Mac: [00:00:00] Like so many outsiders. I'm like, does it really take that long? That many people, that much money to make a game? Like really? And then like, here I am like a couple of years later and I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah. It's, I, I get it. 

Alex: That was Mack Reynolds, the founder, CEO of Knight Streete games, talking about the realization of how hard it is to make a video game.

Aaron: Yeah, yeah. Yep. I think making a game you realize right away, right? Like it doesn't take long. 

Alex: That's what I'm saying. Like doesn't take long to realize that it's going to take long. There's just so many moving parts, you know? And um, like, you know, it's like anything finishing something is hard, you know?

Aaron: Yeah, that's true. It could literally be anything like making a cake or, you know, what mine is, and I think. This is the one that people, why is 

Alex: it making a cake hard for you? Because you, you like to eat the, the ingredients, you know, as you're making [00:01:00] it or what? 

Aaron: Well, there's a lot of elements, like you said, a lot of moving parts like a beef Wellington's a good example.

Like that's a complicated thing. Yeah. But it's the time and it's the patience and it's the different thing. And that I would say making a beef Wellington is pretty close to making a video game. It is just as messy, just as messy. Patience. Like patience is a big one, wouldn't you say? And then realization like, oh, oh yeah, that's a big piece of meat.

That is 

Alex: something that I've changed, has I've changed and grown, matured, whatever. You know, it's like, I don't say it like that. Yeah. What the heck? Whatever. I don't wanna sound like me. You immature. But, uh, I never had any patience, you know? And in some ways that's a good thing because everything's always urgent, so you're always kind of hustling.

But yeah, some things you need to actually prepare for so that when you start it. You have enough information to do good and then you take your time on each step so that it comes out nice. You know? And that's something I've had to learn, you know? 

Aaron: [00:02:00] Yeah, that's true. And like iterating is a big one.

Understanding that the game might feel really good in the first, like the first prototype you're like, yeah, this is gonna be awesome. And then three years go by and it never feels like the prototype. And then it does like one month before you ship. Yeah. 

Alex: There's, 

Aaron: I, 

Alex: you know, we talk about this with me.

There's a, I've often have experienced sort of like the, the midpoint lull where the fun joy of the prototype has been a little bit overwhelmed by the early stages of production. And things aren't as, don't feel as good anymore, and you kind of gotta spend time recapturing Before we get too far into it, couple of little bits of housekeeping thing one.

It's summer and like every summer on the podcast, we're gonna take our summer vacation. So we will be off air for a couple of weeks and then we will shall be back with you two weeks from now. 

Aaron: What are you gonna do on your break? 

Alex: Oh, what am I [00:03:00] doing? I, I'm going to Michigan. That's what I do every summer.

Aaron: Oh, hey, that's right. You go, do you go, you're on the right side of the lake, right? If you're looking down on it. 

Alex: The east side. The east side. I don't know if the east side is the right side, but it's uh, it is the east side and I love that 

Aaron: lake. You know, they put ships on that lake like aircraft carriers.

Really, didn't they? Or Okay. I could be wrong here. Fact check. But it, I remember someone was like, yeah, the, the US Navy trains on this lake. 'cause it's so big. 

Alex: The, the Navy does have a training center on the lake. Yeah. 

Aaron: Yeah. It's like, that's cool. 

Alex: That's neat. Also, Aaron, we should send, uh, some congratulations out to May, our producer who just got a really cool gig and she's gonna be moving into a game studio, which, which good cheer for us.

Uh, she's gonna be leaving us, but we're very happy. Good 

Aaron: for her. 

Alex: Very happy for May. Congratulations. May. 

Aaron: Yeah. And she's going to [00:04:00] New York City, which is like, what a place to be on your first gig, you know? 

Alex: Well, you know, she went to, she went to school at NYU, so no Stranger to New York City. 

Aaron: Yeah. When she told me, I was like, oh, you're gonna love New York.

And she's like, I, I was in school in New York. And I'm like, oh, right. I. Yeah, that's great. I did work for a studio, but I remember working at one at Breakaway in Austin and we were right on sixth Street and we were like at the very beginning of sixth Street. So there was a bar downstairs, it was the first bar on the street.

It was a pool hall and it was awesome. And the worst thing that ever happened to me, it was really great. It was so cool. Like there's really good food there. Casino El Camino, if you 

know 

Alex: burgers, you're younger then, right? So it's like, okay. Yeah. Our, our office is over a party town. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That might get old.

It might get old now. I don't know if I would enjoy, I don't want anymore. Yeah. No, I, I get upset when the dog's barking [00:05:00] out there. Yeah. Can you hear him? He's barking right now. Yeah. Uh, but we had a great, great chat with Mac, um, max. Super interesting cat. We talk about it in, uh, the interview, but him and his brother, part of Imagine Dragons, he's a manager.

His brother's the, uh, the lead singer and they started the studio together. They've been in and around games their entire lives. One of their investors is also an investor in our studio. I got a chance to see their game beginning of the year. It looks awesome. It's so fun. It looks really good. Yeah, and we talk about, uh, capture the flag too, just that game mode and just their insights into how to make it really fun for third person game.

So, 

Aaron: yeah. Can I, can I tell you a capture the flag story of mine real quick? Of course. Yeah. You're gonna love this. Well, maybe you will love this. I love this memory, but I'd never been paintballing. We went paintballing one time and it was a huge, it was here in Texas. It's a gigantic property. Like it's really big.

It's like 10 acres or something crazy. Was this 

Alex: like [00:06:00] at a claim or at a game studio or something? Or was this 

Aaron: No, it was just me with friends. Like, it was like, Hey, we're gonna go paintball. And I'm like, okay. And they invited me and I was like, all right, I'll go with, I don't have a gun. They give you a gun and they give you the helmet and everything.

They're like, where? You know, we're padding or whatever. And I didn't, of course. 'cause I was like, what? It's just a paintball, it doesn't hurt. Anyways, you had goggles, right? They and I, yeah. They give you goggles and I, when I was there, they had to capture the flag, right? You had, that was how you win the match or you kill everyone or you capture the flag and bring it back.

Anyways, we were on our second round and someone on the team was like, okay, we're gonna run all the way up there through the side or whatever, through this part. 'cause they knew the terrain and we're gonna get to their fort or whatever. And it was, it's a really long distance. We got all the way there.

Actually it was just me at the time. So there was nobody else, like there was no, like, I made it by myself to their fort and the guy did and he got shot or something. I can't remember. Anyways, I walk into the fort and everyone is standing around just talking like smoking [00:07:00] cigarette. Like basically like you would expect in like a real like military situation.

Like no one's gonna come here. And I shot at everyone. Missed every single shot. And then in my gun jammed, because those stupid guns jammed, it was like a movie. I missed every shot, my gun jammed. And then I rolled around the, the fence trying to fix my gun and someone put their gun over the fence and shot me point blank and it hurt like a mug.

Anyways, that's my capture the flag moment. Amazing. Don't rush the base. 

Alex: It was so embarrassing. Some, some things never change. You play Fortnite the same way. Um,

all right, well, thank you for joining us this week. We had a great conversation with Mac. Hope you enjoy it. And Michelle, see you on the other side. Welcome to this week's edition of the Fourth Curtain. Friends, we're thrilled to be joined by the co-founder [00:08:00] and CEO of Night Street Games m Reynolds. If you aren't familiar with Night Street games, you will be soon.

They're working on their debut title Last Flag. And Mac is No Stranger to the World of Entertainment having been for the last 15 years or so, the longtime manager of Musical Powerhouse Imagine Dragons. And I told my kids you were coming on. They like lost their minds. Um, in fact, Knight Street Games is a true family venture.

Mac co-founded it with his brother Dan Reynolds, lead singer of Imagine Dragons. I got a sneak peek at last flag earlier this year and it's already looking pretty fine. Max Rich, see you. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? How's everything going? Where are you? 

Mac: Thank you so much for having me. What a kind intro.

I'm in, I'm at home. I'm in Vegas at the, at my home office. Yeah. Yeah. Third generation, born and raised. Oh wow. That's cool. 

Alex: I was gonna ask the first generation that ended up in Las Vegas, what were they doing there? Do you know? Yeah, actually 

Mac: fourth generation Nevada, if you could believe it. I think it's really rare.

[00:09:00] Um, the first one was a lawyer, I think, and actually I'm also a lawyer. Well, recovery lawyer. Recovery lawyer. Yeah. That, that doesn't fall far from the tree, is it? I guess. Yeah. It's like every generation warns the next generation. Don't do it. It's a terrible idea. Then we're discovering we do it. It's like a, it's a, it's a terrible 

Alex: curse.

I know a lot of folks who have jds who don't practice. Um, do you still practice or you don't practice? You just use all that knowledge? Wait, hold on. What's a JD Juris 

Mac: Doctorate? It's like a, you can call me Dr. Mack if you want to. Okay. It's probably inaccurate. Um, the, uh, I went let my license go to Inactive for the first time, uh, a year or two ago.

And it was very hard for me to do actually. But it was actually fantastic 'cause now when people ask for free legal advice, they can say, look, ethically, it really would be wrong for me to do that, even though I really, really wanna help you. 

Aaron: But it, it is kind of cool. You, doc Mack would be your name. Like, that's like.

That sounds good. That's not bad. 

Mac: Don't gimme ideas. I don't, I don't, [00:10:00] I I don't need any more gamer tags. I was gonna say, what's, what is your gamer tag? Mac the knife. Okay. Alright. Is it really? Yeah, it's, that's good, dude. It's also my, it's also my discord name, which everybody in my whole company has like, very formalized, like NSG, like names and mine still is like, Mac the knife.

I'm like, add four 20 to it at the end. 

Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I go long way. Yeah. All right. Well, why don't we start with Knight Street. What is Knight Street Games all about? And is it, is it Knight Street? There's Knight Street Games. Is there also like Knight Street? There is a Knight Street, 

Mac: uh, Knight Street Records.

So we have a little record label, uh, as well. We started, oh, I don't know, eight or nine years ago. Um, only two artists on it, KLE and Benson Boone. Uh, Benson's had a. Huge couple years, which is awesome. Um, but, uh, yeah, games, this is, uh, this is different Night street records you could call a side project.

This is a, this is like the main event. Um, you know, Dan and I grew up playing games super inspired by, you know, Lucas Arts, Sierra Games, [00:11:00] stealthy, like all these studios that were. Just a huge part of our childhood experience. Um, and talked about making games for years, you know, um, Dan, a pretty decent coder, actually does a lot of work in c uh, builds games in Unity.

He actually builds little games that he'll secretly, uh, upload, uh, like anonymously. That's awesome. And, uh, just, just because yeah, that's like how he, he, um, unwinds after, after a show. Are 

Alex: there 

Mac: any 

Alex: that are 

Mac: linkable that we could put in the show notes? Yeah, I could. I could. I'm sure I could. You know what the, the easiest one is the public one.

So, uh, there's one that they did for the last, they, Dan did for the last, uh, album release and I gotta find it. I think it's called Loom. Uh, but it's like a dancing game. It's very, very simple. Right on. But it's pretty catchy. Uh, it's like a, it's like a, a rhythm game. You like move this guy back and forth across, it's like rhythm mixed with like Candy Crush or something.

It's really interesting, huh. Um, love it. But yeah, and then I do like 3D modeling and animating. I did that when I was a little kid growing up and I [00:12:00] still tinker. Uh. I've, I've realized how bad I am now that we have like a real team. I'm like, oh yeah, I can, I can model an ax for you. Let me just go in and like, you know, I like, I turn it in.

It's like crickets. It's like, okay. Like my, my edge loops might not be perfect, you know? It's like, uh, so yeah, it's, I, it's very amateur. 

Aaron: What are you using? What software? 

Mac: I just use Blender these days. I can use Maya, but I, I, 

Aaron: no blender's the way to go now. That's the future. Oh dude. 

Mac: Blender. And it's like every day it gets better.

Yeah. I love Blender. 

Alex: I'm a huge Blender fan. Have you seen Flo All Blender movie? Yeah. It's the one with the cat with no, no dialogue, but it was made entirely in Blender and uh, Aaron, I rented it to watch on the plane ride back from Chicago. 

Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: And I didn't watch it. I got distracted. Oh, I haven't seen it.

I haven't seen it. I think I've got like six days left to watch it before the rental expires. 

Aaron: Watch it with kids, with your family. It like, we put it on and everyone was glued to the tv. 

Mac: Oh, I gotta check this out. [00:13:00] I'm not so impressed that people are like, I shot my movie on iPhones, but if you tell me you made the movie in wonder.

Yeah. You know, I was just seeing that like 28 days later was shot on iPhone. No, 28 years later. Yeah. Was shot on iPhones and I was like, I, which kinda blew my mind to having seen the movie, but, um, but yeah. What are y'all 

Aaron: using in your studio for software for the game? So we actually 

Mac: built in Unity first.

'cause it's great to build in a different platform and Port, I guess I recommend it for everybody. Uh, we, we grew up, uh, we grew up like making games in Unity and you know, Dan especially like follows like all the big unity creators and um, and coders and, uh, yeah. So we kind of like, that's where we're comfortable.

And then we reached kind of a critical point where. We knew we could finish the game in Unity. We could technically pull off what we wanted. Um, but if we were gonna make a change, it was like, okay, now's the time to figure that out. And yeah, for various reasons, we could, we could get into, but I hope we don't, uh, we [00:14:00] decided Unreal was, was a better home for the time of game than we are making.

Alex: That's, that is a, um, it, that's not wholly uncommon. I've heard that before, but it's a big, that's a big switch. Was it? Really painful for you guys? Or was it, did you do it at a time or it was like, you know what, this kind of all, all worked out. I, or I gotta say 

Mac: as, as weird as it is, and I'm not trying to like, recommend it to people, but it was phenomenal for us.

Um, the hardest thing was we had to like level up our team. We had to like, hire new people, uh, and then we had to train people who were there and, uh, you know, and we didn't, we didn't wanna lose people in the process and so we really tried not to do that. And, uh, but the switch was really positive. I mean, we came in at a great time because a, we had just spent like six to eight months just on Core Game Loop and really just workshopping it over and over again.

So we felt like we had a super clear picture of what we wanted to build. And so, you know, being able to build that without the tech debt, like just knowing what you wanna do was really helpful. Um, and then there [00:15:00] was a b and I don't remember what Liz anymore because I got so excited talking about the a, I guess, oh, the B was, the B was the timing with Unreal.

Um, you know, being able to use. Lumen, naite, some of these things, if we had started, we may not have, you know, making that transition could have been harder. Yeah. But for us, it, it, it was kind of a no-brainer. So we're in five five right now. Okay. Oh wow. Well, you 

Alex: know, it, that is interesting 'cause I hear, I've done a bunch of projects on, on real, um, way less in Unity, but I think the common knowledge and my experience, I think.

Corroborates this, you guys tell me, maybe you know better, but like easier to start on Unity than Unreal. Easier to finish on Unreal than Unity. So maybe you start on Unity Switch, finish on Unreal. And it's like you just use the time machine or something. That's a great development. That's a great, great pipeline.

Mac: Yeah. 

Alex: That's okay. Well, uh, good on you. How big is the team? 

Mac: We're about 54, 55 and half of the folks are kind of [00:16:00] full-time, uh, internal employees. Half is kind of a fully integrated outsource team, but, um, we kind of made a decision a long time ago that we really wanted to be one team. And so, uh, it really is one team.

Everybody reports up through the same lines. We're not like, there's no visibility gaps, no accountability gaps. We're not throwing things over the wall. Like we all mm-hmm. Really work hand in hand. And, and they only work on our project and we only work with them basically. So works out. That's cool. It's remote, right?

Alex: Yeah, we're fully remote. And last flag, what's the game about? And, and when and when is it coming out? Do you have a release date? It's gonna come out next 

Mac: year. Um, we are kind of in pre-alpha right now, but we're play testing with folks, so people go, this is my, I'm gonna plug it all the time. If they go to, oh, last flag, uh, sorry.

Last flag.com/signup. Um, you know, you could play test, we're bringing people in as fast as we can. Uh, but we'll be in alpha and beta both this year, uh, by the look of it. And, uh, maybe that's more than I should have said, but 

Aaron: yeah, 

Mac: we're, we're moving [00:17:00] along. Um, the game idea started, you know, Dan and I, we grew up in the Boy Scouts and used to play a lot of, capture the flag in the woods at night.

I thought about that experience. You know, there's a lot of, you know, especially CTF game modes in the nineties, two thousands, unreal Tournament or Song Gulch, you know, whatever. Uh, tons of fun, but none of them for us really got to the heart or scratch that itch of what caps the flag is really about, which is primarily hide and seek.

Um, you know, these game modes were more of, Hey, this is your location. This is my base location, payload escort, basically. Um, and so we started from that place of, okay, we wanna make a pure capture the flag game. See where that takes us. And it took some different shapes and sizes. You know, we started out, is it isometric, is there fog of war?

We, you know, all these questions we kind of answered for ourselves over time. Uh, but today it is a five B five third person shooter. But it really is capture the flag first. So game. Mechanics, like level design, [00:18:00] characters abilities, everything is around that core loop of hiding and finding. It's a very, uh, fun first competitive second experience.

Very over the top takes place in the 1970s. It's a game show created by this guy Victor F and whole underlying story I won't get into right here, but um, essentially the game is hide your flag as a team, find the enemy flag, bring it back to your home base and defend it for one minute to win. But there is a lot that happens in that kind of short 10 to 15 minute game loop.

You are, uh, capturing radar towers that help you find the enemy flag. By eliminating search areas over time, you are killing these cash bots to level up your team. Um, so. Basically doing hiding, finding, point capture, payload, escort, base, assault, base defense. Mm-hmm. Uh, all in this kind of short period of time.

Uh, yeah. I could talk forever, so I'm just gonna stop there. That's a little bit about the game. Yeah. 

Alex: No, that's awesome. It, well, no, I think that, I think that's awesome. Yeah. [00:19:00] There, I, you know, I, I think the folks like, 'cause we, we were working on Battlefield for a while and capture the flag was a mode that we, we contemplated.

Oh heck yeah. Um, yeah. And we didn't think we could do it well enough. Um, and I think because a lot of sort of traditional approaches to capture the flag in a, in a shooter is simplified. It's kinda like what you said, it's like payload, escort. Yeah. And what you're talking about is adding different modalities at play that, you know, there's more than one way to get to your goal.

Uh, there's some, if then thinking, you know, like, uh, as an individual level of team level, it sounds super interesting. There was 

Mac: a chaos to it that took us, like, I think about halfway through we were like, oh, this is why people don't make capture the flag. You know, which was like, we were seeing that like, that core, like I think that some of the best game loops are really simple, right?

Like, like gorilla tag, right? It's like everybody knows tag, hide and seek, everybody gets it. But there is an inherent freedom and chaos basically, um, to that [00:20:00] loop of you could actually hide your flag anywhere. And what we found is it was super fun. But it was also a little bit inconsistent in that like, it, it felt a little bit like, um, more roulette than poker where, you know, like if you find the flag, you're really lucky and if, and you might search a lot and you don't find it.

And that's frustrating 'cause the game took a long time. And so, you know, that was during that time when we just kind of buckled down a game loop and we developed that kind of radar tower system and some other things that, that really brought in a lot of fun elements to it where you can fight over these radar towers to help you find the flags.

If I'm holding tower a every 30 seconds, like a red squares appearing in that sector, kinda saying Don't search here, don't search here, don't search here. Um, and you can send out a seeker while you're fighting over those. Or you could be like, you know what, we are getting like railroaded at the points, like, we're not gonna outshoot this team.

Let's just roll the dice and like sneak around the back line and we all just go searching for the flag. And that is like a total. [00:21:00] Viable possibility. Uh, you trade off some things, you lose some things, uh, you risk some things. Yes. But that's, that's where the fun is, is all the decision points you're constantly making.

So is it, is it free or is it, uh, is it, is it a premium game? Yeah. We're, we're planning to have one time very modestly priced purchase. That's, that's our goal. We, we really want like a holistic experience where you're gonna get the core of it. And it allows us, as a team, honestly, to just print out, to really be able to focus more on like, having that player experience be great, um, rather than just like filling a huge pipeline of content, which can be hard.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. That's cool. I think a lot is going that way, you know? Yeah. I think people are realizing, A, those games are hard to stand up and b, I don't know if there is appetite for a hundred. Free to play games in my life, you know? 

Aaron: Yeah. It's nice to have a library too. I don't know if you're gonna be on Steam or not, but I have a back library where I'm like, okay, buy it now.

It's, you know, and then it is just in my [00:22:00] library, and then it's like, it's like a comfort 

Mac: blanket, you know? It's there if you ever, if you ever, it, it's like, I think I have some like, you know, watch cues, you know, of movies. That's, yeah. It's like a similar thing for me. Yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. The company and the game sound amazing.

I think anybody listening who, um, is, isn't sure, sort of like what the trajectory is on the kind of the game development side. Uh, I hope, feel good that there's so much care and effort being put into, like, how many years in are you on this game now? Oh, we're a few years in. I mean, it's, 

Mac: it's, uh, yeah. It's, it's been a, I mean, it's hard to know where to start.

I just started with like. Sketches. And then Dan like, did like voiceovers and animations and music and I gotta give him credit because he really, uh, we, we both always were, I, I found like a thing from third grade the other day that was like, what do you wanna do when you grow up? And it was like, run a game studio.

And I was like, that's, that's like kind of weirdly specific, where a third grader, so I run a 

Alex: game studio, like, make a video game. It was like, it was 

Mac: like o or own, I think it said own a game studio. I don't [00:23:00] know, like, uh, but uh, yeah, I, it was a little, little weird actually, I 

Alex: would've tapped your, the, your third grade self on the show me like, 

Mac: dude, 

Alex: I don't 

Mac: know.

Well, my, my point being, even though there's something we both wanna do, like Dan, I gotta give credit, like really was a genesis. Like he put a lot of, at some point I'm about to share. 'cause his early vision was really funny and a little different than where he went. It was a little darker. Um, but, uh, but you know, he was like cold calling.

I. I think he like, literally like Googled like how to meet other coders and like, you know, it was like interviewing random people through like contractor websites. And then we jumped on and started doing interviews together and, uh, it was very like, it, and then we hired somebody and then they like, were like, wait, you look kind of familiar.

What's your like, you know, and then they made, you know, and um, it, it, it was a, it was, it was a really fun process, but I, my point being, it's hard to know where it started, but yeah, it's been a few years and, yeah, I, I, I got asked recently, you know, what, what would you tell [00:24:00] somebody who's not in the game business that you saw and learned about being in the game business?

Right. There's like a million things I could say, but the one I was thinking about at the time was like, so many outsiders. I'm like. Does it really take that long or that many people, that much money to make a game? Like, really, like I know. And then like, here I am like a couple of years later and I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's, and you never feel done.

It's not just like some bloat thing, like it's really hard game. 

Alex: Yeah. And you, and you look back and you're like, oh, this took so much time. I, what could I have done to go faster? You're like, oh, fuck. I, yeah. All right. Well, uh, let, let's rewind a little bit. You said something earlier about how you guys were, uh, Cub Scouts.

Yeah. Or Boy Scouts. 

Mac: Eagle. Eagle Scout. In fact, guess that's what I was gonna ask. Did you make it to Eagle Scouts? I'm not through resume right now, but like Yeah, yeah. We, my mom, my mom, we had like a bunch of, there's eight boys in my family. Eight boys were okay. And that was the other thing, like you had come from a big family.

Eight. Eight boys. I think all boys, I think all eight were Eagle Scouts. No, one, one girl. My mom, it took her [00:25:00] seven boys to get her girl. And then I, wow. I think the last one might have been a little bit of a surprise. I'm not, I'm not quite sure. Okay. 

Alex: Aaron. Aaron, how do you feel? So Aaron just had, uh, a child.

His. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. Number five, girl. Number 

Mac: five. 

Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. Girls? Yeah. Number five. 

Mac: You have five girls? 

Aaron: Yeah. 

Mac: Aaron, I don't want to look, this is not like a bragging competition, but I have six

Aaron. Stop. Five. That a great. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, that's bless you though man. I think everybody should get to raise a girl. It's like the greatest experience. The planet. It's, it's amazing. Um, I've got three boys and three girls and uh Oh, cool. We love 'em all. We'd probably change the boys in for three girls if we could, but are they old enough to be 

Alex: listening to this?

Yeah, I should never say that. I should never say that I, something that I'm not supposed to say in that category. Uh, alright, well, so anyways, okay, so I was gonna ask about Eagle Scout and then I was gonna relay a little story and I don't know, Joe, I'm sorry if this is an embarrassing thing. I was not supposed to [00:26:00] be telling, uh, you know, friends of mine, let alone, you know, the public, I remember him telling me about his Eagle Scout experience and for him he had to do an solo overnight.

I don't know if he had to do a solo overnight to get your Eagle Scout. Maybe he had a different project, but he told me that he had to drink his own pee. Oh my God. That's not, that's definitely 

Mac: not in the scout handbook. No, it's not. Okay. That's, 

Alex: I didn't make it that far. In fact, you 

Mac: might, I don't. There's like a take your own p merit badge.

I don't think that's a thing. It's just like a yellow jar. I, I think it was like the survival. Yeah. I, I painted fire hydrants. And fire curbs. That was, that was my, that was my scout project. Okay. Can I ask a non-PE question real quick? 

Aaron: I, I've been curious while you're talking that, so you're a lawyer first, right?

And then, and now you're a, a game studio, a game developer. Um, did you, did you use, like, did the lawyering really help you, like get, get going? You know, because like a lot of these, [00:27:00] like, like a lot of developers, they, they read comics all day, they collect toys, and then it's like, time to do a business, you know, and it's just like, what, what it, like reading all those documents and, you know, do you, do you think it kind of helped you out?

Mac: It's a, it's a really tough question to ask and I think it's, the answer's probably yes, but it's not probably in the way that it would seem. Right? I, I grew up in a very kind of practical family. Like my mom is just super smart and very, you know, like we all took piano lessons many years, like all like, there was a lot of like stability and like focus on education.

And so for me, I. I always enjoyed creative stuff. I used to song write growing up I did three modeling animated, like I said, I, a lot of stuff like that. Um, I never even thought about those things as a career path, if that makes sense. It just didn't, it didn't register for me. And it wasn't that my parents were squashing it or something.

It's just my dad was a lawyer. I was like, that seems like a pretty good job. And uh, and, and I like reading and I like writing and there was a lot of kind of reasons to, and, uh, and I like helping people. Um, but [00:28:00] in going down that path, I was actually in law school when I did a, an essay competition. I won this like Grammy competition, so I had to go to the Grammys and do some stuff.

And uh, and that kind of like even, I even had a brother. My, so my oldest brother manages the killers. And I was, uh, even working with him, I never in my mind was like, oh, you can do something creative. You're piece outta it. And so I think I had that structure. This is not even where you're going at all.

Aaron, I'm so sorry. You're making me very introspective here. This is good stuff. I'll wrap this up. Is very boring. The short version is the short version. Is it? It, uh. It gave me, uh, confidence at some point to be like, you know what? I can try something different. I left the law career, I went into management when I was still like stuffing dollar bills at like a jar to like buy my first TV with my management company money.

Like it was a thing for a long time. Uh, and I think I felt even more empowered later going into gaming 'cause I was like, you know what? I don't know what I'm doing. I'm gonna try to learn everything I can. Um, but it's okay to [00:29:00] like just chase your dreams and do what you wanna do, whether you're successful or not.

Like it, it's a great thing. And so, uh, in terms of like the practical side Yeah, it's like helpful from like a. I don't know, like reviewing privacy policy, you know, standpoints or like what? I don't know, like, but I, I kind of recommend just hire somebody to do that anyway. Um, but, uh, it does help with communication and, and thinking and some other things that I think have been helpful for me.

And it drives people crazy because I always feel like I have to play devil's advocate in every situation. And that's, people hate that. 

Alex: One thing that I heard in there, which I think is, um, really meaningful is that you, you, uh, modeled after your father went to law school, got a degree and were on a career path, and realized that you wanted to be creative and decided that you would.

Change your focus. Yeah. That's not easy. 

Aaron: No. Well, I see the reason I ask is like, you know, you read a contract, you're like, what the hell is this? Like, [00:30:00] and there is this, you don't have confidence in this, in that realm where, you know, you said you did 3D and like you have confidence in doing the 3D 'cause you understand it, you, you know, you've done it.

But like the contract side of things is actually really big. You know, a lot of, a lot of artists get these contracts where it's, you know, they find out later like, oh, I can't work for another company. Or, oh, I can't, you know, um, that kind of stuff. And I think, you know. I, I don't have that confidence when it comes to paperwork a lot of times.

You know, and I was just curious, like, 

Mac: I, I think that all you really gain is confidence. It's not necessarily competence, you know, it's more of like, it's more of like, you realize so many people are faking it, that you're like, I'll do my best job of faking it. Yeah, they're probably, they're probably adequate.

Alex: Alright, well, so, um, back, back to the back, back to the formative years. So, uh, large family, one of eight. Where are you? In the, in the right, in the middle. That, in the middle that, yeah. 

Aaron: So hand me downs and company hand me downs. 

Alex: Uh, but hit the middle is usually not [00:31:00] squeaky meal. Okay. Well, I was gonna say, doesn't in the middle usually trying to get attention, like usually like the cut up and the, I always thought middle child, or 

Mac: maybe it's just me.

I always thought middle child was like, you know, like the, like, just, you're not like old enough to be like one of the big kids. You youngest, we one of the small kids, you kind of just get away 

Alex: with the stuff. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mac: So I was, I was a pretty easy kid. I, I think, okay. My mom says we were all easy, but she's wrong.

We were not all easy. Did y'all have 

Aaron: consoles and stuff at home? Like, were you all, you know what we did 

Mac: mostly a gaming situation, like, yeah. It was interesting, right? Um, I, I grew up with like, I'm be dating myself here, but a lot of Commodore 64. Um, you know, you know, we talk about that all day. Uh, and, uh, we did not, my mom didn't get us a Nintendo.

Uh, I, you know, she just, I, I'd play it at my friend's house all the time. Same with Super Nintendo. Uh, definitely like using PC for the early years and, you know, every Sierra game ever made. Gotta talk to Ken and Roberta Williams a couple weeks ago, by the way, which is like the first time I've think I've ever totally fanboyed in my whole life.

Were, were you on a boat? [00:32:00] No. And but, but they did say I could maybe come on the boat sometime, just the most lovely, wonderful people on the planet. And like, I know I, you don't understand, like I've met Beatles, I've met like people, but like that to me was like, I, I like just melted, you know? It was, so they say don't meet your heroes, but there's exceptions.

Anyway, so back to it. Our first console was actually the Atari Jaguar. I don't know why that's the one we started on. That's, you know, like, okay. Straight outta left field. Yeah. You still have it. '

Alex: cause it, 

Mac: it 

Alex: may be it 

Mac: worth something. It might be. I, I don't think we do. Um, and then my first real love though was the Teno 64.

Like, I golden eye. I golden eye. It. I could have been, I could have been a professional eSports player. I either like college tournaments, I was like, I, I was really, really into golden eye. Um, but in general it was just such a beautiful, uh, console, you know, like, so, like when Mario, Mario 64 came out. Mario, yeah.

I mean like, just the joy of movement. We talk about that still when we're making a game. Right now, we talk about [00:33:00] joy of movement and how important that is. I think about that feeling of the joystick and you're like, oh, it's just so good. 

Aaron: Yeah. 

Alex: When you say joy and movement, do, do you just mean like, sort of like that connection between what you're doing with your hands and what the character's doing in the world and everything in between?

Kind of just like, 

Mac: yeah. I think at a primal level it's that, um, I mean, in general we kind of have this and we can get away with it because we're not trying to make like the next ultra hyper competitive game. Uh, we wanna make it so when you, anytime you press a button, something fun happens. Like if I'm doing an ability and I miss, like, it's still cool and it still is like, Ooh, that felt good.

That's, and a lot of our game, because it's larger maps, uh, and hiding and sneaking and some other kind of things, movement's a big part of it. And so most of our heroes have some kind of interesting movement ability and they have unique movement animations and we want it to feel fun to run around and walk around and jump and do 

Alex: things.

So Right on. Right on. All right. Well, so, um, okay. Early game experience, con Atari, [00:34:00] Jaguar. Nice. Um, being in the mix with seven other siblings. Um, that's an 

Aaron: expensive console by the way. I just wanna say that is more expensive. Which the Jaguar than five Nintendos. Yeah. Wasn't it like 350 bucks or something?

$3. That, that's like 150,000. 

Alex: I dunno, maybe, maybe My mom felt 

Mac: bad that we missed out on a Nintendo. Super Nintendo. You know, we played, I mean we played consoles at our friend's houses, but like, it's not the same, you know, we, we, because we had so many kids, people would come to our house usually 'cause it just was so, it was like a nucleus of people.

It was already a party. And so, uh, yeah, we missed out on some years I guess, of there 

Alex: were, there was a period of time like, I don't know if all of these overlap, but there was like Dreamcast, uh, N 64, PlayStation. It was a Jaguar. Did the Jaguar overlap at all with like the end of Jaguar beginning a PlayStation 3D all sort of run?

Think it was 

Mac: same PlayStation it was before? Yes. Was 

Alex: Jaguar 

Mac: and 3D maybe se overlap time or something? It was kind of, or se, sorry, se. When did the game gear happen? It was, [00:35:00] I'm trying to think. Three. 

Aaron: 3D. 3D and 

Alex: Jaguar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 3D and neither 

Mac: of 

Alex: them did so great. And then the one that 

Aaron: you could take to the arcade and put the, the disc in.

You could play your game at home. Really? What was that one? Which one was that? Oh, I never heard about that. Neo Geo. Neo Geo. Thank you. Neo, OG. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had a little memory card you could take it. That's like save your deal. I didn't know anybody 

Alex: with a Neo G. No. 'cause it was like $800. It was so expensive.

You know, all the prices. Do you guys remember the MiniDisc 

Mac: players? Did you guys ever have a MiniDisc player? Yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Mac: I thought that was gonna be so cool for a while. Yeah. And I don't know what happened. 

Aaron: That was a format. I think Michael Jackson owned the license to that technology. 

Alex: No way. I 

Aaron: think I heard that recently.

Alex: Was that a, was that a Sony device? Yeah, Sony. The mini disc. The Sony, the little, yeah. Yeah. I had a lot of Sony. I would, I was like, you know, some kids like the, the Air Jordans. I like the Walkmans. I would like trade 'em up. Yeah. You know, I had like the waterproof yellow Walkman. Do you remember that one? I had it too.

Had like had rubber gaskets, you know. Oh, a [00:36:00] hundred 

Mac: percent had it. Yep. Crazy. 

Aaron: We'll be right back if you like what you're hearing like and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. This special episode of the Fourth Curtain is brought to you by High Vibe pr, a boutique communications firm for companies building the future of gaming, entertainment, and culture.

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Aaron: and now back to the show 

Alex: I was trying to get at. Whether, um, there's anything interesting, it's sort of those formative years with being in such a large family that, um, you, that sort of translates into business.

You know, it's like, like I grew up with two brothers. They were much older than me, so I had like my high school years I was kind of like an only child, which I think in some ways made me a little bit more independent when I was younger. Um, and did you like learn like crazy negotiating skills or Yeah.

Things like that. During like in being in such a big family, you know, like I. That has maybe like just reflecting, had an impact or helped you like having a game studio? 

Mac: Uh, I'll be honest, I've never thought about that before. Um, and it's a really interesting question. I feel like the answer has to be yes.

[00:40:00] Like you're always kind of, you know, a reflection of, of your upbringing to some extent. But I think when I look at like the closest, uh, direct contact between like, the things that I was doing as a kid, learning as a kid versus now, uh, I think it's all team stuff. Like, you know, we, our company's very flat.

We have a kind of very, kinda like best idea has to win always wherever it comes from. And I, and I think you get that in a large family by nature, it's like you, you're making so many decisions on what you're gonna do with a group. It's like, it's never like. Oh, I think we should play cars. Okay. That's what we're doing.

Like there's always like a t and we have strong opinions, like really, really strong. The car sucks. Exactly. And so, um, and so you've gotta be able to advocate for what you want. It's also, it cuts both ways. Like I, 'cause one of the things I've learned that I have to work on, uh, as a leader in my company is, you know, I'm so used to just like.

Saying what I think, but also expecting to be challenged. [00:41:00] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That I can forget sometimes if you're like, oh, I think blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, that might be good. Someone else might be like, well, I guess that's, I guess all of our contestants are now gonna, you know, have roller skates 'cause mac likes roller skates, or, you know, whatever it is.

Alex: And, and I gotta, 

Mac: and I gotta be like remembering that those words have weight. Um, but I think there is a, a plus side to it. Um, you know, we, for me, I've never, uh, I, I've, I've learned, I guess over the years to never attach my ego to my ideas at least as much as possible. Um, and, and you kind of, and that's a lawyer thing too.

It helped a lot in law, I think, where you mm-hmm. Used to kind of, you let the ideas get out there and they're fighting each other and you're kind of staying back from it. It's why I get like, so like. Confused. When I see people unable to talk about like politics or unable to talk about, I'm like, dude, just let the ideas fight.

It's okay. It's not like a personal thing. Um, but I think that helps in, in, in making games because, you know, one of the things I loved immediately about coming into game development is, [00:42:00] uh, you know, in music it's often about the, uh, artist and in game development it's always about the art and, and that makes it, uh, people just understand that it's almost always takes a village and it's very collaborative and people are much more selfless and sharing of ideas and insight and resources and, um, I'm sure there's exceptions, but, you know, it's, uh, that was really refreshing to me.

And so, uh, I think that. You know, I've really tried to dive into that of like, you're bringing people into your team, not just to do a job, but because you appreciate them as an artist in a way. And even an engineers are artists, right? Everybody's kind of got their craft, and every time you bring somebody else in, it's like a whole nother set of ideas and perspectives.

And that can be challenging, but really beautiful and wonderful. And I think I came from a big family. I have a big family. I think I thrive in that environment. I love that environment. So, yeah, I guess as I think about it, the answer is yes. It probably, it probably made a [00:43:00] difference for me. 

Alex: That is really interesting.

Like, I, I am guessing that you have a comfort level with, um, like, like you're talking about. Well, I mean, you're talking about like the, like separating yourself from the ideas. And that has taken me a long time to do, you know, I have vacillated between, um, like tr trying to protect my ideas to, um, trying to.

Sort of separate my ideas, like, okay, I, I have a domain where I can sort of control everything. That's fine. And, and that's a domain over there. I don't have to be involved in to, to what you're talking about of like putting my ideas in into the mix and just letting them, you know, work it out without ideas.

I'm not great at it to 

Mac: be clear. Like I really, it's hard to, it's 

Alex: a 

Mac: hard 

Alex: thing. 

Mac: It's a hard thing to do, I think. Yeah, I'm very lucky 'cause we have a, an amazing, uh, game director, Matthew Berger. So he came from Blizzard, uh, he worked on the Diablo series. He is a Relic Entertainment before that. Super. And so for me it's already a little intimidating because I'm like, look, he's worked on some of my favorite [00:44:00] games of all time.

Wonderfully talented, wonderful human. Um, but one of the biggest blessings for me over the last couple years has been like how close we are and how much we both enjoy that tug and pull. Like we wanna bounce things off each other and get challenged. And he's helped me, I think, in that process. 'cause he is very good about it.

We both will be like, you have your like. Your pet things, you know, that you're like, okay, like I'm totally flexible, but I really think this thing and you really should tell. Like, and um, we both had to like, give up things, I think, in that process. And I think it's made the game better. Yeah. 

Alex: How, how have, how have you done, um, you know, you're talking about like every time you add somebody to the team, the, the dynamics of the team changes.

There's a lot of wonderful things about that, different perspectives, whole grades and some of its parts, et cetera. Um, I'm kind of curious what cha a what challenges you've run into, uh, managing a, a group that's gotten to the scale that you're at. [00:45:00] You're 50 plus folks, that's, that's not tiny. Um, what challenges you've run in there, into there and like how, how you are recruiting, like how are you finding folks to add, uh, to the team?

Mac: Um, I'm gonna start with the second question 'cause I think it's easier. Um, which is how do you recruit? I mean, it's a, for one thing, it's just, as you know, it's a super challenging time for this industry and it's been. I don't know. It's been terrible to watch some really awesome studios and awesome games.

Struggle and fundraising's hard. And anyway, the, uh, the, the, the one silver lining is there's some great people out there looking for work. And so we were really lucky that, you know, almost everybody we've hired has been a friend of a friend or a friend of a friend of a friend. Um, and we spend a lot of time with GE Culture Check where our interview process is very, you're gonna meet a lot of people and a lot of it's gonna be like, does this person already embody the culture we're trying to build?

Because it's a lot easier to go, I think, that way than it is to kind of work backwards from [00:46:00] like, Hey, this is what we're trying to do. And it's obviously, you know, you build those muscles as a team as well. Um, but a lot of people have come through, uh, referrals and, and, and recommendations and, and those have been great.

Um, the challenges, uh, there's been a lot of challenges, I would say. As with any team, you know, one of the biggest ones is just. Size is, everything changes with size. Like our first 20 hires, like I would never hire somebody until they had sat in on like two or three team meetings and like play tested with the group and done all kinds of stuff.

And you know, when you're running super fast towards a deadline and you haven't hired your social media manager yet or whatever, like you just, you, it's like hard. It's like a lot of people on the team we're all doing different things. Inter having 10 people interview is on the team, like, you know, is tough.

Yeah. Like it's a tax on the, on the team. And so, you know, we're still trying to find that balance. Um, but that's been hard. I think the other thing was, you know, I told you we kind of [00:47:00] integrated this team so we, you know, we hired this team outta Ukraine, that we started with this company Argen and. We reached that determination that we just didn't, we didn't want a normal kind of outsource relationship.

Like we didn't, we already thought of each other as one team. Like, can't we like formalize that a little bit more? That took a little bit of time because you've got two companies, different structures, different cultures, different whatever, and, and figuring out how to have feature teams that cut across everything and having, you know, starting to set up some of those like rhythms as a team that's very unified, took us a while.

Um, we have an amazing, uh, general manager, executive producer, John Nik, who really helped shepherd that process for us. But the end result is great because now we're all Knight Street. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter. Yeah. You know, that's really 

Alex: interesting to me. Like, and I don't know if this is a little too into the weeds for listener, but let me, let me explain why it's interesting to me before I ask you a follow up question.

Mag, um, team structure is, um. [00:48:00] Like used to be everybody, you would hire everybody onto your team to make a game. Y'all were in one room together and the teams were small. You get like 10 people. You talk all day long. Everybody knows exactly what's happening. Then things got big and you got into departments still everybody on the same team.

And then maybe, I don't know, 2005 ish, this was when I started doing co-development. The team started working with contractors because they realized that we finished this game, we've got a hundred people. I don't have work for a hundred people. So those people need to go work on something different. So we started doing this co-development thing, and what you're talking about is, sounds like you're trying to get the BO best of both worlds, where it's like, hey, we've got the intimacy and the relationships of one uni, one team, one, everybody here on the team, but the flexibility of having this.

Am I outsourced relationship? Is that kind [00:49:00] of how you're, that that's 

Mac: exactly right. I would tell you in practice, A I don't regret it. Uh, I love our team and we think 'em all is the same thing. B, it's not perfect. Um, because at the end of the day, you're gonna still be scaling up and down resources and, and we do some of that through other vendors and whatever else, and some of that we could do through our contractor company.

Um, but so it's not a perfect solution, but it's worked really well for us. Um, there's, there's been some, some definite advantages and I, and I definitely prefer it to, uh, to the system we had before where it was a little more traditional, traditional outsource work. 

Aaron: Where, where do y'all, how do y'all communicate?

Like, is it, uh, that's what I wanted to ask. Discord. Everything's discord. We're on Discord. And 

Mac: we're all on discord. Yes. That's what we do. Yeah. Uh, and, and, and we, and basically like morning hours, Pacific time. You have like a four hour block where everybody overlaps and there's some things that are nice, you can kind of pass a baton on some things where it's like, okay, we all work together here and [00:50:00] now.

Like, let's see what you do tonight and then you're gonna hand it back to me in the morning. Um, but it's, we already, were a remote company, right? And to get the best talent as like a, an indie studio, like you almost have to be. And, uh, and so it wasn't too big of a jump for us. We're already like our, our art director, uh, lives in Portugal, you know what I mean?

And so like, hmm. You know, we, we already were remote. It wasn't a big stretch to be like, Hey, like, let's make this work with a team that's mostly centered in Eastern Europe. Okay. I have 

Alex: a couple, I have a couple other, um, sort of topics I'm really curious about. Uh, one, I think I may know the answer to the first one, which is just like, how are you approaching the business side of this?

Are you raising money? Are you self-publishing? Are you working with a publisher? Do you have like go to market figured out? Are you like. Doing a community first, kind of like, what's the biz biz plan around? Yeah. The, the launch. 

Mac: Um, so to date, it's been a very kind of, I would say typical [00:51:00] indie path, right?

Like we, we built out a prototype. We felt like it was fun. We went and raised a seed round, and we've raised a couple times since then and we're still raising. So if that's gonna be a process that hopefully ends at some point in time, it's the worst. How are you enjoying the fundraising process? Yeah, I don't, is there anybody not?

I don't know. Is anybody enjoy that? Maybe there's some people who, they're the same people that like lashing their back with, you know, thorny some, the same people who like to go to the dentist and they're same people who are drinking urine and saying it's a, it's an Eagle Scout project. I think, um, you get a badge.

Yeah. It, it, it's, it's not fun. I, you know what? I should be fair. Like there are, uh, I've met an incredible number of people through that gauntlet of fundraising and some great people, and I will say. The, the investors we have who have helped support us along the way have been amazing and, and just such great teammates in every way and supportive without trying to like, get in the way of creative and stuff.

We just are really, really lucky that way. [00:52:00] Um, but the fundraising's tough and, uh, and, and it's tough for everybody. I think, um, especially in this kind of mid tier space, I think we've got a lot of mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Scrappy small teams. You're always gonna have your tent pull 200, $300 million games and they've got their own lane.

But right now we're totally independent. Um, we are raising money, we are talking to publisher partners, we're exploring, we're thinking about it. Um, particularly I think regional partners. Um, but it is, it's kind of a different world out there, I feel like right now. And there's. Um, we have different challenges and opportunities than some studios in terms of, you know, our ability to get impressions is a little easier.

Um, but at the same time, like, you know, there's a lot of other reasons. Having a partner to help you in publish it can make a lot of difference. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty open door right now, I think is the best way to say it. We we're trying to get through announced, now that we've announced, we're starting to have a lot more serious conversations.

Alex: Right on. Right on. So, I mean, you're, but you're starting from the perspective of [00:53:00] being a hundred percent independent, doing your own sort of, uh, financing. We are, it really would have to 

Mac: make sense. Um, yeah. And, and it's, I think it's harder for some traditional publishers to justify, uh, the same business model these days.

'cause it's just, I mean, it's just like music and anything else, and everything's changing. The distribution's, changing the, yeah. The, the ways to reach your new players is changing every day. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Can you be wishlisted right now? You sure can. And I, and I hope you do. I'm gonna do right now. I hope you go wish wishlist, right?

Everybody right now. Yeah. You guys, you 

Alex: got, you got a mission? Go, go. Wish I watched right now, Alex and watch that bump. 

Mac: Okay. Uh, no, I'm just, but but yeah, we, we would, we would love to have people wishlist and if you go to the website, we could try to get people in as soon as possible to play test. Right now we're, our whole company is really play test driven.

We're thousands of play tests in at this stage and Oh 

Alex: wow. Hey, good for you. Like, how often are you running a play test? Like every week? Oh, like, 

Mac: there's [00:54:00] at least three times a week I think. Well we have, like for you play tests that happen every Friday. Um, but internally we play as a team usually two to three times a week.

Uh, more right now 'cause we're in the middle of kind of running into a soft lock. And, and what's the URL to the website again? It's last flag.com. 

Alex: Tell us a bit about what it's like coming from, um, a different part of the entertainment. Uh. Uh, environment, like from music specifically, um, into games. I know the game business very well.

I have, uh, very sort of limited tangential experience in, uh, with the music business. And I have a lot of assumptions about how, you know, you probably for a long time, we're just kind of like cruising around on your cell phone, going to parties, hanging out, cashing checks. Is that sort of like what it's like in music?

Mac: Oh yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's it. Uh, there's a lot of, you know what I, it's interesting 'cause I started not laughing. I was like, yeah, sorry. It was a grind. It was a real [00:55:00] grind. I could tell you about the six hour cover gigs. Three weeks, three nights out of the week, and. You know. Oh, that'd be awesome.

Awesome. I love hearing about the crime. 

Aaron: Yeah. How did you travel in that, in that time? Were you in a bus? Like did you have the van 

Mac: and everything? Oh, dude. I mean, I, I originally, it was like two Subarus that we owned, like the different band members owned, and, and then we upgraded to, actually, I must use a van.

It was actually a, an old airport transfer vehicle, you know, had like, like the, like handicap lift, like, you know, we'd like put like our, our like stuff on there. That thing died after, actually, it's still around. If you look up Dragon Wagon, there's like a, you'll find it has its own like TikTok, I think it's stuff too.

Um, it still exists somewhere, and then eventually tour buses and now they fly most of the time. Uh, but yeah, it was a lot of, lot of years of grinding. But I, I really try not to make, you know, lazy comparisons between the two. But the truth is there's a lot, it's hard. You see everything through the prism of your own experience for one thing.

Um, but for me, [00:56:00] there's. Similarities and differences. I mean, for me, the, the biggest similarities are that, uh, it's still that kind of magic of creation. It's like you start with nothing. You have an idea and you're creating something that's gonna like, hopefully bring joy to people's life. And that's just a magical thing.

It's just the, the, the greatness of anything creative. Um, it's also very much about the, you know, whether you call it the listener or the player, it's about the community. At the end of the day, everything's about the community. Whatever you're doing is like, you're creating something that's sticky, that's like pulling people together, even single player games.

It's about the community, right? It's like people want to come over and talk about the experience they're having, playing whatever the new game is and have that kind of water cooler moment. I think those are more important than ever. I also, I mean, I say this, I've had zero success. So like, take it with a grain of salt, but my theory is, um, I.

With songwriting, if you're trying to write for radio, you know, if you're trying to be like, I'm gonna make a radio hit, [00:57:00] like, good luck to you, like you're not gonna do it. Um, create great creativity, I don't think comes out of that kind of business model backwards kind of approach. And so, uh, I think in gaming, I've kind of follow the same thing, which is you just, you're only gonna make something great.

You feel inspired and try to be creative and you can't just say, Hey, it looks like there's a market for this and that's where we're gonna work backwards from. Um, what else is different? Um, you know, I, gaming is a very magical mashup of mediums. Like, you know, like you have so many, so many kinds of art altogether, right?

You have like music and songwriting and you have like, uh, sound design and you have like written things and you have visual art and it's interactive. Only thing that holds a candle to it is food for me. Food is like, because you could, like, you can food, you smell it, you can taste it, you can take it into your body.

Yeah. Like pee about food if you wanted to. But, [00:58:00] um, yeah, there's just, there's been a lot of, lot of, uh, I could go on and on. There's a lot of, lot of things I think about. 

Alex: Yeah. I mean, so I, I, I don't know if this is true, but process wise, like, I mean, you guys have been working on one, one game. So one ul ultimately one umbrella piece of creative, um, for a long time with a lot of people.

So there's a ton of moving parts. It evolves. Um, it probably doesn't look exactly today like it was in your head at the beginning. Um, and I imagine that's gotta be different from the creative process, uh, on the music side. 

Mac: For some people it is, for most people it is. Uh, a lot of times people will finish an album.

There's a similar problem that happens in music where you create something when you're feeling it. And then man, now the setup for this album. And like you have to like book stadiums like two years in advance and like set up for a year and a half and by the time the music comes out, it's almost not irrelevant to you anymore.

That can happen. I think it's happening less and less. More. [00:59:00] People are like, I'm gonna write something. Even if it's rough, I'm gonna put it out into the world. I think that is healthy. Um, but but it is, it is like on steroids that process I think in gaming where it is crazy that like years in what, like nobody even knows what you're making.

Right. That's so crazy. Uh, to, to kind of. Set that bird free into the world. And, and, uh, you know, you create something for yourself first, and then you're creating it with your team, and it's like your team owns it. But then pretty soon it's like, it's not yours anymore. Like, this is the players and they're gonna tell you what you need to learn about it.

And you've spent years at that stage trying to build and craft that. So it's, it's really interesting. It's an interesting dynamic and I'm just, I'm living it right now, but yep. Ask me again in a year how it is. 

Aaron: And games usually like really come together, like one month before you ship it, it's like, oh, you're saying this hope, you're saying this hope.

Alex: It's true. Like [01:00:00] every project that I've been on has a slump at some point, like three quarter, four fifths in or whatever. It's like. You know, you're chasing this vision and at some point the word kind of catches up to the vision and un this is just my perspective, underwhelms. And you're like, yeah, totally underwhelms.

Yeah. And then, and then you sort of unpack and figure out, and you, hopefully you, you get this is, that's my experience. I don't know if you're, if, if you, uh, have had that experience yet, maybe you may never have that experience. I don't know. But, uh, not unusual for my POV. 

Mac: Oh, it sounds, 

Alex: it 

Mac: sounds like, 

Alex: uh, it sounds very typical.

Cool. Mac, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We can actually direct people to come and, uh, sign up for testing to be a, a play test. Yeah, 

Mac: please. So we're, I mean, you're not gonna get in today when you sign up, but you'll get in really soon. We're funneling people in as fast as we can. There's play test happening right now on a weekly basis.

So you go to last flag.com/signup [01:01:00] or just go to last flag.com if that's easier. And, uh, yeah, we'd, we'd love to have people come in and play. Right on. Right on. 

Aaron: And it can be wishlisted on steam as well. 

Mac: Thank you, Aaron. Actually, I need to bring you into all my interviews. I'm so bad. I get through the end and it's like, it's like, oh, I never talked about the call to action.

That's, uh, 

Aaron: this is a new thing too, you know, like this didn't used to happen. Now getting wishlist on steam is so important. Is it's very important. Yeah. Because steam emails everyone, Hey, game on your wishlist is available and it's time sale. Well, what 

Mac: it is, is at the end of the day, with every kind of entertainment, people care less and less about anything beyond organic, natural word of mouth, uh, discovery.

And so the scheme is a great place for discovery. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, you're limited to the place where you get it. You go social, you can go creators, you can go steam. There's not a lot of 

Alex: places. All right. Well, great to see you Mac. Um, good luck with your, your alpha and your beta, [01:02:00] and I'm sure we will. I'm sure.

I hope I get to see you before the game comes out. 

Mac: Yeah, that would be great. It meant too long. Yeah. 

Alex: Right on. 

Mac: Thank you guys. This was a lot of fun. 

Alex: Appreciate you. Yeah, no, thank you. Nice meeting you Doc. We we'll see you around. Good to meet you too. Come, 

Mac: come play sometime, guys. We'll set something up. Yeah.

All right. I'll play. Let's do it. Ah, I'd love that. Okay. 

Aaron: All right. Thanks guys. His brother is the lead singer of a band and he codes on the side. That's cool. 

Alex: Yeah, you know, there was a lot of interesting things in there. I thought it was interesting, you know, him talking about how his brother would try to code like incognito or go to meetings incognito so that it didn't like poison the well with this familiarity or whatever.

Yeah. I thought that was interesting. And then you were pointing out the sort of the flat structure they have of best idea wins. Yeah, and we've kind of talked about that before too. 

Aaron: I think it's a good system to have. I've worked in both best idea wins and leaders idea wins. I. Sometimes it's good to [01:03:00] have both.

I don't wanna say one is better than the other, but sometimes there's four good ideas and you need someone to say, this is the best idea. So I like it. It's like, I think it's nice to have a mix of the two, like a healthy mix of the two where everyone trusts the leader and trust the leader can pick the best idea versus best idea always wins.

And then you get into like this weird stalemate situation and versus you have this toxic leader that's like, we're doing this even though it's like the dumbest thing in the world. Like yeah. 

Alex: Yeah. I think that's really sort of the definition of leadership is being able to show up and get the best out of everybody on the team and make everybody feel like they're all pulling in the same direction.

And yeah, there's an overall vision, strategy goal that we're all trying to get to at the same time. Um, 

Aaron: yeah, 

Alex: not easy. 

Aaron: It's not easy and very few people I think can do it. I've had many, many situations where. You see the leader learning [01:04:00] and you just happen to be in the thing. They're learning way. It's like, come on, just take a 

Alex: class, read 

Aaron: a 

Alex: book or something.

Yeah, just go online. Watch a Ted Talk, watch a couple of 

Aaron: like YouTube videos. You know what I just saw? There was a dentist guy that watched YouTube videos and performed, uh, root canals, and he was never, he never went to school. Oh, okay. He just watched YouTube videos. Have you seen this? I just saw this. 

Alex: I, I don't think I've seen it, but I'm not surprised.

Uh, yeah. I don't know. I mean, if he watched a lot of YouTube videos, I mean, I wouldn't want to be the first one to get the root canal, you know? But maybe, I don't know. 

Aaron: Yeah. But you can learn, I 

Alex: guess. So it's a practical, I mean, it's kind of like carpentry, except, you know, a little messier. It's a body though.

It's a human. 

Aaron: It's like, it's a little different 

Alex: than wood. It is organic material. True. You can't go back to the lumberyard and get some more stock. Yeah. I was gonna ask you a question. Oh, [01:05:00] uh. I know the answer to this question is no, but do you ever watch John Oliver? 

Aaron: You, did you say, you know the answer is no?

Alex: Yeah, I know the answer is no. 

Aaron: What is, is he? Yeah, I've seen some stuff. Some of his stuff I don't watch. He's got a show, you know, he is got a, yeah, I know he's got a show on HBOI think, or something is at HB, 

Alex: but, and every once in a while he'll do, like, his format is, he goes deep on something, you know, so every once in a while there's kind of techer and that related.

And he did a whole thing on AI slop this week, which I thought was really interesting. Interesting. Uh, I mean, he kind of pulled apart, like this crazy wave of content that's being AI generated. It's sort of like the new spam and it's not like it's coming into your email inbox. It's just assaulting everybody everywhere.

It's 

Aaron: assaulting. I agree. You know, I thought about this recently. And, 'cause I was trying to wrap my head around, 'cause I see a lot like you use AI a lot and I see other people doing it a lot too, and they're like using it to progress. [01:06:00] Like they're not using it to like, I'm starting to think of AI more like the way, okay, so you would look at Steven Spielberg and say, you would look at a movie and go, yes, Steven Spielberg is a really good director, like Right.

And you're giving him credit for all the art, all the acting, all the everything. You're kind of just putting in on him. And I feel like AI is going in that because I was thinking about artists that show their art that you're using just AI to generate it. And there is a skill to writing the prompt that I would say is no different than a director, you know, commanding a person.

Does that make sense? Directing a person or a group of people? 

Alex: I understand what you're saying. I'm not sure if I agree with it. I I'd have to, I have to think about it. 

Aaron: I, well, I'm saying that, I'm saying that I think that's where it's gonna go. That you're gonna see these people that become famous or well-respected or regard whatever you, whatever the word is.

Yes. For like, 

Alex: I will say that some of these tools are making things accessible to more people that would otherwise [01:07:00] not be accessible. One of the things I've been using AI for is to write code in a language that I haven't used before. And it's very good at syntax and getting the basic functionality working right.

It's not very good at some of the, so maybe this, I'm supporting what you're saying. It's not very good at sort of some of the, like the more complicated things or any of the ideas. So it's like. I have to tell it how to set it up. I have to tell it how to structure it so it doesn't like turn into spaghetti.

Sometimes it can't fix problems that get too complicated. I have, I actually have to know how it works to help it, you know, to unwind problems and stuff like that. 

Aaron: Okay. Everything you just said is no different than if you hired little Johnny to do your code for you or Little Sarah and little Sarah or little Johnny are doing your code and they do their code review and you're like, no, this, you know, change this, do this.

Like, it's, that's what I'm saying. 

Alex: Yes. Well, the difference is that it's roughly free. It's [01:08:00] instant, which is not good news for little Sarah and little Johnny. 

Aaron: No, it's not. And that's kind of my point. You're gonna get a lot of directors and whoever's really good at directing all these bots. I think you're gonna start to see people getting high regards, I don't know what the word is, like fame, uh, fortune.

Like 

Alex: it's gonna be like no difference. It will be interesting to see what results we see come out of the fact that more people are able to do things that they couldn't do before and they're able to do them more quickly. Add in that the end results of a lot of this stuff may be really bad. Like that whole AI slop thing was about, okay, well, like here's some dude sitting in his basement and he's making the CGI movie about cats.

Okay, do we need it because you can do it. Do we need it? The answer might be no, we don't, but we're gonna have a million things we don't need out of that. On the flip side, we may have one or two things that we would've never seen before [01:09:00] and may be really impactful. You know, I dunno. Yeah. I don't know if we're gonna get the cure for cancer out of that, but, but we might, we might get closer quicker.

Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? It's a uncharted territory. I often think, you know, if you go back to before the internet was big in the nineties, if you go back to right before that, people knew it was happening, you know, the whole.com, first.com bust or whatever was, everybody knew this was gonna be the thing and just threw their money at everything.

Aaron: Oh, it was awesome. I remember that. 

Alex: But if you look back now, some of the biggest changes in how we live and some of the biggest impacts on society are not things that we would've necessarily really predicted. And if you go back even further, like to the seventies, and you go, what is the year 2000 gonna be like?

I. I don't think anybody would've said, you know, the most important invention and and change in society is going to be this instant communication framework that will come to be known as the internet. [01:10:00] You know? Or even the phone, you know, I think, you know, it's, oh, flying cars, you know, shit like that. So I, I don't think we know.

I don't think we know, but some fundamental things definitely are. I just hope it's gonna be better, you know? That's all. I just hope it's gonna be better. Yeah. I feel like an old man on my lawn saying, get off my lawn. Get 

Aaron: off my lawn, 

Alex: get off my games. Ai. 

Aaron: Get off my games. Yeah. All right. I think we're gonna be all right.

Just so you know. I think it's gonna be okay. It's 'cause you're an optimist. Yeah. Optimist. Well, when you get your first robot and it does the dishes for you, you're gonna go, yeah. Okay. This is kind of cool, 

Alex: is that if you could buy a robot to do any sort of like chore thing, is that the one you're picking is the dish washing robot?

Aaron: You know, I. I've been using my phone this way, and I really think it's gonna be very, have you ever seen the Jetsons? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's gonna be like the robot in the Jetsons. Like it's gonna be around the house and it's gonna be more like a [01:11:00] another family member. Oof. And I hate saying that because I'm like super duper, like raw, disconnected guy.

I'm a granola to a bit, uh, except camping. Camping sucks when need my air conditioning. 

Alex: Hold on a second. A camping does not suck. And B you can't be granola guy and say Camping sucks. I mean that's, I 

Aaron: know right? I'm a hybrid, but I think it's gonna be like that. I think there's gonna be one in the house.

It's gonna be like Che GBT where it learns and it's gonna make everybody's favorite meals. And when someone gets hurt, it's gonna perform. You know, 

Alex: it's gonna have a defibrillator, you know, and it's 

Aaron: all that paw. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. And I think it's gonna be much cooler, 

Alex: you know, if, if it could order us dinner, you know, accurately not that would be nice.

Aaron: Yeah. Or make dinner. It would make dinner, it would garden. And then what's gonna happen is the only time it's gonna be bad is whenever you vote the wrong way and they kill you. That's the only thing. Oh man. Read Rob 

Alex: Apocalypse 

Aaron: Robo. I think I [01:12:00] started that one. I own it. I know I own it. The audio book at least.

Alex: Yeah. All right. Well, appreciate you all hanging out while we went down the AI rabbit hole or rat hole, whichever one you, you think that was. We very much appreciate you. We hope you enjoy, uh, the next couple of weeks of summer. Go outside, uh, you know, catch up on the library, put your headphones on, you know, and listen to some podcasts while you're out in the sun.

That'd be great. Yeah. And we shall see you soon. 

Aaron: See you later everybody. Thank you for listening to the Fourth Curtain Podcast. Visit us@thefourthcurtain.com to find our monthly newsletter and support the show via Patreon, the Fourth Curtain Podcast as a production of Fourth Curtain Media, lovingly edited by Brian Hensley of Noise Floor Sound Solutions Production support by May Lee, with Community Management by Doug Artman and Art Production by Paul Russell.

Thanks again for listening.