Matt Chat 182: Chris Taylor on the Fall of Gas Powered Games

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182 quite possibly one of the most important episodes of match had ever as you know I've been doing the show for over three years now recorded over 40 interviews with all men are people in the games industry publishers programmers developers designers marketing people who named it i don't think any of those previous interviews matches the level of emotional intensity of the one you're about to see now as you may know mr. Chris Taylor has launched a kickstarter project called Wildman a fusion of the civilization style game with the action RPG genre games like Diablo and dungeon siege unfortunately the kickstarter project that he lost has not gone well at all now if the if he fails to meet his funding goal could mean the extinction of not only wild man but also gas powered games and one of the best and most beloved studios in the business and it can also mean the end of Chris Taylor's career in the as a game designer developer so the stakes really could not be higher so as you're watching this video if you think that Chris and gas power games and a wild man are things that are worth supporting please stop the video go to Kickstarter make the pledge as soon as possible and then come back and watch the rest at the end of this is a interview with chris i'll have a new hall food on who's also a well-known game designer and developer to talk also about a wild man i should support we've got a lot to cover here so without further ado here is mr. Chris Taylor.
Well so you haven't seen any my updates on the Kickstarter why what's going on all because like the Kickstarter is going so poorly that last Friday I laid off in the fourth day it was so dismal I said there's really it's really going to be a it's really gonna be a long shot to find that to fund it.
It's a long shot now i'm up for gambling I could tell people all jump off a two-story building but I'm not jumping off a 30-story building like that's just foolish and I think what happened after that first week.
Actually you know what we can just I don't know we can jump into the thing here on I can tell a little bit of it but I'm to be honest with you of you know I it looks so bad i thought well there's no point in risking these folks livelihood and the only reason I was really upset in the video is because I really thought that when I lay them off I'm not going to see them again they're really gone because they're gonna go get jobs they're talented people and that's going to be the end of gas powered games I'm kind of shocked about all this because the you have done a lot of these Kickstarter's and so they all these really they take a long time is always within like the last week that this suddenly this big rush people ask me that they wanted to know why I felt so shitty after the fourth day and I said because if you don't if you look at the numbers compared to you you have to decide by side comparisons um our numbers were off by an order of magnitude like a zero was missing and it would've been great if the thing had kicked off and I done 300,000 the first day and then 50,000 the second day and then it trailed off to junk because i'd say well we'll probably see the same 300,000 at the other end because that's how they generally go but we saw seventy-five thousand dollars and the trouble is that a lot of games in this in this category of established game design studios were asking for between 500,000 men they funded in the first day or two the whole thing got to a hundred percent so when I some eyewitness was at like one you know 112 113 I realized there was something is wrong you know and I don't like to think of myself as a quitter.
I didn't want to quit we wanted to continue to fund again we had like 30 people that could potentially be on the team like you know that that were from that as the company was shrinking and downsizing and we have 30 people so I didn't know how many of those 30 people were going to keep when the Kickstarter starts off and you have this terrible terrible start.
Like I said you're off by an order of magnitude and you think well even in the absolute best-case scenario being a complete optimist you're looking at losing probably half those people down to 15 people so then you then you have to do the math and say okay so i'm going to lay off 15 people i'm going to hurt a lot of feelings and it's gonna be it's gonna be a really ugly situation are if you look at it and think well if it's so pessimistic that I'm if I'm if it's so it's looking so poor i may as well just clean that just clean the slate and then everybody gets what's coming to them are they get a fair shake to go and get a job.
Are they get their severance they get their pto and when I say get their severance I mean a lot of folks just didn't get anywhere near what I would have liked to have paid them are historically gpg historically gpg we paid hardly any severance because the times were so tough back in 2006-2007 and I gave people computers i gave him chairs i gave them anything I could as a sort of a psychology call it something you know instead of instead of just thanks very much have a nice day arm so this time around we were trying to pay off the layoffs we did last year we try to give everybody a week for every year they were here which was which is fine but when you get into the deeper deeper you cut deeper into the company your severance number goes way way up because you're laying off people that have been here 12 years 13 years so you just can't you can't do it when you're in when you're in a tough situation so we ended up giving very split but we didn't have a honoring that to the to that extent we couldn't we could only pay a fraction of that and so I realized if you've been a company for 12 or 13 years and you get no severance for that and you get your your pto account paid out which we asked everyone to keep their pto burn their pto down in other words to help the company not carry liability forward we wanted people to go take the time off so that if and but things did get bad we wouldn't have a that liability in the trouble is that folks are so hard-working that they want to stay and work and so you're like they don't want to burn down with that meant the runway of the company was not much smaller so it's just like my god between all of these factors i was just like that that Kickstarter is just not going well enough because people are gonna lose out and they're not going to get anything close they're gonna just get their last paychecks Oh arm i was a i was in a tough spot but anyway I'm digressing this is this has been a rough this has been a rough couple of weeks and arm to make the two to finish here arm we saw a little bit of resurgence we've been having conversations with folks and we've been armed bring them back with eyes wide open as i call it so that folks can arguably take some of the risk with the company and not put liability back into the company so we can kind of go through the project but I was gonna say the thing that people don't know is that I have friends that I listened to in the industry and I get their advice and I have some friends at a very passionate and i got a phone call from a friend who said to me when I told him I was what that I was going to have to do a layoff he said to me well whatever you have to cut the Kickstarter down because people are going to be upset that you're continuing to run the Kickstarter if you've laid off the team so I another friend i said to him.
Yeah so I'm going to shut the Kickstarter down my eye got a very you know I've got some advice and some feel that and I and I thought about it my thought yeah that that makes sense you know people are gonna be upset with me my reputation is is out there so my friend said no you can't shut the Kickstarter down your you're gonna be screwed if you cut the Kickstarter down here we're gonna hate you they're going to think why are you shutting the Kickstarter down there like come you get the reason you're doing a Kickstarter is to raise the money to pay the people of course you can have the people the Kickstarter so why people should know that if the thing is successful you will you will find it you'll hire you will be able to build the team and the game so i was just stuck i called it.
Roe versus Wade there's no right answer your you have a group of people who are divided right up the middle at least in my friends minds they modeled it they modeled it out there like all get upset know these people get upset I was like well I'm just gonna ask people but I can't go to people and ask them unless they know the whole story because the story's going to leak out I can't say to someone should keep the Kickstarter going or not and not tell them why I'm asking so i have to tell people and of course at this point I'm completely fried.
It's friday afternoon and I've been having meetings all day long with people there's tears there's goodbyes people are drinking there is because of what clearly evident nobody came into my office and threw themselves on the floor and said no Chris this is gonna work this Kickstarter is going to be a success.
No one said that nobody felt that it would even as we're talking now the numbers are catastrophic they're not even in people people say to me they got I've got if I think I've got a friend out there in the world someplace who has and have has a different spin on those numbers the you can race i'm telling you where an optimistic bunch but this is why businesses go broke because optimism people think the money will come in the 11th hour you know and it's going to save their company and it i know from experience I know a lot of wealthy powerful people and I used to once upon a time believe that if I called them up and four.
In the morning crying my eyes out telling them that I needed to borrow a million dollars that they would give it to me i can tell you in my 15 years running the business this is not true wealthy people are wealthy because they don't give their money away and they don't lend it to their wacky entrepreneurial friends who are always in trouble financially you know they just don't do it so I realized that so i said to myself look at I don't have any get right now the company doesn't know any money.
The best thing we can do is let people take their their make the decision to take their 17 pto and if somebody you know absolutely insisted i said well i didn't come in on monday and talk to me and I I kind of had it in my mind after they got the weekend to clear their heads if someone came back and said you know have been thinking about all weekend you know I really want to figure this out figure out how we can stay stick with the company but take the financial strain of the company you know I was willing to hear that but my head was not terribly straight like I I I you know in hindsight to be fair I should help the company meeting and got everybody in the room and said here's the story but I know what would have happened I think subconsciously everybody would say yeah we're gonna do this and then risk taking a giant risk and I was like no no no it's the human spirit does that people like I call it charging the castle barehanded people will do this and this is not a smart thing right that does not you know you watch them you watch the movie 300 right you think oh that's really awesome movie is very heroic king leonidas you know no that was dumb he lost he died he doesn't get to see his wife and kid right and all these incredibly powerfully trained warriors all die and they could just come back and regrouped with the rest of it because they because they were because you know it's always so to me it was like no no this is not the Alamo no I'm not Davy Crockett santa ana.
You can have it and i'll be back another day.
That's how I felt that's what's that's where that's where my head was at so anyways we're here now I've got some folks back arm and we're gonna um we're gonna wait and see what happens little Kickstarter and we're gonna go ahead if it funds and if it doesn't fund we're now we're now I'm emotionally and mentally and hopefully for many financially prepared to deal with the consequences of that.
There you go yeah I'm surprised they're really i thought you know I've worked with the was a Dave Marshall the shadow great campaign and the the road redemption campaign lot of these other ones and you know 300 I don't know what percentage 320,000 is not too good at the math right now but that seemed like a you know a decent percentage just for still got 21 days left to go to be expecting a huge surge as you get into like 277 day six-day mark but hold them there.
Yeah I'm definitely gonna come down the inside of the guy that said I just give it a little longer you know well if you think about it now with the folks that are in here there's about 13 people on the Wildman team and some admin if but the game funds then we'd only going to have to hire two more people because that's all we have money for our the known ballparking it you know are so 15-person team and then what you do is you try to will be weary structure around the notion that some people blood people are going to get full pay and we're going to probably have to work a lot with the community of people backers a lot of people said they'll test the game and so you know who I am I pull a lot of numbers out of my ass I'll be honest with you but I do think ballpark we thought if we got 22 million or three million like a lot of the other games you know we have we have that everybody would have a job so we were very hopeful now that may be called a foolish optimism but it was just it was just going by the patterns arm games cost a lot of money to make like this so I think you know we we got the writing was on the wall there in the first day that it was probably if very best it was gonna be it was going to be 1.1 but remember the Commission's come out of that so you only have 1 million then you have physical goods coming out of that which you might be able to defer some of that until closer to the end but you still money's money you still have to have the money to pay for the physical good so have you have to carve out of the mouths of the amount is not 1.1 million dollars and believe me when you're making a game like this on a tight budget every penny has to be accounted for.
I had reconciled alright pardon me I had what's the word i had accepted the fact that i would probably go without pay for the bulk of this i can just use my personal savings which is not Lots but you know what i was thinkin I'm thinking if we can get this game to market and maybe that would be a turning point for gpg and that will finally see some royalties.
I've we've shipped many titles that have sold a million copies and we have not had a royalty stream from those games people are shocked i tell people know you understand when you when you get a royalty advance from a company at twenty percent as a round number you're really getting a five hundred percent loan you have to earn royalties now arm if you borrowed a million dollars are called advances if you've got a million dollars you now must pay back five million dollars after all the deductions from the game the game sells 459 dollar fifty dollars there-there's cost of goods there's insurance there's freight there's returns.
There's marketing they call it mdf deduction deduction deduction deduction deduction and then you get a piece that's left which could be thirty dollars and now you get your twenty percent of thirty dollars so now you get six bucks and you have to pay back the advances with six dollars under this structure the publisher of course makes all of its investment back pays for all of its internal costs profits has a healthy profit.
Then the developer will get paid this is called advances against role model this model by the way is was was taken from the recording industry from what i understand you ever heard the old stories where the guy's the rock-and-roll band that was no that was nobody's you know this the record label arm uh funded their album in the studio and then and then they got the sold millions of records but on the two were they destroyed every hotel room they stayed in our so that when the record company said well when you take the take the record sales and you deduct this and this and this and this and this and you get down to your royalty that you made used to Louis about 2 million dollars i love that because now we don't record tell rooms but we do drink a lot of soda pop I have to say so obviously is he as I recall you can we drink a lot of busy now we don't we are too expensive I mean that's the reality right i mean we drink a lot of gue drink a lot of terrible soda pop because it's like 50 cent sack and these are a dollar bottle so we try to we we do have our Mexico know anyway I digress but the the long story short is our advances against royalties models a terrible model uh and you can make quite success you can be quite successful in your own mind you can sell a million copies people will look at you like you're you should be rich but in fact you're looking for your next deal to find your company this is the way in this and you know this is a this is just industry-wide now what people have tried to do is they try to come up with models where you get to pay you get paid like a flat fee like and I've actually been a fan of this you know like the game goes to market you get five percent you know you get ten percent and people like that number feels low but when you look at the fact that you'd be sent to be paid on copy one that was sold at least you're going to get a check.
You know uh but uh the the so the business is really hard any developer will tell you the business is really hard and.
We've had good times and we've worked with some incredibly generous publishers I have to say and the people in those publishers the individuals are some of them are just wonderful and feel your pain and there's they're inside of a structure and you know it's always comical to me when one of those guys inside the publisher goes out and start to game development studio and then you talk to him like three years later or later he's just he's like just just hope I can't believe how hard this is holy shat this is hard and I go yeah like it's it's it's it's sort of a sort of those words indicating i don't know it's kind of satisfying.
I mean it's typical german word for that children photo or something like cash yeah yeah is that german word but thats where revengeful these are not people that I don't like these are people that I i really like I really like a lot of folks industry you know even be able to really piss me off in the industry i still like them because there's something about them that I appreciate arm it's it's a character flaw of mine to like people as much as i do I think I think I think I think that i'm always trying to make people happy and like me and always have a good experience when they work with me on that does not make for a good businessman the good good businessman I I said it before Steve Jobs he's the art type of what you need to do to succeed in America you need to be able to really break your foot off in people's asses if they don't give you what they want what you want and I can't do that.
I I don't have that I can't sleep at night.
Being an asshole all day long and I've read every almost I'm gonna go on a limited I read every book on Steve Jobs it's like six or seven or eight uh justjust autobiographies biographies i just read them all and I just was fascinated with him he just every time I read it the book i read the same story but I told from a different writer and I was always like how did you sleep at how does he sell apple and not give valued employee stock steve wozniak is running around giving his giving these guys Stockman.
Hands behind his back and he's pissed it was in the act like you don't give them stop they don't deserve stock and I'm just going my god i have stocked everybody practically that I brought into the company in the early days and we we basically had to give stop giving stock people because it was too expensive to give stock like all the corporate documentation you have to do all the legal fees.
I would just rather written on a note piece on a post-it notes in here you get some stock because i want to save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in and fees but where'd you park your car this morning underneath in the garage wife as long as those in the handicap spots what o.o jobs like the park is right here but that always starts steve jobs at Park in the handicapped spot all I could just saying oh that's that's funny to very high park Michael Liu you threw me there hey I need a coffee to you I i I've had nothing I am I wipes away right now and she normally makes me coffee in the morning and for whatever reason getting the kids off to school and went one of my kids shoes was out in the yard that he was like where's the shoe and so i'm out like looking at or the whole house birds like wears shoes she has to be in the house right choose out in the yard because he threw it at his brother yesterday because he wouldn't have a bite of of a dried piece of bread I mean these are a six-year-old the ten-year-old they're just crazy right like to get it from mother but anyway I was a I was rambling is what i was doing and and I tell you uh being trying to be trying to keep everybody on your team trying to keep everybody happy trying to keep the bills paid try to do these deals with the publishers it will tear you in half and I've done it for 15 years this may is our 15th anniversary and I think wild man is is going to be a lot of work if we get it funded but I think it could be a turning point for me because i would like to see are the company uh.
Get that game to market and generate income that doesn't have any deductions and it doesn't we don't owe anybody any money are therefore we can keep building that game and building that game and actually start generating revenue and really become a real a real business you know if you run a grocery store you you're running a real business you sold for bread you make money you don't owe you don't you know it's not these this ridiculous sort of scheme that were in here so that that's that's my that's my ramble let me tell you about some of the fans the fans passion sound like you could use a some good news right you know when the Wildman project first or when the Kickstarter first launched to think ahead maybe four or five messages in my my email but you gotta check out this game we gotta go we gotta get chris taylor back on and tell us about this and have pledged if you pledge I said yeah of course you know i pledged that you know that i think was what $35 for the digital copy and one of the fans just jumped in like this and so that's not good enough you need to get the Box copy and sent me a donation like a hundred and fifty bucks right on the spot.
I just a bump you know for me about my pledge up to the no box copy levels so obviously there is a lot of enthusiasm for this project out there well that's to me that's that's that is an emotionally that that really sets me off those stories and uh I there's nothing more.
It is nothing like like just give me give me a second again sure oh but you know the the support from people who really seemed to understand what's going on is just really really moving and he gotta remember it's just video game we're talking about here there's people in the world that don't have clean drinking water there are people that don't that are dying from diseases that are curable if they just had the medicine right um yeah this is video games this video games what the hell are we doing why are we losing our focus here my my my uh my wife's mom who's a incredible woman is has been baking banana bread to build an orphanage in Uganda for this past year and a half I guess roughly she's put everything she's got into it she's retired she's 67 home and she's just just incredible amount of energy in this woman and and she wanted an IndieGoGo to build the wall for twenty thousand dollars and I think she got ten i don't remember 10 or 10 or 11 times you get to 20 and she got an IndieGoGo there's a setting where you can take a ten percent and get the money if it doesn't fund that option isn't available in kickstarter and I'll be honest with you I wouldn't i wouldn't have selected because if you don't have enough money to do it you don't have enough money to it by again i'm i'm off topic here so she she she struggled it was good ran for three months and she managed to get 10 or 11 or something thousand dollars i'm actually I apologize because I don't remember because I just it's been a busy time for me as well and the arm thing is we get to 75 thousand dollars in the first day because video games you know frankly are more important building a wall for a run around an orphanage if they don't build this wall around the orphanage others a chance that the kids will be abducted and um and and they'll never see them again.
These kids are it's not only want to mention what happens to these kids and you know you kind of have to put your life into perspective in a wild man doesn't have to fund for my life to go on I will I will go and do something else in harmony but maybe i'll be a professional whiner and complain inner about the business if people want to hear me bitch about it but the truth is is that on god you gotta keep stuff in perspective so this this outpouring of support arm haha it's been wonderful i got a Felix i'll keep the last name anonymous but he wrote me a metal a wild man tune i believe its metal the guys in the office it's metal it's pretty it's pretty it's pretty intense arm uh i'll send you a copy he said we can have it and maybe we can play it at the end of the bit into the show or something like that.
I i loved it i think it's awesome he brought me to tears of course because of his his thoughtfulness it's the thought ah but the end of the day you know I mean we've had such a great run for 15 years even though it's been painful at times it's been good at times there's been some good money made in there are not enough for independence but certainly enough to to have toys and goodies to have that have new laptops and have you know some laughs so you know what it's not all bad you know you can't you can't.
It's the friendships frankly it was the same goodbye to people who wouldn't see every day that I didn't give a shit about the money my ad you know something since I'm onto the rambling my face off people should know I've turned down multiple opportunities to sell the company we're talking in the twenties of millions of dollars many many offers and invariably I said no we did have one acquisition go almost to completion but it got complicated along the way because we thought we found a partner that it would work but the end of the day we never did we never did end up selling the company and I don't regret that there's days when i'm like i can't make payroll I'm thinking God you know 20 million dollars would be great right now but of course if you sell the company you don't need to make payroll anymore but um the the point the point is that it wasn't about the money I'm just not a guy who chases money i love going to the store like everyone else in buying this and buying this and buying this but um you have your kids and your family of your home those are the priorities if you can pay for those things and have food in the cupboards that's what matters so I try to try to stay focused around that on but no I mean I took that we spent we spent 1.4 million on kings and castles and we needed six and we almost got the game signed and then we went excuse me we want to work on age of empires online because of a risk management we knew that age of empires online was gonna be a ton of fun and it was going to be a secure and and it we always were fans of the game where we could have bet the company then and you would have heard me I'm gonna be on your show.
Haha oh in November of 2010 with a story like this and you know but it was delayed in you know what I can't tell you how much I appreciate what Microsoft did for us.
Microsoft saved gpg or or took the odds of of losing gpg from about 90 percentile chance down 20 I mean they really they really saved my ass I mean you don't know how many times I walk through this office saying when people are frustrated and they're running around trying to get you know stuff made I'm like remember they saved our ass you know keep it in perspective they really did and we thought we'd um we thought the economy would improve and things with Chef man alive video games man.
Uh I saw a number this morning more sales are down weren't you know all the percentages are or are dropping and we're in transition.
There's there's new players coming in got you know this guy over here's got a billion-dollar your business this guy here is asset sale you know what i mean and you're like Wow where will these guys are selling their assets you think of these guys with all the money would step in and just save them but they're like no that's not how the game is played this is business.
There's no saving anyone you don't save things you you let things die that need to die and you let the things succeed that are supposed to succeed this is called capitalism this is what our country is built on and if you if you if you fiddle with capitalism if you start turning the knobs and dials you start subsidizing things you screw everything up.
You know when I heard that corn syrup was so successful in years in the last 10 years that came a sugar sugar cane growers lost their businesses you know because everybody's when corn syrup so I'm like what did that subsidy really accomplished and then we get breast cancer and colon cancer and prostate cancer and all these cancers and we don't know where they come from and I'm like really you don't know where they come from.
It's the shit we eat right like it is this is the problem with this country is it did it take it took us 10 years to figure out that that that that there's too much shit in our food and we've gotta start eating food that's grown in farms where we live and you know that was like to me just like I'm i'm just going yeah so I've always believed that that you have to let us the natural system play out i would like right now for people who cannot afford who pledged Don Wildman to increase their pledges and push themselves out of their comfort zone to take those pledges back they cannot pledged their the last nickel in their in their savings it's just not okay to do that now if they want to because it makes them feel good and it's giving them more than what they would have spent that money on then your choice of course but I don't think wild man should be funded on the generosity and kindness of people because they feel bad arm it should be funded instead because people are just basically you know investing investing in a game i have to tell you though because I'm sometimes.
Just completely rambling it talk about not my word in edgewise this this could be the best this could be the most outrageous show you've ever had it might it might do it might be a good numbers just purchased because of pure ridiculousness.
Okay um I was telling a member of the press uh who was very kind to listen to me tell tell the story arm and I said to him you know what I don't want people pledging and he said he said to be Chris people are not investing in Wildman the game they are investing their money in the spirit of Kickstarter arm because they're investing in you and your game design and your company and they want to see the next Chris Taylor game that was there i was denied holy shit i said that's a that your head that's a that's beautiful can i use that he said yeah sure go ahead i said i should love to get you on a video blog saying that because a video update because uh because I you saying something that I have a hard time saying but i think by by quoting him kind of paraphrasing him i think that you get what I'm the value of it which is that arm that people can in on Kickstarter really shouldn't be pre-ordering a game they should be investing in people who they want to see continue to do what they do arm so our I said okay okay I'm gonna lay off that you know I'm not gonna get down on people if they if they're be pledging $200 and they can only afford 2000 yeah I'm gonna back off that but you would not get a something else no no I get to see the pledges right I get to go into the account i get to see they came from there is so many pledges from my friends and family that I really know they're never going to play while yeah so just like I'm just like okay I better better.
This better work I I you know when you know my dad called me up and told me that he's pledging I just like I just was shaking my head I was like I don't I don't know but god bless him true you know I'm not religious but God boys ok sounds like you're a little uncomfortable with the whole Kickstarter setup.
Oh yeah oh yeah there's no question about it.
I actually said to a chad here I said you know what we should never have put a ten-thousand-dollar to hear anything over you know frankly anything over a hundred twenty-five dollars arm i had a friend email me and he said you better put a really high tier in so i can put a lot of money in here's the thing you can put up to ten thousand dollars in and buy a hundred twenty-five dollars here you can call me on the phone and you can see chris i wanna i wanna invest in gbg Chris I want to lend you a hundred grand privately like like really I didn't need the ten-thousand-dollar tears but people unfortunately what they do is they see that and then they feel like there's an onus put on them to see how hi there their pain threshold is so in hindsight no more.
No I wouldn't have put it in and if I ever do this again which I I don't want to never say never but arm i would keep the cheers down to a level where you kind of feel like people can't lure gonna lose a rent money because they're caught up emotionally like I'm actually fearful of the last two days of this campaign.
I'm fearful that if that 980,000 dollars that a hundred and twenty thousand dollars is going to come from people i love I do not want that to happen I will call people up who pledge and tell him to get rid of that pledge because know this thing should fail if it's destined to fail.
I am NOT I it's not even about pride its will care for people forget my pride forget my ego.
Holy shit my ego left the building last Friday when I when I made that game I mean any anything i had left was gone so it's all about it's all about just protecting people you love really and again remember this is just a video game so let's not let's not lose that you know I.
Yeah so this match after Chris chat today.
Well you know people we tend to hear you not the not for me so thank you I mean you're very nice a nice guy to have these these attitudes i think it's so I think it speaks well of you that you're not just out there are using you please send me everything and maybe we can get a five or six million dollar why they call it when you go beyond the minimum gold stretch goals and so on yeah we can't get to stretch goals see a lot of my friends and then the man these guys I mean they were worried doing Kickstarter but they got to their goal within a couple days then they started into the stretch goals and you can really drive a frenzy when your friends stretch goals.
It's like the game is on right then know that you know the games coming so when you pledge after the goal is Matt you know the money is spent you can retract it but you know you're pledging for something that's gonna happen.
Well we can't even talk about our stretch goals I mean we have stretch goals to go to linux to go to Mac are the game is the game's design fundamentally could be played on a mobile platform like a like a guy on ipad so on but we can't even get to that it's ridiculous to talk about that when we're at 300 so there's this there's no strip there's not we're not going to get to a stretch goal so uh you know those guys really caught it's like surfing they caught the wave and they served it in they look good the whole way I was paddling out in the water and a wave came in and threw me onto the the hot dog Shack and my feet are sticking out like this and I'm like okay okay let's see what next who are now which of these Kickstarter projects are you comparing yourself to you know I don't really necessarily want to say but you know all pretty much the guys who are armed you know you could figure it out there that they're the I mean it's not that I don't want to say it's it's it's just that I don't wanna draw I don't want to draw any negative attention i think that this whole thing feels like it's got a negative energy around to it not a positive energy arm and so I don't want to do that.
But you can figure it out real fast if you just go on kickstarter and do a circus 3i no.34 projects that I'm you know wondering but anyway I maybe could back up a little bit just say why did you choose to find a wild man through a Kickstarter campaign to begin with you know that's a great question because it leads to a really important series of events we lost with three projects last year and people ask me they said hey we're gonna go to Kickstarter with kings and castles and I said well I'm my studio is completely busy with 80 people and we're all busy.
Well we lost all those projects inside of eight weeks so all the projects were cancelled and they were cancelled for reasons I like to believe had nothing to do with us.
That's what i'm told i was told to quote one person on you guys were great it's nothing you did internal changes blah blah.
Anyway it doesn't really matter those are sort of that I could do a coffee table book on things publishers say that try to make you feel better hack and you know what and God bless them right these are some of these people come over and give me the speech are good friends let alone the publisher so um we then had about five publishers that we were talking to about getting some more work and one by one those publishers called to say that either the restructuring that their management is unsure if they want to move in that area arm.
Some people just don't call you back you know you know Brian Fargo's video wasteland 2 of video I tell you have not seen it you should go watch it because it's still up there.
He does a little parody of what it's like trying to sign a game and it's it's hilarious because it's so close to it's a parody but it's so in in spirit it really models in the problem that the biggest problem i have with publishers is when they kind of know they don't have any money like the smaller ones they come by and they spend a day at the office and they talked and talked and talked.
And then what they do is they ask you to do a proposal so you spend anywhere between a week and a month of someone's time and sometimes multiple people on the team and this costs you you know arguably tens of thousands of dollars to put a proposal together and then they tell you that they're not interested in moving in our direction so can you imagine what it's like trying to run a business where you have to spend into you know you have to spend money speculatively I i call it skirt lifting i have a name for it it's not a very good name it's probably right up there with binders full of women but I tell you what arm it just feels like you just after you've just you've been violated on some level you know it's it's like you you just think you just think God would you stop it.
Get your hands off like you know like don't touch me is how like stop the hat dammit because you're just taking away you're not you're not even gonna buy me dinner you know.
Well actually sometimes they do buy you dinner but you know it's a two-hundred-dollar dinner for forty thousand dollars in InDesign documentation and phone calls in in overhead right you know so anyways maybe maybe that we should include that the video what do you think haha it's just the reality is called business development right you have to develop business.
It costs money to develop business it's why when you're a couple of guys in a garage and you're going to start a company you have no overhead you have no overhead so you can business the first business that you develop has no costs overhead costs associated to it you might even have another job and you do that weekend and evening but now you have us the office.
You gotta rent you've got insurance you've got all these costs and you've got a team of people that you're carrying and you're now waiting for that next deal to come in.
It's called you have to bridge which means of dollars from the bridge has to come in from profit from the previous deal.
Well that costs that could cost that could be a million dollars two million dollars.
Well you it's really hard to build two million dollars into a deal with the publisher saying we're not spending that money on the game.
Why are we gonna give you that money and your.
No I guess I can't have to profit if you don't have profit you're you're you're basically going to do what I've done for 15 years you're going to go hand-to-mouth for deal to deal and that forces you to do bad deals because the lawyer on the other end is pushing a term and you have to cave in on those deal terms because you don't have any money to sustain the company is named for this it's called um and I'm gonna just think of it I there's an with with ok it's called drying drying the other guy out.
Okay that's one term ensure that your Donald Trump has another term for it but um sure the action sure that bit i'm sure the guys out of Harvard colorado is it what we resolve where's the the pawnshop business guys come from i think they call it American business but it's what I call it is drying the other guy out because the longer you said and kind of chat you basically that company that you're dealing with his put all its resources into that single game i've heard me that single deal and then you have to finally sign and take whatever terms they offer because you have no money left to run the company drying the other guy out what a great idea that is that i did i shock you by ending our yeah so caveman I'm sorry a wild man has a kickstarter and I guess this arose this kind of out of a desperation would you say your I mean had gone to publishers with the concept and they were this proved to be too expensive with the design documents and you know that's that's probably where I arm i get you know and I in turn myself into a little bit of trouble Wildman was a game that I designed for a platform i called Project Mercury and wild man was so basically was supposed to run a web browser but then we realized after all the projects were canceled that we needed something that we could take to kickstarter and Kickstarter wasn't even the first idea Kickstarter was like an idea that we would have with all the other publishers at that slowly fell away and one for one reason or another and um so so we kicked well man into high gear just started putting everybody working on that and um arm gosh I almost forgot the question now we want worked on this for the idea originally come from.
Oh so it was it was it was a typo i like to pull a lot of the ideas that i have out of my ass.
That's where all great ideas are born um no I'm kidding that was just well frankly I should have got you just qualify it and then it would be true it's where all of my great ideas are born okay I don't think you're great ideas matter born in my ass okay although i'm happy to lend you some of mine if you're short.
Um some but anyways uh my uh wild man just was me.
Doodling like I do on the on the on the whiteboard or on the mic my paper here in my office and I was thinking about how i could build something that would stream because i had that icon the thing is with web technologies you've got you've got limited cpu but you really have limited you that you don't have an installation footprint so you have to pull the stuff down from the server and then you get the browser caches and you've got a couple of things when you put all these constraints of the way browser works you starting to me that sort of defines how the game should work so I that's where the the idea of doing it.
Action RPG that takes place that streams over this world but um was Chad who came to my office one day I think with dad and he said hey you know what uh there's an opportunity here to do something with that sort of similar to what people know as a mobile but not mobile but something where you can do things with and I thought that's great so i started doodling around and arm came up with this whole idea of the war zones that fit inside of an action RPG so it's a it's still a team effort you know it on that level where I take ideas from people because they walk into my office and effectively I tell them what I'm doing is looking at doing doesn't do this and then they say oh you thought of this if you gotta listen to that this and then what i do is my my job is to kind of filter out the ideas and come up with something that at all fits together holds together.
Oh so you know it's still it's still really my ass i might my ass is a team is a team effort arm it's either my balls are my ass you notice that comes up in conversation only the two could be combined god what what yeah so um so the where am I going with this so that's where wild man came from so we started working a wild man but we didn't we didn't say oh oh i remember your question question was do we take the publishers well i started to New around the idea that I should float past publishers but my feeling was you know they're not going to sign this they're gonna just look at it they're just going to see the idea i'm going to spend gonna fly on a plane down to this city in that city i'm going to sit in the boardroom gonna waste you know collectively waste a week of my time they'll tell me all the same thing that I've heard in the last 45 years and they'll want to own it don't want to own the IP and I'll work my ass off and i'll be back right back where I started your to later and it's just gpg will be 17 years old and i'll be on Matt chat telling a story it's a vicious cycle you have to break the cycle so here's what I'm here's what I'm going to do if it doesn't fund and it's just that my of wight now.
Aight doesn't charge through the door with a checkbook and says I saw you imagine and I'm so rich that I just don't know what to do with my money until I saw your video and I realized the fates work you know whatever i'll say great but that's not gonna happen that I I dare the universe to prove me wrong okay and the universe and I are good friends and the universe is going to make me look bad.
Ok and have someone charged in there with money and say to me oh by the way i'm just going to give you this money for ten percent or her i'm just gonna give it to of all kinds of my heart and uh so um so I knew that I couldn't just go to publishers although i did email one and they showed some interest but what they what they do is their they they show interest in everything a publisher will never close the door I was talking to UM a friend of mine and he said when i ran a publishing company he said and somebody came in and showed me a shitty idea i would turn to them and say we're not interested in this idea.
Have a nice day and he was really proud of that and i tell you what i am to of him because I you show a publisher the worst idea you say I've got marshmallow guys and they spit acid but they're deployed from an airplane which is cloaked they'll say could you you know what will keep it that you know can you send us some documentation on that when you guys get to a first playable we'd like to see that see what they do is is they don't want to close doors because when battlefield 1942 from dice in Sweden went around all the publishers they all they all took a look at it and they probably gave them their it's sort of like their line of welcome back later but then someone else signed it and you know and in the it was the it was time for Xena's group its I da that signed it and that's a victory right like what they started but everybody else is like oh.
God why didn't you sign battlefield 1942 and so they're always trying to make the person they're talking to think that they're gonna sign it in order to keep the door open while their convincing their management to it that they need to to put this game into the into the into their onto the slate and that leads to a lot of business is going under that whole practice.
I mean one of the things I think about when I'm looking at these Kickstarter games is here is a game that wouldn't have been able to be funded through the traditional you know avenues available here so it's probably unique in some fashion.
It's probably something that people who really care about gaming should invest in if they do want to see some diversity some things that haven't been done a million times and the not so safe bets right so what do you think a wild man has to offer that you're just not going to get from that the traditional published game.
Well we really stack the deck there I mean we've got a game that we've got our we're making it so that you can mod this game i mean let me actually talk about high level features you got an action RPG game now action-rpg has been done to death but people loved it so it's one of those tough situations like if you love first-person shooters would you like it if i made you another first-person shooter.
It's like saying you like cheeseburgers so much and i'm going to start a cheeseburger stand it doesn't make sense it has to have a hook right so the trouble is it's got to be the same but it's got to be different so wild man is the same action RPG game except your character collect technology like civilization when he starts off with a big bone he's got no tak he's just got a bone any now the guy back in drops this club that's been nicely fashioned with this and it's got a little hand grip on it and he picks it up and he goes yeah I got a better toy here to play with any alright okay that's where we began 200,000 years ago.
No I thought that was a really fun story to hang an action RPG on because he can keep going all the way back to medieval times in if there was like an add-on next week all the way up to the laser guns now in addition it that we thought would be interesting if one man began he didn't he was the only one who had a brain it like a big brain like a thinking cognitive brain the opposable thumb whatever it was right he there was insects that are like that were able to use tools and were able to have great language tools language you know the whole thing culture.
Oh that the things that make the thing that makes man so apparently great ok but of course that we don't spend a single they do we talking about how great we are without going were also pretty effed up but nonetheless let's just say we're great and man is going to go out there into the world and and in in conquer it so the games action RPG element i think really is calling on a much more powerful theme then farmboy farm girl that just goes out there for revenge revenge's you know it's okay but it's very cliché I like building your empire as a theme so now when you go to build an empire what happens you run into someone or something that's trying to build its own Empire and guess what not just standing out there with their ass in the wind it got an army they've got technology got walls they've got cowers they're keeping you out of their yard so what do you do you build an army you don't go there single-handedly with the club you just picked off that dead guy know you start unloading your army of guys with clubs that you made because you learn how to make a club you find a club you go and you make your own Club so this is a really this was really fun idea so I was telling people you know if you found soap you'd be like what's this soap thing right.
Well it's bubbly butt soap was one of those things in in the history of man that actually increased our life expectancy by a huge percentage because we kept zzz under control as best we could I mean never heard that like we lived we were 30 years old you you know it's not hard it's low-hanging fruit right if you get to 40 you've given yourself thirty-three percent more life of by just doing a couple simple things now we're getting kinda to the other end of that that curve where it's like we have to invent with did we have to we have to take apart the human genome in order to figure out how to solve the next the next thing so it's getting a little more complicated and even two years onto the end of the average life but back then it was easy and the well easier and I'm sure if you ask them they argue that but the point is that you're fighting it's all these other creatures so that we don't have to have a video game.
We're just killing other human beings because I'll be honest with you I've always tried to design games where I avoid killing humans but you know killing humans as it turns out for humans is more fun than killing bugs and killing critters this is also part of our human condition we seem to like to only kill our own kind so I I wanted an excuse and the guys we brainstormed and we came up with these ideas to to to fight these other these are the critters so and then we thought it was kind of a fun alternate version of hit Earth history now back again to the war zone so you come across of this this bug guy who is like God an army of bugs and now when you kill him are you defeat him the bug guy you get to steal some tech that he's got maybe his bugs had bows archery and all you had was slings and rocks and clubs so now you've got you have a choice do I want this weird soap thing or do I want this because it's a video game we can drive it right we see you can choose the art thing where they can shoot projectiles that looks pretty cool coursework were playing this in twenty thirteen or fourteen so of course where we know damn well that we we're making a video game decision and thinking hmm maybe i'll get the bow on the next guy because they're probably a boat you know probably another chance to get the borrower i'll pick up the soap later wait a second i say i'll pick up the soap later oh that's better than dropping the soap but anyway on it that's the game the game is about playing these over land adventures with your with your hero your wild man who gets less and less wild frankly more and more powerful less wild and he fight these wars.
Hours and steals technology and then continues on overland adventure I on this idea co last this was like this is magical in terms of the way I'm these elements are coming together we did a video we tried to keep the video short we tried to actually try to explain it at a high level like like you're doing a movie trailer didn't work what the kickstarter video has everybody scratching your head going I don't know what the game is so therefore the pledges are just people who just say Chris gpg we trust you with we know that you know what you know what you're doing the the and that vote of confidence is wonderful but it's at what do we got 6,000 pledges and we need to be at you know 18,000 pledges so you know or more umm so so God you know god bless all the people out there who just believe that I know how to make video games because that's that's what I'm seeing they're saying you know how to make video game here's my hundred and fifty two hundred dollars my twenty bucks whatever it is so but anyway you have a clear picture of wild man absolutely I mean I civilizations series is we've got to be one of the most addictive like one of my personal favorites this the idea of somehow combining that with an RPG format is it nowhere is that game on thinking now shit that interested yeah I actually I actually want that game too now so if this doesn't fund i want to go back to Project Mercury and I want to build the game as it was originally intended and i will build it in my basement i will the company will be shut down and it will build in my basement.
The thing is armed I I you know I want people to know that it's not the end of the world in fact building in my basement right now is starting to look better and better and better every day because of the enormity of the stress and the pain that I've experienced the last two weeks.
I'm like I'm like I gotta get through this i can't wait to see how this movie is gonna end because I gotta get on with my life and.
In and turn the page here and and start start building again.
No thanks a lot Chris has been fine your your version of your dialogues they get these are the inside reviews of all this oh oh you would not believe I could talk for I could talk all day about what I've experienced last 15 years and I know that there's only going to be a handful of people that are that find it interesting arm but i will tell you something that's really important that I do not sound like I've got sour grapes arm i think it's been wonderful in so many ways but it's also being armed it's been it's it's it's theirs painful i think that there's there's just you know one day off i'll come up with one sentence closer on how it all feels but right now it is just what it is and and i think the next the next 15 years are probably going to be a little easier now that I know what I know thanks Matt.
It just makes me sad to see the things happening to to this kind of happened to Chris can be shoved in this corner because he's one of the last people in the world that deserve this no I've been doing this for 23 years now i worked for all kinds of different companies and different bosses and something else i'll reiterate that I've said in other places and I'm i'm going to post my own little video on youtube space the specs of people understand is that it's if there is obviously well then the game itself and it's fantastic i think some cool ideas are coming up with it i hope that that people like everybody else will rally together and help to pull us over the line but I also want to say something about Chris himself and as I got to know Chris again as I said before I is that we were both working for k-dog and he was working on Total Annihilation and i was working on Elysium but his office was right next door to do John Carter's office and so whenever I was going up and we're visiting and doing stuff i saw chris taylor all the time but then later on when he moved over to to gas powered games make this is get going i was one of the first people that he contacted to kind of let me know as a mannequin new studio got some cool stuff and then obviously that relationship is what about eventually led the lay the groundwork for Dungeon Siege but it a back in terminal it's 2004 we were starting to work on us on Supreme Commander you know we were starting to do the the backstory for four Supreme Commander and and search flash out what the world was going to be working with a great guy at the time i'm in Congress who was was working on it and we put a lot of interaction going on stuff so i'm working on the Bible for the world and about this time my wife Dana was diagnosed with we're extremely rare dangerous form of breast cancer uh which most of fifty percent of the people were uh we're alive after two years thirty percent of people were alive after 5i and so I it was just I was completely destroyed.
I we'd already gone through a rack I'm Janet had breast cancer before I think about is mostly let's understand is they're different varieties of breast cancer is not a model the thick disease they're all kinds of subvert identities so anyway we're working on the Bible for supreme commander and I was having a very hard time getting through everything else because all I'm thinking about is my future is she gonna be live a block and so Christmassy I was having a real hard time the things and at one point he basically pulled me aside he said you know youre you said I don't you worry about all this other stuff with supreme commander I want you to go home and take care of your wife she's the only important thing right now we cut me a check says go ahead go home take care of your wife and that's what you know I want you to do that that's the only important thing in the world that's who is Taylor purpose and that's why that man is the same business because he cares about his employees he will fight for you he will do anything I can for you and there are so many people I can I work for all kinds of different people in the world but he he's one of those people that he crusading for 40 hour work weeks that doesn't exist in the game industry anywhere else they expect you're going to work a 70-hour what you know most game companies target they look for people who don't were single you know they don't have black and have a kid I don't have to pay insurance on them i can work them 80 hours a week and they don't care though they're just going to be glad to be there and that's not chris at all you know he cares to have a personal life he wants you to have a great life is going off on and I God you know uh that there's just no reason that man should be put out of business and so sorry was getting misty-eyed rule kind of emotional is here whatever but I will fight the debt that map I'm and so back filed me please uh it's a great game they grasp our games like fantastic stuff and make sure this guy stays in business and that's all for this week's episode hope you guys enjoyed that now if you want to support the Wildman Kickstarter i have a link in the show notes to the page you can pledge whatever you would like I think it starts at a dollar but if you donate more how you can get various pledge rewards reward packages it's really exciting stuff and get a box copy if you think it's a hundred twenty-five maybe for that 35 for digital copy all we have to like ten thousand dollars and all kinds of cool stuff so i go there check out the rewards I find out what tier you want to come in at and uh please do that right away had another don't put it off because these guys really need to see shows a fan support as soon as they can get it they need a shot in the arm so to speak so let's go make that happen now as always i want to thank you supported my show how my efforts.
Some people may not realize the the the work that it takes to produce these shows.
I spent hours a gathering footage of rounding up people to interview editing these files of finding footage screenshots and so on it's are really time-consuming process that i enjoy but also of course like to be rewarded for all my work so if you think these shows are worth supporting if you think these efforts and i'm putting into match had his is a worth of the time maybe it's also worth a few dollars so please go to match at sorry go to our shark aid i look for the match at link in the top right corner of the page and make a donation or set up a subscription again whatever you are comfortable with and what you think the show is worth to you I appreciate it very very much.
Now what about that ail of the week now this week I've got a another one from good old Herbert this is a brew dawg hardcore IPA clocking in at 9.2 percent alcohol explicit Imperial ale and as always have a wonderful write-up on the side of the bottle here this Imperial india pale rocks hardcore but don't feel obliged to take our word for it this little bottle has a grandiloquent story to tell.
2204 multiple Morris other green this gave all they had to offer the world to provide the robustly delicate tough e-mount canvas for this ensuing epic for hop cones willingly sacrifice themselves in the fiery cauldron that is our brew kettle to ensure your mouth is left feeling punished and puckering for more 9.9 trillion yeast cells frantically fermented their little hearts out as the sugars were magically turned into alcohol in the dark depths of our fermentation tanks to humans and one canine companion are relatively happy with the results marvelous right up let's get it open though.
Let's see what it's all about alright so i have this hardcore IPA and the you rather excellent drinking horn hear it smelling this smells quite nice we get a course very happy you can almost smell the the bitterness here kind of peachy apricot maybe a little blueberry have very nice aroma here and definitely no no alcohol fumes emanating from this so no brewdog seems to have a flair for disguising all that alcohol is actually in the brute anyway here's to you Herbert and also to you chris a good luck with wild man here's to you know that is war that is quite nice ok there's the bitterness coming in kind of a a chocolaty coffee sort of berry flavor here quite nice little nutty nutty flavor it's nice and thick very flavorful what is that there's maybe another flavor i can't quite put my that can't quite identify was all nice very sophisticated able one of these you drink and then you taste three four five things and sort of follow following each other so not as if you got a sophisticated palate this is a very good choice mr. a really nice very nice selection here just just the right amount of bitterness i don't really taste in the a.m alcohol in this at all 9.2 percent i don't know how they do it just a really really nice ale this is the the second one from brewdog but I'm just are all around greatly impressed with i would definitely have this again and strongly recommended gonna go five out of 10 on the hardcore IPA explicit Imperial ale for brewdog a very nice choice.
Ok now let's wrap up with a quotation so for the quotation of the week I found something from the late Steve Jobs goes something like this.


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