

the more that I have put a lot more value on myself rather than like worrying what other

• 1:43:59

people are gonna like attribute to things or whatever like my life has gotten way better

• 1:44:03

I remember there was a certain period where I really put my foot down for a lot of things

• 1:44:07

and that's when I started to really see my life kind of like turn around yeah just do

• 1:44:13

what is good for you I would implore everyone to take a moment just to write a list of the

• 1:44:20

things that you care about your priorities in life and and reflect on that is that the

• 1:44:25

list that you want are some things on there that you want to remove are things in the

• 1:44:30

right order that you want them to be in and assess how you can achieve those things in

• 1:44:35

the way that you want because it will it will be mind-changing and like holistically changing

• 1:44:41

for your life if you if you start driving towards what you really want in life absolutely

• 1:44:45

that's great advice so I do have one question if you're able to respond to this so I know

• 1:44:53

that you you consider yourself a bit like oh god you can see yourself a bit of a druid

• 1:44:59

having a green thumb in anything are you are you are you upset at all that there is no

• 1:45:04

druid class that's going to be in ashes necessarily I think I've been I've been saying like there's

• 1:45:14

a druid life thing like I'm leveling up my druid skills because I think it's fun to correlate

• 1:45:19

real life fantasy world because that's how I deal with things because I'm a weirdo but

• 1:45:26

I wouldn't say I've agreed them I think I'm getting better and leveling up skills to learn

• 1:45:31

how to grow food it kind of goes hand in hand with the food thing it's wild once you start

• 1:45:37

tracking your food and putting food into a thing where you realize like wow I can't eat

• 1:45:42

anything from any fast food restaurant because it is not actual real food this is some weird

• 1:45:47

processed shit and it is mind-boggling even like the vegetables you get sometimes aren't

• 1:45:52

real vegetables it's like some kind of weird conglomeration thing that they've created

• 1:45:57

in the science lab I don't know but for me it's been really important to kind of measure

• 1:46:02

and track my food and that has helped me with my health journey maybe it's not a thing for

• 1:46:08

you but that's how I've been doing it for me and growing food for myself and being able

• 1:46:13

to like eat fresh kale and eat fresh carrots from my garden has been amazing and it just

• 1:46:18

tastes so good and so that has been a really big goal for me I would I would like to eventually

• 1:46:25

be able to feed my whole family when I start having kids with with sustainable food from

• 1:46:30

my own garden that's what I would like to be able to do and then anything that I need

• 1:46:34

that I can't grow or I can't feed myself I want to be able to do locally so kind of working

• 1:46:39

with some kind of like farmer that I can work with that's the end goal for me I'm manifesting

• 1:46:45

that putting that out there I want shingles I want goats I want everything oh man I had

• 1:46:51

all those growing up we we had like I don't know like farm thing going on I guess like

• 1:46:58

not all at once at one point we would own chickens and then we'd own goats and then

• 1:47:02

we'd own cows and that's very cool it was a great part of my childhood honestly it teaches

• 1:47:07

you about you know responsibility it teaches you how like the cycle of life works I think

• 1:47:14

it's important as a child to see those things so for me I want to have that be part of my

• 1:47:19

life and have that be part of my children's life so down the line I would like that we'll

• 1:47:24

see that comes to fruition someday when I have the chickens you guys tell me I've made

• 1:47:29

it yeah that's when like that's like peach made it stuff my tiktok is like filled with

• 1:47:36

chickens like a lot of chicken tiktok stuff gaming and then weird beauty stuff it's like

• 1:47:41

hot collaboration of weird stuff yeah I think that I would love to see I think we'll have

• 1:47:49

maybe something that's like a druid but it just not called a druid you know I just had

• 1:47:54

to put that in there I just noticed you've been pretty similiar to that I think that

• 1:47:59

druids are cool I like the concept of druids but I don't think you need to have the thing

• 1:48:04

is that we've have these classes that we've come to know over the years right they were

• 1:48:08

like this is the name that we all love but I think having something new and refreshing

• 1:48:13

is cool having new types of archetypes and you know sub archetypes that we've that we

• 1:48:18

like we can glom rate and create together is it's neat concept yeah that's a really

• 1:48:22

cool concept I was like different I'm here for it I'm here to try it I'll see how if

• 1:48:28

how I like it I'm not the one designing it I get to just experience it's like you guys

• 1:48:31

I've made the joke too of like if there's like no barbarian class and I think for a

• 1:48:35

while there was like well if you don't like it don't play it like there was a so I was

• 1:48:39

like before you guys say anything I'm still gonna play I'm just I don't see the name there

• 1:48:44

so like this thing is like our barry and there's so many things that could be like a barber

• 1:48:49

maybe brawler is gonna be like the barbarian that you like right and also here's the thing

• 1:48:54

a lot of different classes in different games are widely different like you drew it but

• 1:48:59

in all these different games and drugs different you know absolutely that's true cool are you

• 1:49:07

allowed to tell us what race you're most excited to play in ashes I don't know the longest

• 1:49:14

time I've always been a huge dwarf fan just because like me and my fiance have always

• 1:49:18

played like two two dwarves together usually and we just like throw it up like we're like

• 1:49:25

a cleric and a paladin and we just like take it but and it's you know we RP we have fun

• 1:49:31

we're kind of dorks about it but I think that I don't know I like everything there's been

• 1:49:36

some games where I've made many class and race combos and played variety of things and

• 1:49:42

depending on the rate we need this type of shaman versus this cleric I would just play

• 1:49:47

whatever we needed at the time so I don't know we'll see I have to begin the game has

• 1:49:53

to be yeah we actually have to see it try it classes I really like you know what I mean

• 1:49:59

this is true that was like I was I was gonna be dead set a red rank I until you guys show

• 1:50:04

the concept I are for told our in like literally I have played are the most crazy controversial

• 1:50:10

shit because like for years it's just like tone our second like people all hating on

• 1:50:15

toner and then as soon as we shelter I was like guys I'm changing sides I'm a lover now

• 1:50:22

I have oh my god I kicked my leg I have I have played orcs in like every game ever and

• 1:50:28

I was like I've really it was it was like a thing that like was very known when we first

• 1:50:33

started streaming or whatever like you like kind of like in a chat would talk about work

• 1:50:37

Jamie or whatever and then we saw that and I was like I've never seen concept art for

• 1:50:43

a fantasy race where I was like I'm I'm changing sides I was like this looks especially like

• 1:50:48

that gorilla demon looking thing I was like my god this is the coolest fucking thing I

• 1:50:54

have ever seen I was like not I was like I gotta see which one can be the bigger beefier

• 1:50:58

boy but like that's gonna be the deciding factor of like which one's gonna be the most

• 1:51:02

hulkish but I was like oh my god like you that dropped and was like there was not even

• 1:51:06

close to like what I had envisioned like I didn't really like try to put too much effort

• 1:51:11

into thinking like what it would or wouldn't look like but when we guys dropped out I was

• 1:51:14

like holy shit I was like I've never had that was our artists are I mean obviously everyone

• 1:51:20

has seen they're just badasses and we're creating something really cool and our character creator

• 1:51:25

is insane and it's gonna be cool to see that and have you guys experience it so I love

• 1:51:31

seeing the way that you guys do take like the concept art and then like we're now I'm

• 1:51:36

at the point where I'm like is that is that like an actual model or is that concept art

• 1:51:39

like is that concept art or is that like our concepts look so close to our 3d well we try

• 1:51:44

really hard to make them very similar it's crazy like there's so many times where I was

• 1:51:49

like I think you guys had shown one of the elven cities or whatever and I'm like looking

• 1:51:54

and we're like oh it's a concept art I was like I had no idea what one that was I was

• 1:51:59

like I love that though where I'm like looking at I'm like I know when we actually get like

• 1:52:02

the actual models for it that it's gonna like look spot-on yeah and sometimes you have the

• 1:52:07

concept art and then you have the world you're like wow they look you can tell it's concept

• 1:52:11

because there's some brushstrokes there but when you look at it you're like it's very

• 1:52:13

close yeah I mean how we use concept art or how concept art is generally used is to get

• 1:52:18

the look and feel and make sure you're in the right space and usually you do a couple

• 1:52:22

different variations of that till you get to a space where you're like okay that's it

• 1:52:26

and then then you're replicating that with 3d assets and creating it in world so usually

• 1:52:31

you know you want to reflect what's in there depending on what the vision is some place

• 1:52:36

I think in a lot of other games maybe it's not one-to-one as much it is here but here

• 1:52:41

it very much is because like we're trying to get whatever is in Steven's brain on a

• 1:52:46

paper and the main like all right is this what you want no I want that tweaked a little

• 1:52:50

bit all right is that what you want I want the statue to be like five times bigger and

• 1:52:54

like it looked like this all right and then it's like okay now are we good all right now

• 1:52:58

let's go take the time and effort that it takes to build those 3d assets because it

• 1:53:02

takes you know more time than it is to sketch something out I am so hoping that you guys

• 1:53:07

give you the concept of that I'm so hoping that you guys come out with like a like either

• 1:53:12

a Pathfinder 2 module or just something because I'm like that's something I've been waiting

• 1:53:15

on is I want to get like all the because I love lore and like I just I want to see all

• 1:53:21

the because like I have it in my head where I'm like I want to set our Pathfinder game

• 1:53:25

in Vera but like I need more lore to be able to do this and like I want to write the stories

• 1:53:29

and stuff let us work let us make the game first but we have definitely talked about

• 1:53:34

you know supplementary things like books and also you know maybe a whole other tabletop

• 1:53:40

RPG system right like those are all things that we have discussed and talked about but

• 1:53:43

like first thing's first the vision is to have a franchise to have like to make Intrepid

• 1:53:51

Studios you know a big studio like the others right now we're indie baby but we're growing

• 1:53:58

in and you know as people get excited for the product and we launch it and we make lots

• 1:54:04

of money hopefully we can then you know service some of these other products that people have

• 1:54:08

wanted or that we want to create and make a lot of cool games that hopefully excite

• 1:54:13

people

• 1:54:14

I think that was one of the things too that drew me in because there was a time where

• 1:54:18

it was like stream forever ago where I think it's the actually Steven said it more recently

• 1:54:23

too I've talked about you know that this is the flagship product but wanting to build

• 1:54:27

off of it and everything I just remember that got me so excited because like there's one

• 1:54:31

thing I always really loved about Wow was like I read all the novels you know we played

• 1:54:34

the game we obviously saw the movie and stuff like there was so much of it where I was like

• 1:54:39

I just this one thing I really enjoy especially with like other you know we played the tabletop

• 1:54:45

miniature games and stuff and like just diving into that world like I love learning like

• 1:54:50

diving into those things so that was something that was really exciting for me too it was

• 1:54:53

another thing it really sold me on the project because I was like god I can't wait to see

• 1:54:56

what else like after this comes yeah you know what I'm excited at what point would you no

• 1:55:03

longer be considered like an indie studio because you guys are amassing like a quite

• 1:55:07

a well indie means independent yeah we have no other publisher to adhere to we have no

• 1:55:13

other person that we have to adhere to we have no you know board like as in regards

• 1:55:20

to you know someone that we have to appease in any way like we are our own independent

• 1:55:26

studio right now and that's there might be a change we might someday get like an external

• 1:55:30

publisher or something like that but I you know that's not in the plans now currently

• 1:55:33

we plan to do everything independent and you guys are closing on what close to like almost

• 1:55:38

200 employees at this point something like that we're getting there yeah that's pretty

• 1:55:42

cool that's so awesome it's crazy you know I come I I was there when we were in a small

• 1:55:48

little kind of garage type of thing and now we're in this big you know what do you call

• 1:55:53

those things like structures office structures yeah yeah it's wild that is really cool it's

• 1:55:58

wild and once we a little bit even when you see your small team grow bigger it's been

• 1:56:04

cool to see that but even with our small team I think we're able to do a lot of really cool

• 1:56:10

things especially for my for my team you know a lot of them are the people that you guys

• 1:56:16

are engaging with on a daily basis I don't know a lot of projects where you can pretty

• 1:56:20

much get a response on social get a response on forums get a response on discord within

• 1:56:24

seconds from a developer that is something that me and Stephen had talked about when

• 1:56:29

I first started here I was like that's what I would like to strive to do because from

• 1:56:34

my perspective the best community management is really community managers and you know

• 1:56:39

social managers and support that are actually really part of the community and understand

• 1:56:44

and are integrated into it yeah he shared that with him so it's been cool to get the

• 1:56:50

support that I need to be able to accomplish those things I think that's something that's

• 1:56:54

been like super like surreal for me like just even right now like being able to have this

• 1:56:58

conversation with you or like having other other devs that have like jumped in the stream

• 1:57:02

and like chatted with us while we're like doing the podcast where I'm like this is to

• 1:57:07

me it's insane because I'm like I you know you sent an email to somebody and then some

• 1:57:11

like bigger company and like you might get like an automated response back and never

• 1:57:15

hear from someone so like having like we very much notice it where we can email us we're

• 1:57:20

responding yeah contact us we're responding obviously within work hours I'm very I'm pretty

• 1:57:27

I've tried my darndest and make sure these folks like I'm like when you're out of office

• 1:57:31

do not check your email I think it's very important I'm not the best at I don't practice

• 1:57:37

what I do practice what I do is what I tell my staff for me I'm on call 24 7 and that's

• 1:57:42

because I'm the boss right but I think that for for my staff I always wanted to be very

• 1:57:47

clear like you do not have to answer something if someone messages you on the weekend you

• 1:57:50

can just wait till Monday to respond to them so yeah so how's has there been any I think

• 1:57:58

I can't remember how how let's go look at discord real quick how that was posed how

• 1:58:06

much has your role changed since moving into your new position from from yeah yeah yeah

• 1:58:15

not too much so I really was managing all of that stuff that I was managing before already

• 1:58:20

the only thing that changed this year is now I'm also managed like directing internal communications

• 1:58:25

a little bit more than I was before I wasn't necessarily part of that as much I mostly

• 1:58:31

manage my teams but not necessarily like the ins and outs of the entire studio I'm much

• 1:58:38

more involved in development and the communications with teams and making sure that we're you

• 1:58:43

know progressing in a way that communication is important because as you grow if you lose

• 1:58:48

that communication it things can be missed or things can fall apart a little bit and

• 1:58:53

so I've been a really part of that external communications was already something that

• 1:58:56

I was managing prior and then the big thing that I took on this year has been quality

• 1:59:02

assurance team so that's been a huge endeavor is taking over that team basically redoing

• 1:59:09

a lot of their processes or in some cases adding processes that weren't in there kind

• 1:59:15

of reassessing how the bug system works in our JIRA ensuring that you know we're actually

• 1:59:19

bugging the stuff that development wants to bug versus bugging stuff that they're like

• 1:59:23

hey we're not ready for you to test those things yet so why are you putting bugs in

• 1:59:27

them for that we just didn't really have a lot of guidance in some sense and then the

• 1:59:31

next thing is building that team out you're going to be seeing some positions coming up

• 1:59:34

here for QA slowly but surely that I'm going to be starting to fill so that I can you know

• 1:59:40

build that team out and then hopefully someday they're all running efficiently like all my

• 1:59:44

other teams and then I'll help do something else I don't know whatever Steven needs me

• 1:59:49

to do I will do that's my I just love organizing and making sure people are doing things I

• 1:59:56

think that the weird part is one systems and processes are in place and as a manager you're

• 2:00:00

kind of like oh yeah it's all just running right as long as you make good processes and

• 2:00:05

good systems and then you also have a check in and retro peak moments so I have like basically

• 2:00:11

one on once once a month with every person on my staff to basically go over what are

• 2:00:16

the processes that are not going well I audit all their work and check to see where I think

• 2:00:20

there are improvements that can be made or mentorship opportunities and then the big

• 2:00:25

other thing that I kind of have helped with this year is our build process so it's really

• 2:00:29

just kind of making sure that the build streams all the way you know from engine dev all the

• 2:00:35

way up to our release are good standing and good a place and we have good processes in

• 2:00:40

place for promoting those things up and testing those they kind of go hand in hand with QA

• 2:00:46

so it was a yeah it was it made sense it was a symbiotic adjustment and assessment so yeah

• 2:00:52

I mean wild a similar position where I just I just took over a facility that someone's

• 2:01:01

been running for like two years and like I'm coming in where everything is so disorganized

• 2:01:07

in my company in general it's weird because it's like a it's a it's got a very big head

• 2:01:11

but a very small body so it's there's so many processes they don't do where I came from

• 2:01:16

like a background where we had you know processes for everything like so it's like looking at

• 2:01:22

that it's it's fun though where you get to process is a process that you don't realize

• 2:01:26

it was the process it's just a habit that you make yes yeah people get afraid of the

• 2:01:32

word process they're like oh she's bringing in processes and it's like no it's just I'm

• 2:01:36

trying to build better habits and people but to do that you need to have good you know

• 2:01:40

processes so they can follow them especially when it comes to onboarding because a new

• 2:01:43

person doesn't know what your habits are that you want them to know about right well yeah

• 2:01:48

that's like a problem like walking into my office and I'm like everything is written

• 2:01:52

down on like notes and there is like literally nothing where I'm like oh no so like it's

• 2:01:59

it's fun to be able to have that like kind of like I like the thing of it like going

• 2:02:02

in with the blank slate and being like okay I get to look at what were the processes I

• 2:02:06

can reiterate on them and then change those and then play this something I really like

• 2:02:10

doing it is how can I streamline some of these processes or like start to make them more

• 2:02:15

efficient and things like that so like hearing about that I've that's that always makes like

• 2:02:19

my manager brain get all excited change over time like you're saying you need to make them

• 2:02:24

more efficient when when new things come online then these things need to adjust like that's

• 2:02:29

why it's so important to have those check-ins too so that you can make adjustments along

• 2:02:32

the way and it's not just like oh we made a process we're done it's like no you need

• 2:02:37

to continually update those things and keep them in good standing because things are going

• 2:02:42

to change along the way or even when you create a process once it's once you actually install

• 2:02:47

it like execute it you start realizing like oh these things need to change in that process

• 2:02:51

because we didn't think about X or Y or Z and so like yeah it's those have been the

• 2:02:56

really big changes otherwise everything else that I was doing you know content management

• 2:03:00

social media marketing management you know community management public relations events

• 2:03:05

customer service audio visual all those things were already stuff that was on my plate I

• 2:03:10

have really amazing team members who are badasses who you know we create a process and together

• 2:03:16

they now efficiently do them and really my job now with those teams is just any copy

• 2:03:21

they make any assets they make I look at those and I approve those and sure I make mistakes

• 2:03:26

along the way everyone does but I try my best to catch them but yeah that's really what

• 2:03:32

I do is just oversight and overview of every anything that goes out externally and then

• 2:03:37

a lot of internal communications and building like the game in order to make sure it's quality

• 2:03:44

efficient so that when you guys get in Alva too it's a good user experience that's my

• 2:03:48

goal yeah it's always a pleasure yes nothing feels worse than like you step into something

• 2:03:54

and you're like oh no what is this I was like how where do I especially like well that's

• 2:03:58

like we watch the UI stream and we were watching things so I'm like man like because obviously

• 2:04:04

the community is hearing about it's like we're only gonna UI stream or whatever then you

• 2:04:06

watch it you're like my god I did not realize how important every aspect of this is because

• 2:04:12

like we were recently have been playing some games where I had like terrible UIs where

• 2:04:16

it's like you don't notice it until you don't have it so like once all those like really

• 2:04:21

nice things are that you're like ah this is good this is good but you definitely will

• 2:04:25

notice it when it's like not there Colby and his crew are amazing they are yeah they tend

• 2:04:31

they we just they actually just sent over something recently with more of their style

• 2:04:36

guide for text and stuff because we're trying to finalize like what is the actual fonts

• 2:04:39

that we want to go with yeah and I you know I think we're all on the same page but you

• 2:04:45

know yeah fonts are a finicky thing but I think that it's an important part of our gameplay

• 2:04:53

I it can either hinder your experience or make it a great experience and it's not just

• 2:04:58

about the fonts it's also about like you know the customization of it it's something that

• 2:05:03

we've we've thought about and it's very important to us especially for people who have different

• 2:05:07

types of you know visual impairments or whatever you might want to call those and so like that's

• 2:05:12

something that we want to be conscious about and when we're building out these systems

• 2:05:16

and the UI for those systems and then also we don't want to be too much on your screen

• 2:05:21

and we also don't want to be too little like it's a it's a balancing factor and I think

• 2:05:26

sometimes people go oh it's UI you know it's can't be that sexy or exciting but hopefully

• 2:05:31

we walked you through the process you understand how it works and as we move forward and you

• 2:05:37

see those pieces you go oh wow there was a lot of effort and love that went into those

• 2:05:40

things because even the tiniest thing is is important to us right and definitely the community

• 2:05:46

walked away as a whole thinking like man UI is a lot more important than I thought it

• 2:05:51

was somehow there was like that was a really good response where you're like what is happening

• 2:05:56

right now like for instance I love you Dark Souls don't come for me but it feels like

• 2:06:01

someone just like rammed their face on their keyboard and was like here's your key bindings

• 2:06:04

and I'm like what the fuck is that so we were playing we've been playing Red Dead Online

• 2:06:10

in like just trying to navigate through some of the menus is extremely painful where it's

• 2:06:14

like why did you guys do it this way and like that was like around the time you guys really

• 2:06:20

set every time I play video I'm like what is happening it's like did anyone sit down

• 2:06:28

and test this why did you let this go yeah well I think some people love certain UI and

• 2:06:36

some people loves or other types of UI that's the thing too it can also be very much like

• 2:06:40

a personal preference I think that's why we focus so much on like customizability of UI

• 2:06:45

and the options that you have in there because everyone has their own opinion like some people

• 2:06:50

love probably BDO UI and I'm like I'm annoyed by it so it's just you know everyone has their

• 2:06:56

own their own thing that they like strokes for different folks exactly games not every

• 2:07:04

game is for every person yes and that's okay too like that was another thing too where

• 2:07:10

like I love that you guys stick to your guns too with you know like this is how the games

• 2:07:14

being designed this is what it's gonna be like there are some things that are gonna

• 2:07:17

change but the core pillars are still gonna be there in like that's really nice because

• 2:07:22

we have seen certain games where the you know certain crowd starts yelling really loud and

• 2:07:27

then they cater to it and then all of a sudden it's like wow I wonder why the game failed

• 2:07:33

because like because you walked away from your core player base that was like really

• 2:07:37

excited for this thing to then try to encapsulate a much bigger audience where it's like and

• 2:07:43

that's one thing too like because a lot of people's argument is that the game that has

• 2:07:48

the most concurrent players is the best game and it's like not necessarily like you can

• 2:07:53

have a smaller more tight knit like fan base that's gonna be a lot more loyal and be around

• 2:07:59

in that is really gonna enjoy that and then you're probably pull other people in there

• 2:08:02

because there's actually people there to play the game with as opposed to these games that

• 2:08:06

you know they'll release and they kind of just try to do those broad strokes to bring

• 2:08:09

in everybody and then it's like you went the wrong way like go back and that's a bounce

• 2:08:15

right yeah analyzing feedback in a way that makes sense so for instance when we are making

• 2:08:22

reports to development we do give them the raw information to like they can click and

• 2:08:26

read through the raw comments if they want but we really take everybody's comments and

• 2:08:32

we solidify them into like here's what people are talking about the most and second like

• 2:08:37

and word it in ways that are actually readable versus like these long you know walls of text

• 2:08:42

that people have yeah and breaking it down into the segments of those things and really

• 2:08:48

analyzing what the feedback is is on the development side so we're like hey here's what people

• 2:08:52

are saying now it's on you guys to take that that information and analyze it the example

• 2:08:58

that I always give is I used to be a weapon like combat weapon designer and one of the

• 2:09:03

things that people kept saying after a patch was they're like oh man this weapon just doesn't

• 2:09:08

do enough damage compared to all the other all the weapons and I'm like that's so weird

• 2:09:12

that people are saying that because I don't think that's true so I looked into the data

• 2:09:15

and I was like it's doing the same DPS as as the weapon that's comparable to it and

• 2:09:19

on the other like enemy forces and I kind of played around with it a bit I was like

• 2:09:27

you know what I think it is I think it is the animation is making it feel not as powerful

• 2:09:32

and so I went in and I made and I adjusted the animation a little bit checked that in

• 2:09:36

and everyone was like oh they listened to us they fixed it they made it do more damage

• 2:09:41

and I was like I did nothing with the damage but we'll let them think that you said that's

• 2:09:44

really cool all I did was like change the animation a little bit to make it feel more

• 2:09:49

you know damage but it really wasn't and that goes down to like how it goes down to like

• 2:09:57

how like animation like goes and like just how everything kind of needs to have like

• 2:10:01

a certain feel to it or else like especially there's some games where you'll play and you

• 2:10:05

feel like your attack isn't landing even though it is like you're not getting that feedback

• 2:10:09

from like the hits or anything like that would be it from like the sound or like a mild screen

• 2:10:14

shake or something just to let you know like okay I actually did hit impactful as lady

• 2:10:20

beyond would say so what pen said in chat impactful yes yes all right so right now I

• 2:10:28

would say we're coming up to like two and a half hours I don't know where you are in

• 2:10:38

your questions list I'm almost I'm pretty sure we we walked away from the questions

• 2:10:43

list I think we deviated a bit I was hoping that's how it would go anyway I was like I

• 2:10:47

hope we get with some more like natural questions I'm not very good at like that pre-planning

• 2:10:51

we're like improv is much much more my style sometimes it has like that little awkward

• 2:10:57

puzzle as in my brain processes what's the next thing to say but I can edit that in post

• 2:11:01

so that's the beauty of having a list is that you have something to go to when you have

• 2:11:05

those moments that's true but you have one final question okay what are your cat's names

• 2:11:13

so George looking over here and Lucy she probably wants dinner I don't she's probably sitting

• 2:11:20

by her bowl she's like because I think friends walk around out there but yeah George and

• 2:11:27

Lucy and come here Georgie I don't know where my cat is normally I think he might be locked

• 2:11:34

in the basement actually with you is he down here I don't think he's dying he's probably

• 2:11:40

hiding who knows well Margaret thank you so much George is he's like a Siamese looking

• 2:11:46

cat and then Lucy the tortoise shell oh cute I love Siamese kitties yeah he's pretty we

• 2:11:54

had to have the cat conversation I used to have like a half Siamese cat and he was my

• 2:12:00

favorite his name was Gouda that's cute all right well thank you so much for coming on

• 2:12:06

to our show Margaret we really appreciate it was a lot of fun hanging out with you and

• 2:12:09

kind of picking your brain and just talking about various topics and also thank you so

• 2:12:13

much for being our first guest I think this is our 30th episode so that's really cool

• 2:12:17

having you on there one of those kind of milestones what's your the hills now I know I wasn't sure

• 2:12:23

if we would get past like when we started I was like man I don't know like we have a

• 2:12:28

hard time sticking with things sometimes and I was like man if we can get through like

• 2:12:31

four episodes I think we'll do it more consistently and then yeah the other day I'm like looking

• 2:12:35

like wow someone last now we're almost coming up we're I think eight months into doing this

• 2:12:41

and I was like oh man we're almost like we've had a baby having at this point yes yeah it's

• 2:12:47

almost a baby I know it's almost born many many more years and many more babies then

• 2:12:59

it's like oh my god it was enough it was enough sounds like a lot it is it's it's weird because

• 2:13:10

like when you have one two but when you have one you're like you're like almost like you've

• 2:13:16

been five minutes late like some things then you have two and then it's like turns into

• 2:13:21

like 15 minutes late once you have three it's like how are we two hours late to everything

• 2:13:25

I don't know I have told him two births so he is like all right six tablets I don't know

• 2:13:38

the picking is too funny I told him one time I was like tell my mom how many kids you want

• 2:13:43

him he was like I want a dozen and my mom was like oh yeah she's so quick she was like

• 2:13:48

you're gonna need a new wife you know I was like I was dying laughing but no I told him

• 2:13:58

two births whatever that entails we will deal with my mom's a twin and his mom's a twin

• 2:14:06

so that's oh man now we're gonna take bets friends are not the interim that must guess

• 2:14:18

I don't know it'll be wild the biggest question I guess would be what will come first alpha

• 2:14:23

two or Margaret's kids we're starting we're starting so we'll see you can blame us for

• 2:14:47

like the the next like it's gonna have like a gun like a pool or one trying to vote for

• 2:14:54

which one's gonna be which be a lot of attractiveness that I'm going to have to end up like then

• 2:14:58

I think that was help to make it happen I guess and this for those of you who didn't

• 2:15:07

hear you know Stephen said alpha two is not right around the corner but it's not years

• 2:15:11

away so take that with a grain of salt and do some math on your side having those benchmarks

• 2:15:19

is good every day asking us this week this month this month it's like no I definitely

• 2:15:28

think it helped a lot of people just now just helped a lot of people just breathe and like

• 2:15:33

okay like we at least have like a rough idea instead of like is this the month is this

• 2:15:37

month is this month like I was like especially like I feel it for like on the content creation

• 2:15:41

side to have like when do we push and when do we like kind of just let the flow go and

• 2:15:46

like so it was nice knowing it's like okay also state this that if people have signed

• 2:15:51

up for the content creator program that program will you know we'll start inviting people

• 2:15:56

as we're getting closer to that date so that will be also some semblance of indication

• 2:15:59

right keep in mind we're in that right yeah you applied I don't know you tell me but at

• 2:16:07

the time I don't think we had like anything so I'm like I don't know I need to resubmit

• 2:16:11

you get a better code now so then you can update you can edit your application so anybody

• 2:16:18

who has applied if you changed your social handles or whatever you can edit your application

• 2:16:23

through the same link awesome Margaret is there anything you'd like to plug I'm sure

• 2:16:28

most people are most people watching know who you are but yeah sure I'm Margaret cron

• 2:16:34

you can find me at Margaret cron and all the places I do a lot of things on the internet

• 2:16:38

if you want to follow those things you can follow me and I will let you know whenever

• 2:16:41

I go live with those things I do a lot of tabletop RPG stuff so if that interests you

• 2:16:49

that is a big part of my life it's something that I love doing and I also you know work

• 2:16:54

on ashes of creation so if you would like to check out the products that I'm working

• 2:16:58

on head on over to ashes of creation and all of the places and come check out what we're

• 2:17:03

doing because we post lots yeah social media game is awesome yeah we have been we've been

• 2:17:10

at it so like I said we've got some good processes and ways and it's worked out really well for

• 2:17:15

us and I know that we do want to do more things and as we get closer to launch you'll be seeing

• 2:17:20

a lot more stuff coming online and no folks have been like oh we'd like to see more live

• 2:17:25

streams and more of this and it's you know you have to make the cadence in which you

• 2:17:29

want things to to the excitement to be there right and I think that as you get closer to

• 2:17:34

launch that's when you do those bigger moments and have more streams and have more content

• 2:17:38

creators that are part of your your your content cadence but I think that when you're early

• 2:17:44

in development that is not a smart or wise thing to do we don't want to like amp up hype

• 2:17:49

so much that people are like you're gonna launch when we're not you know we're not there

• 2:17:53

yet yeah it's you know yeah I find that nice yeah not me patiently waiting for merch I

• 2:18:02

know you guys mentioned that too we're like you know we we are definitely have worked

• 2:18:08

towards merchandise but I think that the other side of it is the people who want merch and

• 2:18:13

then there's people who are gonna be like why are you guys selling merch right right

• 2:18:16

I want merch it's a balancing I can't believe how many people love the WispWelk so much

• 2:18:26

and I also didn't think Steven would let that pass I thought he was gonna be like Margaret

• 2:18:31

what the hell are you doing why are you designing this it's ridiculous now now everyone loves

• 2:18:37

it I'm like oh that's so cool and the animators what they did it just it's like everything

• 2:18:44

that I wanted because I told him I was like I really wanted to be like you just think

• 2:18:47

it's a giant snail and then you go to attack it and then it just stands up and you're like

• 2:18:54

watch it was really cool seeing that being animated and in that desert showcase like

• 2:18:59

watching it go through where I was like man I didn't even realize it was gonna have like

• 2:19:03

the snail animation then yeah you see it like stand up they're like this thing looks so

• 2:19:06

freaking cool yeah I love the idea I love the idea of it like biggest now and then you

• 2:19:12

like as a major ranger you just shoot at it and it just like stands up and starts running

• 2:19:16

towards you like oh my god and it has like gross legs too like I want the legs to be

• 2:19:25

just nasty just like like old wrinkly man legs I love it yeah it's fun I don't get to

• 2:19:39

design as much stuff now as our team has grown a lot the designers have taken over a lot

• 2:19:44

of it there's there's some that I get designed every once in a while but it's a little spider

• 2:19:49

it was so close to you oh I know the little spider they were so adorable I got to design

• 2:19:55

that I was like I gotta make people like spiders cool little scary but it's okay I added that

• 2:20:04

stuff to my cart and then I forgot to buy it but then I remember the day after it rolled

• 2:20:10

over I was like no even as Jamie I like was mopey and upset yeah you know we try to balance

• 2:20:20

it out we're like we have more masculine more feminine sets and then more things like it

• 2:20:25

kind of depends on what the designers need so we've been really focusing it around the

• 2:20:29

content that they're designing and what the different groups that they're trying to design

• 2:20:34

for like the set that's out right now as we're recording in April of 2023 it's kind of like

• 2:20:40

the ups of Vera so it's very interesting so if you read the mail carrier yeah they're

• 2:20:47

the mail carriers it's the gray short company trading company which is really cool yeah

• 2:20:53

it's very neat seeing this those things come to fruition and working really closely with

• 2:20:57

the lore team has been really fun and seeing what they design and really my job is in that

• 2:21:03

process is just making sure that everything fits with like the creative the creative art

• 2:21:08

direction that Steven wants so that nothing strays from what he has envisioned in regards

• 2:21:14

to the branding and style of Ashes of Creation I love that Pegasus so much it doesn't fit

• 2:21:23

this set and I'm like oh my gosh yeah there's a reason why it's part of this set goes with

• 2:21:32

the gray short trading company you'll find out why exactly yeah mystery I'm gonna say

• 2:21:37

everyone in our discord was like losing their mind over it they're like this is the best

• 2:21:41

mount that has ever come out yeah we have a Pegasus from before it's like the red Pegasus

• 2:21:46

I think yeah designed with like the corgis like royal set so we have had Pegasus before

• 2:21:53

but this one was a new one I honestly I'm so excited to see the animation with the clouds

• 2:21:58

and things on it I'm like yeah they'll do amazing they always do so yeah very cool all

• 2:22:06

right well we won't keep you any longer I know we're gonna keep going on tangents like

• 2:22:11

tummy prowling all right well thank you so much for hanging out with us so much it's

• 2:22:18

gonna be like the lore of the rings doesn't have like 10 different endings all right thank

• 2:22:21

you so much we'll cut this short thank you so much for coming on and thank you everyone

• 2:22:26

for tuning in and we will see you on the next one thank you yeah thanks everybody yes have

• 2:22:31

a good night and do the thing worried about George and his dinner this portion of all

• 2:22:36

that like feed me all right guys see you in the next one