SPEAKER_1: This is Sticker Retro Corner, the best retro gaming YouTuber in the world, and I'm here to tell you, you should be watching and listening to Scene World.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't, you'll regret it.
SPEAKER_2: Sup all, it's the Scene World Podcast.
SPEAKER_2: I'm AJ, that guy over there is Jörg.
SPEAKER_3: Hello.
SPEAKER_2: In a minute, we'll be talking with Sarunas Ledas from Tag of Joy.
SPEAKER_3: Joy of Tag, Tag of Joy.
SPEAKER_3: Tag of Joy, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: From Lithuania.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: And we will be talking about actually three topics.
SPEAKER_3: He was the main graphic designer, sorry.
SPEAKER_3: He was the main graphic designer of Broken Sword 2.5, the fan project that we once discussed with Mario Scosh in the earlier episode.
SPEAKER_2: We're on a roll because we've had like a Broken Sword, this is like our fourth or third or fourth podcast about this.
SPEAKER_3: Fourth, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, we had Charles Cecil or Cecil at first.
SPEAKER_3: Then we had Mario Scosh of the fan project.
SPEAKER_3: Then we had Scumbiam that also mentioned the game, and now we have him.
SPEAKER_3: And not only did he do the main graphics, but also he was responsible for doing the English voiceover.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Well.
SPEAKER_2: So that's in a minute.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_2: Before we do that, we got some news, I think.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_2: I got some news.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Well.
SPEAKER_3: So the company RetroBit is finally putting P472 for the Megadrive or Genesis, over three decades after its cancellation on physical release.
SPEAKER_2: What is this?
SPEAKER_3: Pre-ordered now.
SPEAKER_3: P47 is one of those famous arcade games where it is like, how you say it?
SPEAKER_3: Shoot them up?
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, it's a shoot them up.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: And it was canceled and now it's released on physical.
SPEAKER_2: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Three decades after its cancellation.
SPEAKER_3: So RetroBit is actually releasing it now.
SPEAKER_3: You can pre-order it now.
SPEAKER_3: And the amount of units produced will equal the amounts ordered.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: So it's not a limited pre-order.
SPEAKER_3: It's pre-order, then you get it.
SPEAKER_3: And if you don't, you don't.
SPEAKER_3: Anyway, that's one thing.
SPEAKER_3: The other thing is Nintendo announced Donkey Kong Country Returns HD.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: And that's actually the name.
SPEAKER_3: Actually called Donkey Kong Country Returns HD.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: All right.
SPEAKER_2: Cool.
SPEAKER_3: That's the name of the new part of Donkey Kong Country.
SPEAKER_2: So is this a remaster of the original Donkey Kong Country or is it a brand new game?
SPEAKER_3: From the name, I would say it returns an HD.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: That's interesting because Donkey Kong Country is one of the very few games.
SPEAKER_2: So games are fun.
SPEAKER_2: I enjoy a game.
SPEAKER_2: I do not have the patience or the time to beat a game.
SPEAKER_3: I know.
SPEAKER_3: I'm also not a compilationist on games.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly like you.
SPEAKER_2: I think every game I've ever had, a couple of games on the C64 I have finished.
SPEAKER_2: But the vast majority, it's like play it for an hour or two, put it away, and don't think about it again.
SPEAKER_3: Same about me.
SPEAKER_3: Same.
SPEAKER_2: Donkey Kong Country is one of the very few games that I sat down with my brother, and because he was good at some stuff and I was good at some stuff.
SPEAKER_2: So we would take turns hitting the parts that we were good at.
SPEAKER_2: We beat the game in like an afternoon.
SPEAKER_2: Like the first time that we tried.
SPEAKER_2: And we were so proud of ourselves because it was like, like, holy shit, we just beat a game.
SPEAKER_2: Like that doesn't happen.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_3: I felt the same when I completed the first Turtles game on the Game Boy in 2017.
SPEAKER_3: No, 2016.
SPEAKER_3: 2016.
SPEAKER_2: He and I did that a few times.
SPEAKER_2: We beat Soul Calibur 2, I want to say, on the PlayStation.
SPEAKER_2: He and I kind of just, again, took turns playing it.
SPEAKER_2: And then at a video game con, we went there and we sat down and played Bonk's Revenge for five minutes and somehow beat it.
SPEAKER_2: We got an end screen.
SPEAKER_2: So I guess someone else is probably playing it before us because we went in there and played it.
SPEAKER_2: And it was like, yeah, you won.
SPEAKER_2: We just kind of looked at each other like, are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_2: Like that was it.
SPEAKER_2: We won.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_2: I got video of it somewhere.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, because I took video of that stuff.
SPEAKER_3: I know, I know you showed me.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: The thing, however, is a very interesting thing about Donkey Kong Country is it's one of those titles that pushes the Super NES to its limits.
SPEAKER_3: And interestingly, after it was released on the Super Nintendo, they made a port for the Game Boy, which is incredible because it was one of those games thought they would never make it to the Game Boy because of how technically advanced it was.
SPEAKER_3: But despite the technical limitation, the Game Boy versions are also very, very spectacular, very fluid animations, very, very detailed, amazing.
SPEAKER_3: Donkey Kong 3 is actually also special.
SPEAKER_3: If I'm not mistaken, there are two versions of Donkey Kong 3, one in color and one monochrome for the original Game Boy.
SPEAKER_3: I might be wrong on that, but I believe I have both versions.
SPEAKER_3: Let me quickly verify that.
SPEAKER_2: There were a lot of games that I feel like they came out as a black and white like original Game Boy game.
SPEAKER_2: But if you plugged them into a Game Boy color, it would put colors to it.
SPEAKER_2: Sometimes they work quite right, but it would do something to it.
SPEAKER_3: That wasn't actually very much the case.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, really?
SPEAKER_3: You are confusing it with many or some later Game Boy games doing that with super Game Boy cartridges.
SPEAKER_2: Maybe.
SPEAKER_2: I remember it added some kind of coloring to it.
SPEAKER_3: It wasn't perfect.
SPEAKER_3: You could get Donkey Kong that was made for the Game Boy and put it in a super Game Boy and then it would add colors because it came with its own color scheme.
SPEAKER_3: But actually, most Game Boy color games were made to only run on the Game Boy color and not on the Game Boy.
SPEAKER_2: The hell was a super Game Boy?
SPEAKER_3: A super Game Boy was an add-on to play a super game.
SPEAKER_2: Think for the Super NES.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Or for our Asian, Japanese listeners, Super Famicom.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_2: Huh.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, I was right.
SPEAKER_3: There were two, there were a couple, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Late, Donkey Kong was actually, Donkey Kong Country 3 was actually three times.
SPEAKER_3: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Let's see, let's see, let's see.
SPEAKER_3: I'm looking it up because.
SPEAKER_3: Because I really want to know now.
SPEAKER_3: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Now my browser is stuck.
SPEAKER_3: But it was released a couple of times.
SPEAKER_3: It was also released on the Game Boy Advance.
SPEAKER_2: Now, see again here, if you play Super Mario Land, which was a pretty early Game Boy game.
SPEAKER_2: If you play that on the Game Boy Color, it will display colors.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, but they're not great.
SPEAKER_2: They're not great.
SPEAKER_2: That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_2: A lot of these games will display something.
SPEAKER_2: It's not perfect.
SPEAKER_2: It doesn't look great, but it's not black and white.
SPEAKER_3: No, you are totally wrong here.
SPEAKER_3: What you were talking of, all Game Boy games are having a default color palette on Super Game Boy.
SPEAKER_3: What I'm talking about is some later games like Donkey Kong, not Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong for the Game Boy.
SPEAKER_2: Right.
SPEAKER_2: They had a added stuff for the Game Boy Color.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_3: No, for the Super Game Boy, not the Game Boy Color.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, Super Game Boy.
SPEAKER_2: But I'm talking about original games that didn't have that, and the Game Boy Color would put color to them.
SPEAKER_2: It wasn't great, but it would do something with it.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, but that's why when I play Game Boy games on the Game Boy Advanced, I'm not playing them on the Game Boy Color.
SPEAKER_3: Then I'm always using a key combination before the game starts up to put them in black and white.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, I'm not saying whether it's good or bad, I'm just saying it does the thing.
SPEAKER_3: Well, it's mostly like purple and crap.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, like I said, it's not great, but it tries to put color to the game, is what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_3: But what?
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, but yeah.
SPEAKER_2: It's not great.
SPEAKER_2: Given the option, I'd rather see it in black and white a lot of times, but it just does it.
SPEAKER_3: Game Boy Color is actually the less preferable Game Boy, because in comparison to the Game Boy Advanced and the original Game Boy, you can't add background light to the Game Boy Color.
SPEAKER_2: Well, they had one for a short time.
SPEAKER_2: It really wasn't a big fan.
SPEAKER_2: Anyway, moving on.
SPEAKER_3: Well, the Amicon UK 2025 announced, there are no booking fees on tickets this time to reflect that everybody struggles financially nowadays to the economy being down and stuff.
SPEAKER_3: They decided to drop the booking fees this time.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: And another show, another booking, Vintage Computer Festival SoCal is happening again this year.
SPEAKER_3: And we had them last year for a podcast interview.
SPEAKER_3: So now you can also get your ticket there.
SPEAKER_3: And another show happening is the Tokyo Indie Game Summit.
SPEAKER_3: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: That will be happening in March.
SPEAKER_3: And you can also get your ticket there.
SPEAKER_3: So that's three shows coming up for The Enemy slash Retro slash Gaming Nerds.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Yes.
SPEAKER_2: Nice.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: And the other news is somebody got Doom running on a PDF at 12 frames per second.
SPEAKER_2: What?
SPEAKER_2: On a PDF?
SPEAKER_2: What?
SPEAKER_3: On a PDF.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: Explain.
SPEAKER_3: Well, you can program PDFs to show graphics, obviously, and now you can play them.
SPEAKER_2: All right then.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_1: Cool.
SPEAKER_2: Cool.
SPEAKER_2: Speaking of playing things like that, there are two emulator updates here that I've seen, which is, one is Virtual C64, which is a Mac thing.
SPEAKER_2: It's a C64 emulator for Mac OS that improves the REU and fixes a couple bugs, I guess.
SPEAKER_2: I never actually used it.
SPEAKER_2: I'm still, if I use an emulator and go with VICE.
SPEAKER_2: But also the HOXXS64, H-O-X-S-64 emulator was also updated to 1.1.2.7 with new features and again, enhanced REU support.
SPEAKER_2: So I don't know if they're related at all.
SPEAKER_2: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_2: I don't know, but they were both updated.
SPEAKER_2: So one's Windows, one's Mac.
SPEAKER_3: Nice.
SPEAKER_2: So that's a thing.
SPEAKER_2: Speaking of emulation, there's a ChatGPT client for Amiga OS available now.
SPEAKER_3: Nice.
SPEAKER_2: Called Amiga GPT.
SPEAKER_3: Okay, nice.
SPEAKER_2: I'm so sick of the AI.
SPEAKER_3: Well, ChatGPT helped me a couple of times with my issues, so I can't complain here.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_3: I'm using it a lot actually.
SPEAKER_2: I don't know if you saw any of the stuff from the recent CES show in California.
SPEAKER_3: No, I didn't.
SPEAKER_2: It was very, very depressing.
SPEAKER_3: The CES show, but CES stands for Consume Electronic Shows already.
SPEAKER_2: Yes, but everything now is like, here's an AI thing to help you not deal with your children or here's an AI thing that, it's all just nonsense.
SPEAKER_3: That's the future.
SPEAKER_3: That's the future, man.
SPEAKER_2: I hope it isn't, man.
SPEAKER_2: I really hope it isn't because it sucks.
SPEAKER_3: Why?
SPEAKER_2: Some of these things, one of the things that I saw a lot of people talking about AI making movies, basically.
SPEAKER_2: Coca-Cola this year for Christmas, put out their Christmas commercial, their advertisement, and it's AI generated.
SPEAKER_2: This is something that you guys actually released as a commercial to people.
SPEAKER_2: It's winter animals and things, and they're moving, or not really moving.
SPEAKER_2: They're standing kind of static while the camera kind of pans around them like AI does, you know.
SPEAKER_2: It's a really just, there's a lot of it that's just kind of.
SPEAKER_3: Well, I see the positive things in AI.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, you don't know how to solve a problem in the game.
SPEAKER_3: Right, AI gives you some hints.
SPEAKER_2: For example, the hint guide for the game, which they exist, there's walkthroughs and stuff.
SPEAKER_3: Anyway, other improvements, for example, are in the medical field like cancer detection.
SPEAKER_3: AI often can detect cancer a lot easier and earlier than any human can on detecting patterns and signs that humans can't.
SPEAKER_2: That's okay because if you've got something like that, if you've got an AI system for detecting illness or cancer or something, then that flag goes to a person, to a doctor to look at and verify.
SPEAKER_2: There is still a human hand in it.
SPEAKER_2: It's not just the AI isn't.
SPEAKER_2: That's where it comes down to.
SPEAKER_2: Currently, there are tools to help people do jobs.
SPEAKER_2: What a lot of these entrepreneurs want to do is make it so that the AI thing detects it, makes the care plan, does everything without the influence of any human influence in it at all, which is not, I don't want AI deciding what my medical insurance is going to cover.
SPEAKER_2: Again, tools to help somebody, great.
SPEAKER_2: If there can be an AI way to help me, like the smart selection thing in Photoshop, sometimes it gets a little hinky.
SPEAKER_2: If your headrest, if I'm cutting you out for the thumbnail of this, and you're leaning back like that, the headrest on your chair is dark, and your hair is dark, and your hoodie is dark.
SPEAKER_2: So it has difficulty figuring out where your head and stuff is.
SPEAKER_2: If there could be an AI method to help figure that out, to figure, okay, this is the way his head's going, so this is probably where it's going to be.
SPEAKER_2: That's great.
SPEAKER_2: But they're talking about saying, just give me a picture of you, and it'll give me a picture of you looking all shiny and plastic and that I can stick on something.
SPEAKER_2: The whole thing about AI is that it's supposed to do the things we don't want to do so that we can spend time doing things we want.
SPEAKER_3: Or as Charles Sissel said it in the interview we did, they used it for reforged to replace humans that otherwise they would have needed.
SPEAKER_3: And so as a small company, they can't afford making the product.
SPEAKER_3: They couldn't afford making reforged from Broken Sword at all.
SPEAKER_3: Of course, they couldn't afford the salary of the amount of people that would need it to hunt, hand, draw, or the original backgrounds.
SPEAKER_3: So the decision was-
SPEAKER_2: Really though, because, okay, you think-
SPEAKER_3: That's what he said.
SPEAKER_2: That's what he said, and that's what he said, and that's what a lot of the buzzwords are going to be, in that you can say like, we couldn't have done this without the use of AI and whatnot.
SPEAKER_2: But at the same time, you are-
SPEAKER_2: These are jobs that used to be held by people, and now you're taking that away and giving it to AI.
SPEAKER_2: It's like the creative stuff, the stuff that we want to do, is not what we should be giving to AI to do.
SPEAKER_2: Give that the medial stuff, doing laundry or cleaning the sidewalk, or whatever it is that takes up our time that we don't want to do, and leave the creative stuff to people that want to do it.
SPEAKER_3: But the problem is, and that is what Charles Cecil also said in his interview with us, that he wouldn't have the money to pay so much human force.
SPEAKER_3: So, that means the product wouldn't have been out, which means he wouldn't have earned money with the product.
SPEAKER_3: He couldn't pay his people, so it would go in a downspiral.
SPEAKER_3: Instead, he used the workforce of humans he already had, and added AI as a helper to it, you know?
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: And he not only said that to us, but also in many written interviews or articles, you could read about Broken Sword Reforged.
SPEAKER_3: He mentioned that a lot, that AI was actually a helpful tool.
SPEAKER_3: So, if there is a difference between a product not being released because you can't afford to pay the people that would be necessary, isn't it legit to say I use AI as a helper and still have my people, so nobody is losing his job because of AI, but actually get them something to work because, as he also said in the same interview with us, that they would go over what AI made and perfectionize the image.
SPEAKER_3: Removing all the artifacts, so it's supporting but not making people losing their jobs.
SPEAKER_3: Instead, keeping their jobs because now they can work on a product that otherwise wouldn't be possible.
SPEAKER_2: I'd be interested to know what System 3's revenue is and what they could pay someone.
SPEAKER_3: But we are talking here about Charles Sissel and that was Revolution Software.
SPEAKER_2: Oh, Revolution, sorry, Revolution.
SPEAKER_3: That has nothing to do with System 3.
SPEAKER_2: You're right.
SPEAKER_2: I'm going to stop here.
SPEAKER_3: Revolution Software is from Ireland and is it from Ireland or UK?
SPEAKER_3: I don't remember.
SPEAKER_3: But System 3 is actually...
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, I think it was UK.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_3: But yeah, don't confuse Broken Sword with Lasting.
SPEAKER_3: What do you want to say?
SPEAKER_2: I'd be curious to know what their revenue was.
SPEAKER_2: I'm seeing about $14.2 million a year right now.
SPEAKER_3: In Revolution Software?
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_2: So you're telling me they couldn't pay someone $35,000?
SPEAKER_2: Estimated revenue per employee, the amount of money they make per employee is $145,000.
SPEAKER_2: That's not what they're spending on employees.
SPEAKER_2: That's what they make per employee.
SPEAKER_3: Well, we can only go by what he tells people.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_2: No, I mean, obviously, that's, you know, a lot of people have, they have, it says 98 employees, and yeah, 14.2 million a year.
SPEAKER_2: I hope this is, I don't know if this is the right, I'm not sure who this might be.
SPEAKER_3: Revolution Software is in York, England.
SPEAKER_2: Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_2: So, I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_2: So, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_2: I just, as a tool to help somebody, AI is fine, but when you're giving it the entire task, when it's doing the thing, then you're number one, devaluing the contribution of people, right?
SPEAKER_2: Because why have us host this podcast when we can have an avatar with fake computer voices hosting this?
SPEAKER_3: Which is something some YouTubers do nowadays.
SPEAKER_2: That's right.
SPEAKER_2: I hate that.
SPEAKER_2: When I go and look at a video, it's that obviously AI voice or the fake Morgan Freeman voice.
SPEAKER_2: For some people, maybe that's helpful.
SPEAKER_2: But for the vast majority of people, again, as to help people do a task, great, fantastic.
SPEAKER_2: But when you start giving the AI thing, that task to do instead of giving it to a person, then you are devaluing the contribution of each person that is contributing.
SPEAKER_2: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_3: So you think that Charles Cecil is wrong in claiming he couldn't make the reforged edition of Broken Sword without AI?
SPEAKER_2: I think that they could have done it without AI.
SPEAKER_2: It might have taken a little longer.
SPEAKER_2: It might not have been as easy.
SPEAKER_2: Well, I'm sure it could have been done.
SPEAKER_2: You look at that freaking 2.5 was made by a team of volunteers.
SPEAKER_3: It ate here or so.
SPEAKER_2: Yes.
SPEAKER_2: Again, it took a while.
SPEAKER_2: But they also didn't have all the assets and all the...
SPEAKER_2: They didn't have the kind of...
SPEAKER_2: They didn't have a company behind it that had revenue, that had money to put at it.
SPEAKER_2: Even if it's not a lot, it's something to put at it.
SPEAKER_2: They didn't have that.
SPEAKER_2: They were just people doing a thing.
SPEAKER_2: So, yeah.
SPEAKER_2: So, I'm not too fond of it.
SPEAKER_2: I don't like when you start giving creative jobs to something else that a human could do.
SPEAKER_3: Well, or the other example that we also mentioned in the podcast a few months back is that PS2 version of S0 where VHS tapes were used, and then I put on the VHS tapes recording to recreate the code for the track, so to restore the game data that would have been otherwise lost.
SPEAKER_2: Right.
SPEAKER_2: But again-
SPEAKER_3: That was a good thing in preservation, actually.
SPEAKER_2: Right.
SPEAKER_2: But again, that's helping someone do a task.
SPEAKER_2: It's helping us.
SPEAKER_2: The AI can recognize this, just like in the graphics editing application, to help me use that to select where your head ends and the chair begins.
SPEAKER_2: It's something that you don't see as a creative working on it.
SPEAKER_2: You would put that in there, you apply a filter, you apply this thing to figure it out, and it could help do that, but it's not going to make new audio wholesale on that.
SPEAKER_2: It's not going to redo the voices, it's not going to do all this other shit that might be done to it.
SPEAKER_2: It's just getting this noise and removing it, and being able to recognize what that noise is to remove.
SPEAKER_3: Well, the thing is, I always learned in IT that you cannot create something if the original is lost.
SPEAKER_3: It doesn't exist anymore, right?
SPEAKER_3: This is the exceptional case where you can create the game, Nintendo released, put on a satellite system, and the satellite system data that was stored on the flash card do a digital data rotting, data rot, that actually is something that happens.
SPEAKER_3: The code is getting lost to a degradation of the media that the data is stored on.
SPEAKER_3: And normally, I learned that those things are lost forever.
SPEAKER_3: But thanks to AI and thanks to a Japanese YouTuber uploading his race he did in the 90s, when he was connected to that live stream of the Nintendo satellite system, AI was able to recreate the track data out of nothing, basically.
SPEAKER_3: Out of visual data that somebody put in a bad quality VHS rip on YouTube.
SPEAKER_3: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_2: It was able to recognize and differentiate the different sounds and video and whatnot that it was looking at.
SPEAKER_3: No, not sounds.
SPEAKER_3: Only the video.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: And recreate based on that.
SPEAKER_2: But you're not recovering.
SPEAKER_2: The original stuff, you're rebuilding it out of something else.
SPEAKER_2: So it's not going to be, it's not a perfect one-one thing.
SPEAKER_2: It's reinterpolating this stuff and making something that looks just like the stuff used to look, essentially.
SPEAKER_2: Which again, yeah, that can be useful for that, but you're not saying, you're not telling it being like, here's a block of video and here's another block of video.
SPEAKER_2: Recreate the 30 minutes of video that's missing from the middle of this.
SPEAKER_2: You're not giving it that full creative control to just make some shit.
SPEAKER_2: You're telling it, clean up what we have already.
SPEAKER_2: It's doing its best to extrapolate from what's there to rebuild what already exists.
SPEAKER_2: But it's not like creating whole new videos that look like this.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_3: Well, another example would be the Command And Conqueror remaster.
SPEAKER_3: They couldn't do what George Lucas did with Star Wars by just re-shooting the original actors again for the re-release, because one of the main actors, General Shepard, actually died a few years earlier, so they couldn't-
SPEAKER_2: Who did they put the free film?
SPEAKER_3: So they indeed used AI to improve the quality of the cutscenes based off the bad quality they had in the game.
SPEAKER_2: That, again, is a tool.
SPEAKER_2: I have a thing here.
SPEAKER_2: It's an image upscaler.
SPEAKER_2: It uses AI to upscale the image, but I'm not telling it create a whole new image based on this.
SPEAKER_2: I'm using it as a tool to do something myself, just as they use that to clean up the video that they had.
SPEAKER_2: They're not telling it, make a whole new video that looks like this.
SPEAKER_2: They're just cleaning up what's already there.
SPEAKER_3: They're telling it, make code that would work like what you see in the image.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_2: But yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_3: Or draw the, or interpolate and draw, recreate the graphic.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: It's a whole weird thing that, I mean, you and I were messaging a couple of days ago because I did the AI summary on our X profiles and it had a general idea of who we were and then it picked the most bizarre quotes.
SPEAKER_2: Like the quote to summarize my whole online personality was, and now I am barbecuing in the room.
SPEAKER_3: You mean Croc, the AI from X?
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: It's one of those things where it's funny, I've got a couple of pictures where I said, give me a picture of what AJ from Scene World and Yorick from Scene World look like.
SPEAKER_2: And it gave these pictures of some dude who is not me.
SPEAKER_2: One of them, I look like this individual looks like he's been lobotomized, and he's trying to type on like a Super Nintendo.
SPEAKER_2: But it has no idea what we look like.
SPEAKER_2: But they all had a red thing on their right wrist, which yeah, I have my dog's old collar on my wrist.
SPEAKER_2: So it knew I had that.
SPEAKER_2: They knew enough to put that in every picture that I had.
SPEAKER_2: It put that in there.
SPEAKER_2: But it also knew that I don't tend to shave every day, because every picture in there, the guy had like a five o'clock shadow.
SPEAKER_2: But it couldn't give me a picture that looked like me.
SPEAKER_2: You even had a picture of you where you had like a Scene World sweater on or something.
SPEAKER_3: I know, it was looking very cheap.
SPEAKER_2: But it didn't look anything like you.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_2: So I don't understand.
SPEAKER_2: It's so hit and miss on what it can do.
SPEAKER_2: And it's so, I don't know, maybe there's probably like some kind of wall in there.
SPEAKER_2: So it can't actually make a representation of someone that exists for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_2: But yeah, there's so many weird little things that this stuff is just not, I feel like, so Chat GPT is like, essentially, it's a chatbot.
SPEAKER_2: And you can type questions to it and it'll type it back, answer you in regular kind of like human speech.
SPEAKER_2: It's sort of like the Eliza thing from years and years ago.
SPEAKER_3: But it's much, much more perfect.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, it doesn't suck as much.
SPEAKER_2: Because Eliza, you would say something and she'd be like, well, how does that make you feel?
SPEAKER_2: It wasn't really like a whole thing.
SPEAKER_2: It was just kind of like she'd answer you with a question.
SPEAKER_2: So it just kind of kept, it was basically improv.
SPEAKER_2: It's a yes and kind of thing.
SPEAKER_2: Chat GPT is much more succinct.
SPEAKER_2: It's much more natural language.
SPEAKER_2: But it feels to me like that's kind of trying to emulate like a general intelligence, like a general AI, which is, I mean, that's the holy grail.
SPEAKER_2: That's data from Star Trek or C3PO or whatever.
SPEAKER_3: But once you hit that level, like R2D2, but he couldn't speak, he only could peep.
SPEAKER_2: Well, he could speak.
SPEAKER_2: He just spoke in Astromech, I guess.
SPEAKER_2: Beep, beep, boop, boop, boop.
SPEAKER_2: But yeah, once you hit that level, it's like well, it's a weird thing like specialized AI, no problem with that.
SPEAKER_2: Specialized AI that could help do tasks or whatnot.
SPEAKER_2: But a general thing is just kind of, I don't know.
SPEAKER_2: I don't know, it just feels weird.
SPEAKER_2: I don't like it.
SPEAKER_2: I don't like it one bit.
SPEAKER_2: I'm getting to that point where I'm some generic old man that's just shaking his fist at everything in my lawn.
SPEAKER_2: But yeah, anyway, there is an Amiga GPT.
SPEAKER_2: You can download it for Amiga OS, and Amiga OS 3.4.1 and Morph OS.
SPEAKER_2: So it's there.
SPEAKER_2: You can download it.
SPEAKER_2: We'll put a link in there somewhere.
SPEAKER_2: Core i64 is still at it.
SPEAKER_2: They've been doing, they've been making like the reproduction CMD drive, the FD and so forth.
SPEAKER_2: Now they have released some new compatible, CMD compatible boards.
SPEAKER_2: So there's the 1750XL, let me say that again.
SPEAKER_2: There's the 1750XL TLCC edition board, which is an updated design of the 1750XL, which was a CMD REU.
SPEAKER_2: I don't know exactly the specs on it because I never had one.
SPEAKER_2: That was, oh lordy, that's a bandsaw.
SPEAKER_3: Two megabytes, I believe.
SPEAKER_2: Two megabytes?
SPEAKER_2: Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, so that's one of them.
SPEAKER_2: And the other one is a RAM card XL board.
SPEAKER_2: So it's got a real-time clock, a battery backup system, and it's also got an external battery connection.
SPEAKER_2: I guess with the RAM card XL is kind of, maybe that's a RAM disk.
SPEAKER_2: Again, I don't know.
SPEAKER_2: I never had any of these things.
SPEAKER_2: So both of those are around.
SPEAKER_2: And I think they're expected to be available by next month, which would be February.
SPEAKER_2: I don't know when this is coming out, but February 2025.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, when do you think it will come out?
SPEAKER_2: I was thinking probably in January, right?
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: So I guess you can reserve an item, but they won't actually take payment until it's ready to go.
SPEAKER_2: So that's a thing.
SPEAKER_2: And finally, from my end, we have.
SPEAKER_3: If you don't talk to your hand, it would be much better.
SPEAKER_2: Sorry about that.
SPEAKER_2: We've got RetroFusion.
SPEAKER_2: They have now available for $95, new Breadbin cases, which come in colors.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, Breadbin for a change.
SPEAKER_2: Breadbin, yeah, Breadbin.
SPEAKER_2: They come in some colors.
SPEAKER_2: I see blue and purple and.
SPEAKER_3: Bless you.
SPEAKER_2: One more time.
SPEAKER_2: Let's try it again.
SPEAKER_2: They come in colors.
SPEAKER_2: I see red and blue and purple and brown and black and smoky, acrylic and clear, of course, because it's got to have a clear.
SPEAKER_3: Now the question is, is that from a mold or recreated from scratch?
SPEAKER_2: They are injection molded.
SPEAKER_3: But from the original Commodore or new?
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: C64's original bread bin or bread box shape is an icon of 1980s home computing, an enduring symbol of the 8-bit era.
SPEAKER_2: I'm reading it.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, really?
SPEAKER_2: Our brand new injection molded replica.
SPEAKER_2: True to the original in every detail, features enhanced durability and ease of use.
SPEAKER_3: So it's a replica, not from the original Commodore?
SPEAKER_2: Right.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: Produced for the first time in a range of exciting new colors.
SPEAKER_2: With matching or contrasting side brackets and badges, C64 enthusiasts can reinvigorate their beloved old machines or give their custom-built modern unit a striking new look.
SPEAKER_2: The bread bin is back and better than ever.
SPEAKER_2: You can hire me for voice acting at contactsceneworld.org.
SPEAKER_2: But yeah, so that's available.
SPEAKER_2: It's compatible with the original C64, the longboard, the shortboard, the Ultimate 64, the 64 Reloaded, both Mark 1 and Mark 2, Evo 64, and the 60 Clone.
SPEAKER_3: And how much?
SPEAKER_2: Ninety-five dollars, which in euros is, which in euros is, shouldn't be so much different.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, it's probably about the same.
SPEAKER_2: It's 92 euros and 42, whatever they are.
SPEAKER_3: Then, of course, you also add the import.
SPEAKER_2: Okay, so the Indiegogo, they were trying to get $47,693 and they got 67,000.
SPEAKER_2: They're in Australia.
SPEAKER_3: Australia.
SPEAKER_2: Adelaide, Australia.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: Okay, they're in Australia.
SPEAKER_3: There you go.
SPEAKER_2: That's also not in Europe.
SPEAKER_3: That's also not in Europe, no.
SPEAKER_3: Awesome, but Europe is not the thing.
SPEAKER_3: Thing is, if it's part of the European Union.
SPEAKER_2: Well, I don't think Australia is.
SPEAKER_2: Vandalism News, number 75 is out.
SPEAKER_3: Nice.
SPEAKER_2: So if you want to go download that, there's a thing somewhere.
SPEAKER_2: It's a good magazine.
SPEAKER_3: The NTSC news section again?
SPEAKER_2: Of course.
SPEAKER_2: Although the magazine itself is not NTSC fixed.
SPEAKER_2: So I'm working on that.
SPEAKER_2: I'm working on that.
SPEAKER_3: You are working.
SPEAKER_2: No, I'm not personally working on that.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, it still surprised me to this day that after 25 years of Scene World, nobody ever tried to make a competition to us, which means people either think it's not worth it, or they are just too lazy to put the work in.
SPEAKER_2: I don't see it as competition.
SPEAKER_3: There is none.
SPEAKER_2: Right.
SPEAKER_3: There is none.
SPEAKER_2: Right.
SPEAKER_2: But I mean, I don't think that even if somebody were to do the same sort of thing, right, an NTSC PAL, I wouldn't be.
SPEAKER_2: It's still not.
SPEAKER_2: It's still right.
SPEAKER_2: But it's not, it's not competition.
SPEAKER_2: We're not competing with anybody else here.
SPEAKER_2: This is just, you know, it's a thing that we do.
SPEAKER_2: Whatever.
SPEAKER_2: You can be successful.
SPEAKER_2: We can be successful.
SPEAKER_2: It's all good.
SPEAKER_2: I don't, I don't, I'm not trying to be better than anyone else.
SPEAKER_3: If there was another magazine doing the same thing we do, we would be less motivated to keep on going.
SPEAKER_2: You think?
SPEAKER_3: I think so.
SPEAKER_2: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_3: People would say, why do we even go through all this pain every time when there's another magazine around doing the same thing?
SPEAKER_2: Would we want to?
SPEAKER_3: Would, that's the thing.
SPEAKER_3: Would we want to?
SPEAKER_3: I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_2: It wouldn't be like, well, there's someone else doing it.
SPEAKER_2: Time to hang it up, guys.
SPEAKER_3: Do you think so?
SPEAKER_3: No.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah?
SPEAKER_3: I'm not so sure about that.
SPEAKER_2: Hopefully, we won't find out.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Well, it doesn't look like anybody has something prepared to be like, wait, here we go.
SPEAKER_3: Fully NTSC, PAL Fixed Magazine System, ready to roll.
SPEAKER_2: But again, if they did, it's not a competition.
SPEAKER_2: We're not, this isn't like.
SPEAKER_2: It really isn't.
SPEAKER_3: You remember this Australian guy, Damian.
SPEAKER_2: Don't say the name.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_3: Who was like, don't undercut words.
SPEAKER_3: He was like, can you give me access to your source code?
SPEAKER_3: And we're like, hell no.
SPEAKER_3: Hell no.
SPEAKER_2: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_2: Invoke that one.
SPEAKER_3: Hell no.
SPEAKER_3: As long as I'm doing, as long as I'm managing the project, it's not going to happen.
SPEAKER_2: First off, okay, you're talking source code, okay?
SPEAKER_2: Anybody with a freaking, with a super snapshot cartridge or an epic fast load, can go into a freaking monitor and look at the memory, look at the source code right there.
SPEAKER_2: It's right in there.
SPEAKER_2: You don't need us to give it to you.
SPEAKER_2: It's right in memory.
SPEAKER_2: Just look at freaking memory.
SPEAKER_2: Do a memory dump.
SPEAKER_2: That's when I coded my first demo in a trillion years back in, it was probably 2014 or 15 years.
SPEAKER_2: I didn't have any more source codes anymore.
SPEAKER_2: So I found an old demo that I did, and I did a memory dump, and there it is.
SPEAKER_2: That's how I figured out how I used to do it, was looking at this memory dump in a monitor.
SPEAKER_3: But without the documentation, even with the documentation, it's sometimes difficult.
SPEAKER_2: I think that someone with talent could figure it out.
SPEAKER_2: I think Andrew could probably figure it out if he was digging through it.
SPEAKER_2: You know, seriously.
SPEAKER_3: I like it how you say, Andrew is very talented, and Andrew himself is like, I'm not somebody special.
SPEAKER_3: Different perspectives on things.
SPEAKER_3: Different perspectives.
SPEAKER_2: But yeah, the stuff's all right there.
SPEAKER_2: If you spend the time to go through it, you can figure it out easy enough.
SPEAKER_2: But anyway, we should probably start the interview, because we've been babbling for a bit.
SPEAKER_2: So let's go over and look at this Tag of Joy over there.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_3: Back to Lithuania.
SPEAKER_2: No, Lithuania.
SPEAKER_2: Is it Lithuania?
SPEAKER_2: Lithuania.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_2: For some reason, I-
SPEAKER_3: The domain is tagofjoy.lt.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_3: LT stands for Lithuania.
SPEAKER_2: You're right.
SPEAKER_2: I just, for some reason, I was just lost for a second.
SPEAKER_2: I forgot that's where he was.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: I was thinking Latvian or something.
SPEAKER_3: Nope.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Today, we have another interview with another guest, Sarunas Ledas.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, how do you want to be introduced?
SPEAKER_3: I mean, you are doing a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_3: Are you still doing graphics or are you more like a company leader nowadays?
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: Currently, well, we've co-founded the company with my brother and we've been developing games in the company and I'm kind of the CEO, even though it's a small indie company.
SPEAKER_1: But I do all kinds of stuff because I had been doing art, like for the game that we're going to talk about, but also I studied programming.
SPEAKER_1: So I do whatever I can.
SPEAKER_3: Awesome, awesome.
SPEAKER_1: I'm kind of a generalist game developer.
SPEAKER_3: Awesome.
SPEAKER_3: Well, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you.
SPEAKER_3: Awesome to have you on.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, it's quite interesting because we had an email exchange in between or before the interview and you said you could shed some light on some stuff that Marius, gosh, we had before, couldn't answer.
SPEAKER_3: So I'm very, very much looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_3: But perhaps we should start with as we usually do.
SPEAKER_3: What was your starting point in the game industry?
SPEAKER_3: Was there something before a Broken Sword 2.5?
SPEAKER_3: Or was that actually your starting point?
SPEAKER_1: It was actually the first big project that I joined.
SPEAKER_1: But before that, I did some random stuff for some other projects here locally in Lithuania.
SPEAKER_1: So people were trying to do some...
SPEAKER_1: There was this game which was kind of inspired by Fallout games.
SPEAKER_1: So I tried to join that team and then there were a few other projects, but everybody was just starting out in the industry, not even in the industry, they were just all hobbies back then.
SPEAKER_1: So I tried joining those projects, but some of them didn't progress that much, and then I found that Broken Sword 2.5 project, and it became the first big or bigger project that I worked on.
SPEAKER_3: Interesting.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, the funniest thing is, you were the guy that made the all-German team international, and when I contacted them first by email, I sent an email in English, because it was like, you don't know who would answer, and so it turned out that you were the only non-German guy, they said.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, there was, I think, one person from Austria, but everybody else, I think, was from Germany, and then I was from Lithuania, so everybody had to talk in English because of me.
SPEAKER_3: Awesome.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: And interestingly, one thing you told me in our email conversation, you said you disagree with the sentiment that Marios was telling us that you were one of the cornerstones of keeping the projects alive, and you said you don't think so.
SPEAKER_3: Why?
SPEAKER_1: Well, I mean, I was one of the important people, but I wouldn't say that I was like the most important or one of the two or three people.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, there was this core team of maybe, I don't know, six to eight people probably, and I was one of them.
SPEAKER_1: But other people were equally important, I think.
SPEAKER_1: So there were many people that joined and then left.
SPEAKER_1: So I guess they did their work, but they weren't as key to the project.
SPEAKER_1: But I wasn't alone in it or I wasn't even the lead person for the whole project.
SPEAKER_2: So yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_3: But you said, you were leading the graphic team, kind of, and you also told me that you were responsible for the English synchronization, the English dubbing, which is quite interesting because that is where Marios couldn't tell us anything about it.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, I did some research, I found out that most people who did the voice acting were actually big YouTubers at that time.
SPEAKER_3: So perhaps tell us a bit about those two things, if you can, because that really interests me.
SPEAKER_1: Sure.
SPEAKER_1: I could talk a lot probably about those topics because I worked on them for years.
SPEAKER_1: But I can start with the English voiceovers, even though they were the last thing probably that happened to the project except for a few bug fixes and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_1: So when we released the initial version, the German version in 2008, I was quite sure that we have to make an English version because by then a lot of people from other countries, in addition to Germany, wanted to play the game too.
SPEAKER_1: So other team members were quite tired of the project already, and they were happy with the German version because it was great.
SPEAKER_1: And I said, guys, we have to do this.
SPEAKER_1: And they said, if you want to supervise that, just go ahead.
SPEAKER_1: You have the green light.
SPEAKER_1: So I did that, and someone on the forums referred one YouTuber that had a similar voice to George Stobart in the game.
SPEAKER_1: So we contacted him and he agreed to record the voices for free.
SPEAKER_1: He wasn't a professional actor, but I think he did a decent job.
SPEAKER_1: And it was for free, so I think it was great.
SPEAKER_1: And then we had some other people contacting us, or we contacted some random people that wanted to do it.
SPEAKER_1: And they recorded some of the characters.
SPEAKER_1: And then at some point, a person from the UK who was kind of managing or working with a theatre actor group or something like that suggested to record probably at least half of the voices in their group.
SPEAKER_1: So he supervised those people, and they recorded the voices, and they even raised the quality even more.
SPEAKER_1: And yeah, we got the voices, we edited them, and we added them into the game.
SPEAKER_1: And then we got the English voiceovers that way, which took two years, I think.
SPEAKER_1: We released the English version in 2010, I think or so.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, it was two years.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Which is interesting.
SPEAKER_3: Did you try or had the idea to get like the original English voice actors, like Marius told us, they got Alexander Schottky for the German one?
SPEAKER_3: Or wasn't that a consideration actually?
SPEAKER_1: It was, it definitely was.
SPEAKER_1: And I think at some point, someone from the team contacted, or maybe it was me, but I think it was someone else that contacted the original actor, Ralph Saxon.
SPEAKER_1: And I think he agreed at first, but when we actually needed to record the voices, he said that he couldn't do it.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know what the reason was.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it was kind of ethical because the game was kind of looking like one of the originals, but it wasn't.
SPEAKER_1: Or maybe he just didn't have time at the moment.
SPEAKER_1: So I have no idea what the reason was, but then he said that he couldn't do it.
SPEAKER_1: And that's why we looked for another option, which is completely understandable because it's a big task.
SPEAKER_1: And people just don't have the time to do stuff like that for free, at least in some points in life.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, but as for other actors, the actress of Nico kept changing in the original games.
SPEAKER_1: So there was no point in getting one of the original actors because the theater group actually recorded Nico really well, I think.
SPEAKER_1: They captured the French accent and the acting was great and the recordings were in high quality.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I think Nico was great and many other characters were good too.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I was happy with not having the original actors, even though we would have loved to have them if we had the chance.
SPEAKER_3: Had you actually a connection to the series before you joined the team or did you just join it because you were looking into being a part of a team that makes a fan project that actually looks like it's coming to light at the end of the day?
SPEAKER_1: A bit of both.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, I didn't have any connection to like the development team of the original games, but I loved the games.
SPEAKER_1: I had played them myself before joining this team, and it was actually one of the first games, or at least the first adventure games that I played.
SPEAKER_1: It was, I think, the first one was Broken Sword 2 for whatever reason, because you would just play anything that you got your hands on.
SPEAKER_1: Then the second game was Chris of Monkey Island, and then Broken Sword 1, and then the games kept coming in.
SPEAKER_1: So, yeah, I loved the series, and then somehow I was googling about Monkey Island, about Broken Sword, and semi-randomly I found out this, I found this project that these German people were making, and it actually seemed like it's, as you mentioned, it might become a reality.
SPEAKER_1: So I thought, why not?
SPEAKER_1: And I actually talked to my brother who was kind of into such games as well, and he said, just do it, it seems like a good idea.
SPEAKER_1: He was a bit older than me, a couple of years older.
SPEAKER_1: So I went to him for advice back then, nowadays as well.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, and I joined the team.
SPEAKER_1: That's how it started.
SPEAKER_3: Now that was the second part of the question.
SPEAKER_3: The first part was actually, how about the graphics?
SPEAKER_3: Because it's interesting, Marius himself said he didn't think that the graphics were coherent throughout the game.
SPEAKER_3: But me as a person who played it, I didn't notice any hiccups, to be honest.
SPEAKER_3: To me, it looked pretty much fitting after all.
SPEAKER_1: Well, that's good to hear.
SPEAKER_1: I think that people that work on every project always see the places that could be better.
SPEAKER_1: They might not be bad, but you can always see what can be improved, especially when you start the project at one point, and then in two or three or five years, you are much better yourself and you can do it better.
SPEAKER_1: But it's important to actually release games as well.
SPEAKER_1: So you don't always have to make them perfect.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, to answer your question, it's also a tough question because there were a lot of people joining the project.
SPEAKER_1: And I will probably start from the beginning when I started, when I joined the team.
SPEAKER_1: So back then, I wanted to do animation, or at least try doing animation, frame by frame animation as it was done back then.
SPEAKER_1: And I made this jaggy little walk cycle for George.
SPEAKER_1: I think they gave me a task assignment or something like that because I didn't have a lot of sample work to show them.
SPEAKER_1: So they gave me this assignment.
SPEAKER_1: I made that animation and it was pretty bad.
SPEAKER_1: But he was moving, so they said, this looks great, you can join the team.
SPEAKER_1: So I did.
SPEAKER_1: And then at that point, I think it was too early to actually make a lot of animations because many of the characters weren't designed.
SPEAKER_1: And I think maybe a part of the story wasn't finalized, even though they did have this whole document and everything.
SPEAKER_1: But I think they were still iterating on the puzzle design and what characters will be in the game and so on.
SPEAKER_1: So they said, well, at this point, we don't really need that many animations.
SPEAKER_1: So what else can you do?
SPEAKER_1: And I said, I could probably try making backgrounds.
SPEAKER_1: And again, they gave me a task assignment to repaint this little piece of one of the original backgrounds, which was the outside of Hotel Ubu.
SPEAKER_1: And because, you know, we had to repaint the backgrounds from 640 to the high resolution of 800 pixels.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: I remember it very well.
SPEAKER_3: It's the first time we are noticed you can actually die in the game.
SPEAKER_3: That was exactly that location.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: So, yeah, we had to repaint all the backgrounds and make them prettier.
SPEAKER_1: Or I don't know if they were prettier, but they were higher resolution at least.
SPEAKER_1: So I did repaint that small part with my mouse in Photoshop.
SPEAKER_1: And then they liked it and they said, okay, now you can do backgrounds.
SPEAKER_1: And I did.
SPEAKER_1: And I started painting the backgrounds.
SPEAKER_1: I repainted the Hotel Ubu locations, so the outside, the inside, the upstairs and so on.
SPEAKER_1: And I kept doing it.
SPEAKER_1: And then I kind of started looking for better ways to do it and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_1: And then in the end, I did a lot of backgrounds.
SPEAKER_1: And at some point, I got back to characters and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_1: So I guess you will have more specific questions at some point.
SPEAKER_1: And so I can elaborate on bits and pieces there.
SPEAKER_1: But yes, we can.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_2: So I was going to say, was it difficult to get into?
SPEAKER_2: Because in a lot of games, a graphic artist is working with the style they've invented for themselves.
SPEAKER_2: But you're working within a art style that exists already from the previous games.
SPEAKER_2: Was that more difficult to step into than just making it up yourself?
SPEAKER_1: I think it was really good for me at that moment, because I didn't have a lot of art skills.
SPEAKER_1: I had some skills.
SPEAKER_1: I did do some art before, and I was looking into art, but I was 15 years old probably.
SPEAKER_1: So I didn't have any education or anything, and I just needed to learn.
SPEAKER_1: So learning from example and repainting the backgrounds and looking into them, like checking all the details and how they did it.
SPEAKER_1: And I think I probably saw some original sketches, like line art and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: So I realized, okay, they did this line art, and then they colored it probably in the computer.
SPEAKER_1: So I think it was a really good learning experience for me.
SPEAKER_1: And I kind of learned to mimic the style by doing that.
SPEAKER_1: And then it became much easier.
SPEAKER_1: And actually, I kind of acquired the skill of mimicking other styles pretty well.
SPEAKER_1: And now when some artist does something in our projects in the company, which is Tag of Joy, that I work at now or that I co-founded, someone does some art.
SPEAKER_1: I quite often do some art direction or just management in general.
SPEAKER_1: But sometimes I have to repaint in some additional states or some objects or something like that.
SPEAKER_1: And it's pretty easy for me to mimic the style and just paint those parts in the same style of the other artists.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that skill also helps me nowadays as well.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that was actually pretty interesting and good at the age that I was.
SPEAKER_3: And you will have the situation again, because I guess we will talk about that later.
SPEAKER_3: You actually announced recently that you are working on the successor of A Vampyr's Story.
SPEAKER_3: So you will have the same situation again, that you have a game at least this time from 2008, that you will make a successor for, and you have to also do kind of mimicking the graphic style in a way, right?
SPEAKER_3: At least from the screenshots and trailer from what I saw, it looks like you are not going too far away from the 2008 release with the successor.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, yeah, but with that project, it's interesting that the original background artist and the creator of the IP, which is Bill Tiller from X LucasArts and Chris of Mike Island, he is working on this project as well.
SPEAKER_1: So he's probably gonna paint all the backgrounds himself, so he can mimic his own style.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, yeah, it's quite interesting.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, when I looked at what you're doing with the company, it looks like you first did more like mobile games and, you know, like, and small projects like Learn English and other stuff, and also augmented reality.
SPEAKER_3: And then two years ago, you actually came out with Crowns And Pawns, which is actually, well, a homage on Broken Sword, also Point And Click Adventure.
SPEAKER_3: And interesting there, to me, it feels more like, the graphic style is more like of a Sims game or of a mobile game, in a way.
SPEAKER_3: So, it looks like you are progressing there with your company from the small steps, and then working with Bill Tiller, an ex Lucas Film Games, Lucas Arts employee.
SPEAKER_3: That must be amazing to reach all those milestones in your life.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, from what I heard, it also read on the media at that time, Broken Sword was out.
SPEAKER_3: You are the only person of the core team that actually started a career in game development afterwards.
SPEAKER_1: At least one of the one or two people.
SPEAKER_1: I know that the composer, Daniel Farros, was or is still working in the gaming industry.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not sure if he can be considered one of the core people, but I would definitely consider him one of the core people, so I can see at least two people working in the gaming industry.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, most of the other people just went their own ways.
SPEAKER_1: Anyhow, to answer your question about our journey, so my brother and I always loved adventure games, and at some point we obviously, like not obviously, but we didn't work together.
SPEAKER_1: We just did random stuff, so I did Broken Sword 2.5, and he did some other work.
SPEAKER_1: And time passed, and at some point, we said that maybe we could start the company and do something together in a professional capacity, and not freelancing, but actually making a business.
SPEAKER_1: And we did, and we started, we kind of liked augmented reality because it was completely new, and we liked experimenting and trying something new.
SPEAKER_1: And mobile, the mobile market and the mobile industry was kind of rising at the time, and it was a nice medium to experiment and try something new, because it was like around 2010, 2011, it wasn't that packed and wasn't that defined.
SPEAKER_1: So we thought, and it was much easier to create a small game there, because people liked games like, I don't know, ZombiVille or whatever it was called, which was made by three people or so.
SPEAKER_1: So we thought that it's a good medium to try something interesting.
SPEAKER_1: And at the time it was, but in like five or six years, it became this, I don't know, a mashup of all kinds of games.
SPEAKER_1: And at the same time, the PC and console market became much more open to indie developers.
SPEAKER_1: Because back then only like triple, double A games would be released on PC and console because someone would have to print the CDs and ship the games.
SPEAKER_1: And everybody was waiting for first person shooters and RPGs and real time strategy games.
SPEAKER_1: But with time, it liberalized a lot and the engines like Unity came along.
SPEAKER_1: So much more people could actually create games.
SPEAKER_1: And we saw that, well, PC and consoles are now pretty friendly to indie developers.
SPEAKER_1: And so we came back to the idea of making something for those platforms.
SPEAKER_1: And we actually started making Crowns And Pawns in 2015, probably.
SPEAKER_1: So it took us more than six years to actually finish it and release it.
SPEAKER_1: But it was on and off.
SPEAKER_1: It wasn't like we worked on it all the time.
SPEAKER_1: We had to find funding.
SPEAKER_1: We had to build the team.
SPEAKER_1: We had to actually write the game and do all other kinds of work.
SPEAKER_1: And in between, we did some client work.
SPEAKER_1: And we were still working on our big game on mobile back then.
SPEAKER_1: So it took a long time to get there.
SPEAKER_1: And in the meantime, we actually released a pretty fun project on mobile.
SPEAKER_1: Which was a monster, augmented reality, location-based monster, collecting and fighting game called Monster Buster World Invasion.
SPEAKER_1: And like a couple of years later, Pokemon Go came out.
SPEAKER_1: So it was really fun to see that we kind of...
SPEAKER_1: I don't want to say invented the genre because there were other games in the genre.
SPEAKER_1: But we kind of put together this like we took Pokemon, the original Pokemon, as inspiration.
SPEAKER_1: And we took augmented reality experience that we had from before.
SPEAKER_1: And we made this game.
SPEAKER_1: And then someone thought that they could do the same with actual Pokemon.
SPEAKER_1: So they popularized the augmented reality gaming genre, which was nice.
SPEAKER_1: But at that time, we realized that if you don't have a really big publisher or IP or budget and the marketing capabilities, then mobile was not that friendly anymore.
SPEAKER_1: So then we moved to PC and started working more on narrative games, which we loved from ages ago.
SPEAKER_1: And here we are.
SPEAKER_3: Awesome.
SPEAKER_3: It's quite interesting, by the way, because now I wonder where did the jump go to the actual working and getting a connection with Bill Tiller and then say, okay, we are actually taking the game from 2008, up rise it from the grave and making it a successor to it.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, I got both games on Steam.
SPEAKER_3: I got Your King and Crown And Pawns and The Vampyr's Story.
SPEAKER_3: But honestly, I didn't play both games yet.
SPEAKER_3: But from what I've read about the Vampyr's Stories, actually it was supposed to be kind of a series with an open ending.
SPEAKER_3: On the first part, did I read that wrong, actually?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, that's completely true.
SPEAKER_1: It was actually like it just ended suddenly with the idea that it will continue with the second game in like maybe two or three years back then.
SPEAKER_1: But then I think their publisher had financial problems due to the prices, like the financial prices in the world back then.
SPEAKER_1: So they couldn't finance the game anymore, and they stopped making these kinds of games.
SPEAKER_1: And yeah, Bill and his company didn't have the funds and didn't have the means to continue making the games.
SPEAKER_1: And they also lost the IP to the publisher, because back then the publishers would actually, well, at least sometimes they would take the rise to the IP.
SPEAKER_1: So it was all kinds of problems and the reasons that they couldn't continue with the series.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, they did other games in the meantime, with the hope that at some point they could make more Vampyr's Story games.
SPEAKER_3: Which is interesting, because I've also seen that there was a Kickstarter in 2013 that was unfortunately unsuccessful in funding.
SPEAKER_3: And I also have read on the game that in 2003 he actually regained the rights of the IP, which is actually by two years ago it was re-released on Steam and GOG as a digital release.
SPEAKER_3: So that's quite interesting.
SPEAKER_3: So somehow he managed to bail it out of their publisher.
SPEAKER_3: But probably that's something I should ask him and not you.
SPEAKER_3: So probably you can more easily answer me, how did you get involved in being one of those connections?
SPEAKER_3: I mean, a small Lithuanian studio working with an ex-pioneer of a Lucasfilm game slash LucasArts, that's not very much heard of.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, it's a very unique story, I would say.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, in a way.
SPEAKER_1: Nowadays, with globalization and the gaming industry being so friendly and open and easy to get into, at least at first, so I think it's much easier.
SPEAKER_1: And people trust each other more.
SPEAKER_1: And you can be in Lithuania or somewhere, I don't know, in Asia or, I don't know, anywhere in the world.
SPEAKER_1: And you can reach out to a person in another continent and just talk to them and offer them a partnership or whatever you want to offer them.
SPEAKER_1: So it's much easier nowadays, I would say.
SPEAKER_1: So, a lot of small teams are really successful or they're making really interesting games because there's a lot of talent and there's a lot of tools that you can use to make a game or make an interesting game if you have good ideas and good skills.
SPEAKER_1: So, at the end of the day, I would say that it's not completely unheard of nowadays, but I still agree that it's really fun and interesting and it's exciting for us and hopefully exciting for Bill as well because now he can actually make the game and we can help him make the game.
SPEAKER_1: So, it all started, like, I mean, we started following Bill years ago.
SPEAKER_1: As I mentioned, The Curse of Mike Allen was one of the first adventure games that we played.
SPEAKER_1: And we kept checking what he's doing and the games that he is making.
SPEAKER_1: So, he made The Vampyr's Story, then The Pirates of Wuju Island, and a few years later, he made the Duke Robovsky game.
SPEAKER_1: And he kept trying to make adventure games, even though it was difficult to fund them and it was difficult.
SPEAKER_1: Sometimes it may be difficult to get good team members to actually have the time and have the skills and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_1: So, I don't know, we had this idea to offer him help if he needed that at some point, like just an idea on the back of our heads.
SPEAKER_1: And when we saw that he regained the rights, we at some point, we contacted him and said, look, we have this technology that we are using for Crowns And Pawns.
SPEAKER_1: And it's very, very similar to A Vampyr's Story.
SPEAKER_1: So we could easily make a new Vampyr's Story game if you were up for this kind of partnership.
SPEAKER_1: And he said, okay.
SPEAKER_1: It was pretty smooth and simple because he saw the advantages of that.
SPEAKER_1: And we were really excited if that could become a reality.
SPEAKER_1: And it did.
SPEAKER_1: We started working on that.
SPEAKER_1: And the interesting story is that we actually, well, Crowns And Pawns is also at 25D.
SPEAKER_1: So the backgrounds are 2D painted.
SPEAKER_1: Even though they're more realistic, like the perspective is more correct and the characters are a bit less funky than Vampyr's Story characters.
SPEAKER_1: But the underlying technology is very similar because someone paints the background.
SPEAKER_1: We transform the background into a fake 3D scene.
SPEAKER_1: And then we put 3D characters in the background.
SPEAKER_1: So I think Vampyr's Story, the original one was one of the first games that actually proved that this mix can look good.
SPEAKER_1: I mean 3D characters in 2D backgrounds.
SPEAKER_1: Because before that, all 3D games were like pre-rendered backgrounds from 3D scenes and then 3D characters or painted backgrounds and painted like hand-animated characters.
SPEAKER_1: And Vampyr's Story had 3D characters in 2D backgrounds and we loved the idea because then you can have more animation, more angles for the characters.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have to always be from the side.
SPEAKER_1: And so we did that for Crowns And Pawns and then we said, hey Bill, look, now we have this technology.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe you want to make a game with us.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, so we kind of had the full circle there.
SPEAKER_3: Actually, interesting question.
SPEAKER_3: So you didn't go with whatever adventure scripting system you had already there.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, there are tons.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, they're obviously the most known one is the Scum.
SPEAKER_3: The Scum scripting language from Ron Gilbert.
SPEAKER_3: And also you have things like AGS or something.
SPEAKER_3: But you decided to go with your own again, pretty much like Broken Sword 2.5.
SPEAKER_3: If I understood your answer correctly, right?
SPEAKER_3: So you made something from scratch for Crowns And Pawns.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, well, we do use Unity as the underlying tech or technology or engine.
SPEAKER_1: But we did have to build a lot of the stuff on top of it to make the content creation easier for the game.
SPEAKER_1: So we integrated the ink language, which is what's developed by another developer.
SPEAKER_1: And then they open sourced it and gave it to any developer that wants to integrate it into their games.
SPEAKER_1: So it's really good for scripting the logic.
SPEAKER_1: But there was some work to integrate it into our framework.
SPEAKER_1: And then we made the framework for scene setup and custom effects and the shaders for 2D backgrounds to fit with 3D characters.
SPEAKER_1: And so that they could receive shadows from each other and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: So, yeah, we did create this kind of custom framework on top of Unity that we could use to make these kinds of games much quicker and much easier.
SPEAKER_1: And one of the reasons was probably, again, as I started in the beginning, we like experimenting and we like trying something new.
SPEAKER_1: And it didn't seem that exciting to just take another engine or tool, which makes it easy, but then you're not that flexible.
SPEAKER_1: You can't add any extra features or visual effects or something like that, that the engine doesn't support.
SPEAKER_1: So it's not sometimes financially not viable to create your own tech, but we kind of wanted to do something more unique, to stand out in the industry a little bit and to actually make the game that we want to make with all the custom features and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_3: It's interesting that you mentioned that, because I remember talking to other people in doing Point And Click Adventures.
SPEAKER_3: Also, others are using a Visionaire Studio, and then they are like, oh, you want to disable the subtitles?
SPEAKER_3: I have to hack that function in, because the engine doesn't allow that from the get-go.
SPEAKER_3: So there is a lot of hacking going on there.
SPEAKER_3: Especially with Visionaire Studio and HES, you often have the problem that when the games are updated, suddenly your safe games don't work anymore.
SPEAKER_3: Because some major things in the engine changed, and now the safe game can't find the location in the game anymore.
SPEAKER_3: And stuff like that.
SPEAKER_3: Super horrible.
SPEAKER_3: So I understand that sometimes it's easier to use a base and build up upon your own stuff, which is quite interesting, because if I'm not mistaken, 2022 was all the time where a lot of people shifted from Unity to Godot, because Unity had some shitstorm, because they wanted to make a weird subscription model.
SPEAKER_3: But you still decided to go for Unity, I heard.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, we started using Unity in probably 2009 or 2010, so it didn't make sense to stop using it, and we're not selling millions of copies, so the Unity subscription, or not subscription, they kind of wanted to make money from copies sold, but only when you sell more than a million copies.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, if we sell a million Point And Click Adventure game copies, I can share that revenue with Unity.
SPEAKER_3: Well, in the end, they refrained from doing that, but the shitstorm was so big that a lot of developers, I spoke to at the time, were like, oh yeah, we are switching from Unity to Godot, I think was the one that was often mentioned.
SPEAKER_3: I was like, okay, if you think it's big enough of a scandal to actually relearn a whole engine, wow.
SPEAKER_3: Quite a biggie there.
SPEAKER_3: Now, we didn't really talk about the 3D animations.
SPEAKER_3: And I really would like to know, in Broken Sword 2.5, to go back to the first game that was your major project, you worked on, you actually used a TGI that, from the nowadays perspective, look a bit cheesy, I don't know if you would really do that like that anymore, but I know that in the 90s, the late 90s especially and the early 2000s, people were loving those CGI FMV cutscenes and Broken Sword 2.5 was no exception there.
SPEAKER_3: Was that also something you were involved in?
SPEAKER_3: Or did you mainly do mostly the 2.5 or the 2D graphics?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, so personally I was mostly involved in the in-game art department and at some point I started leading the in-game art department.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, the cutscenes were made in 3D, but probably not because they were popular, probably because it was really hard to actually make a good cutscene in 2D.
SPEAKER_1: Frame by frame animation is hard and it takes a lot of time and skill and for example, for Broken Sword 1 at least, some animators that worked on Broken Sword cutscenes, they were animators from the Anastasia animated movie, which was a Disney or Dreamworks.
SPEAKER_1: I think it was a Disney movie.
SPEAKER_1: So really, really serious animators worked on those cutscenes.
SPEAKER_1: And I mean, a fan-made game couldn't afford to hire people like that or even ask them to work for free.
SPEAKER_1: And I mean, if there were any professional, or not professional, but aspiring 2D animators that are studying classical animation, traditional animation, I think it could have been an option.
SPEAKER_1: But at some point, even before I started working on the project, they decided that it's probably easier to just do it in 3D.
SPEAKER_1: And as far as I remember, everyone agreed that it would be prettier in 2D, but it was just a better way to do it in the way that it could just be done easier.
SPEAKER_1: So that was the reason.
SPEAKER_1: But I mean, I don't think it's bad.
SPEAKER_1: And at the end, since you asked about myself, I did work on one cutscene in the end of the game, almost the final cutscene where everything explodes and stuff.
SPEAKER_1: I did make that cutscene in 3D because the time was short and nobody else could do it.
SPEAKER_1: And we had the release date coming up.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I did one short cutscene for the game too.
SPEAKER_3: Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: It's ending with a bang.
SPEAKER_3: While the original starts with a bang, Do Not Five ends with a bang.
SPEAKER_3: It's quite interesting, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: But to be honest, when I look at Crowns And Pawns, I don't know if I find the sim slash mobile look very intriguing.
SPEAKER_3: But then, that is also something that's happened a lot in the last years, that Point And Click Adventures were criticized for the graphic style, rather than their riddles and stuff, interestingly.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, just go back to the Return of Monkey Island, where there was an outcry of the graphic style being used there.
SPEAKER_3: So, what was your decision there?
SPEAKER_3: I mean, if you look at Point And Click Adventures nowadays, it's either a pixel look or cartoonish, and you didn't go with either of the two.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, well, we kind of wanted to do something a bit similar to Broken Sword, and that's why we went with 2D painted backgrounds and semi-realistic locations where you can actually see some real buildings and some fake places in the scenes.
SPEAKER_1: I think that the backgrounds are quite painterly and 2D looking, unlike Sims, for example, which is completely 3D and probably a bit less detailed.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have these paint strokes and things like that that we do.
SPEAKER_1: But obviously the characters are a bit similar to that style.
SPEAKER_1: And the reason was like we wanted to have, as I mentioned, as I had mentioned before, we wanted to have 3D characters so we would be more flexible with animation.
SPEAKER_1: And we had to choose a style which is in between cartoonish and realistic.
SPEAKER_1: And that style is just there, I guess.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_1: And we would have loved to animate characters in 2D, but it's a lot of work and again, you lose the flexibility and it looks a bit less modern.
SPEAKER_1: We also wanted to have a game that looks modern to attract new players, not only the ones that played back in the 90s.
SPEAKER_1: So all those decisions added up in this kind of style, which luckily most people love and the people that played the game like the art style.
SPEAKER_1: There were a few comments that people didn't love it, but not as many as the new Monkey Island.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: So I think it was good enough for the old audience, but also good for the new audience.
SPEAKER_1: And you can always use tons of different styles.
SPEAKER_1: I would love to make games in like five different styles, you know, but you have to just choose one.
SPEAKER_1: And this was just one of the choices.
SPEAKER_3: But yeah, you mentioned that nowadays the game industry is more open to indie developers.
SPEAKER_3: But also I see on the counter side that especially the player base is very unforgiving sometimes.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, go to a game, right?
SPEAKER_3: That is done from let's say Spanish studio.
SPEAKER_3: And there will be a threat like, how did you dare to make the game only in English and not with the Spanish dubbing, you know?
SPEAKER_3: And the same happens with German games.
SPEAKER_3: And they are always demanding, like, you know, to have this game in, and how about a Polish version and whatever.
SPEAKER_3: And I'm like, dude, this is, you know, this is an indie studio.
SPEAKER_3: They don't have the financial backing to make the games in 20 languages, you know?
SPEAKER_3: And where do you draw the line, you know?
SPEAKER_3: That's the thing, because if you make it in French, then some others will say, how about the Spanish language?
SPEAKER_3: How about the German language?
SPEAKER_3: And please make Brazilian Portuguese.
SPEAKER_3: And I like, you know, and that's, that's really the thing that people don't understand, because, as you said at the beginning of the interview, games were this thing of big studios with big puffers behind them, who were like, yeah, we will, we will pay for all the synchronization and the voice actors.
SPEAKER_3: Don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_3: Just make your game and we are good to go.
SPEAKER_3: But, and, and unfortunately, a lot of player base still has this sentiment that they want it all.
SPEAKER_3: And I'm like, perhaps you could improve a bit on your English, then you wouldn't have such a hard time, you know?
SPEAKER_3: I don't know.
SPEAKER_3: It's just a thought I had.
SPEAKER_3: And I also spoke to some game developers who actually hate Steam and say this community is toxic over there.
SPEAKER_3: And I'm like, I don't know if you should think like that, if that is where your main revenue is coming from.
SPEAKER_3: What's your perspective on that?
SPEAKER_1: I mean, all the points that you mentioned are completely valid.
SPEAKER_1: So I think the players nowadays are a bit more spoiled because there's so many games and the big studios can afford making tons of languages and everything is voice acted.
SPEAKER_1: And there's a ton of original music and the art is amazing.
SPEAKER_1: And there's like 200 hours of gameplay.
SPEAKER_1: And so, yeah, I mean, when then they play an indie game and they think, well, if they can do it, why this team can't?
SPEAKER_1: And some people just like regular gamers, they don't know the industry that well.
SPEAKER_1: So I think we can forgive them for that because they well, you can you can expect something from when you don't know the context.
SPEAKER_1: You know, you don't know the budgets of games.
SPEAKER_1: You don't know how big or small the teams are.
SPEAKER_1: So I think it's fine that some people make assumptions.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, in the perfect world, it would be great that they would come and they would say, I love that this small team did this for us and they made this game because of players like myself and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_1: But not all people have all the knowledge in the world and all the context in the world.
SPEAKER_1: And some of them are probably pretty young.
SPEAKER_1: So if there's a 14-year-old playing games and trying to learn about games and they ask questions on Steam, maybe they will learn something if the developer answers.
SPEAKER_1: Because we also go to the Steam community and we get questions like that.
SPEAKER_1: Hey, will there be Polish in your game?
SPEAKER_1: And we try to be friendly.
SPEAKER_1: And the first thing we consider, the languages that people ask for.
SPEAKER_1: Because if there's like 100 people asking for Polish, maybe there's 2,000 people that will buy the game.
SPEAKER_1: Then we probably have to translate it into Polish.
SPEAKER_1: But on the other hand, even if we, in the end, we decide not to do that, we can answer and explain to the people that, hey, it costs a lot of money and we will try to do it, but we can't promise.
SPEAKER_1: It takes effort and it takes money and it takes all other kinds of things that we could use to make another game or more content in this game.
SPEAKER_1: You have to educate the players on one hand, and you have to be forgiving to some of the players.
SPEAKER_1: At the same time, you would want all players to be amazingly friendly and so on.
SPEAKER_1: We live in the real world, so I mean, I think it's fine.
SPEAKER_3: Also, my personal opinion here is, now that you mentioned globalism a couple of times, people are more learning English, have easier access to English originals, thanks to Netflix and all those things.
SPEAKER_3: Is there even a use of doing all those efforts, when on the same side, people that are complaining actually do it in perfect English?
SPEAKER_3: Like, whoa, you know, I mean, I mean, of course, now you are coming from a country where people don't expect that.
SPEAKER_3: You wouldn't expect every game to have Lithuanian as a language to pick, you know?
SPEAKER_3: I don't know if that would also make it unfair in a way, you know?
SPEAKER_3: I don't know, it's just something like, as I said, you could use the money elsewhere, you know?
SPEAKER_3: And so, it's always, I think, a double-edged sword in that regard.
SPEAKER_3: And also, I guess, you have to learn to not take the criticism too much to your heart.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, when Gilbert was so pissed that he actually disabled commenting on his vlog, was like, oh my God, that escalated quickly, you know?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: And with Vampyr's Story, it's really a big IP.
SPEAKER_3: It's going to be a successor to a game that is becoming a big franchise in the end, probably, if Bill Tiller decides to make a third game and a fourth game, perhaps.
SPEAKER_3: So it could become one of the big Point And Click Adventures alongside Monkey Island, Simon's Sorcerer or Broken Sword.
SPEAKER_1: That would be nice.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, that would be nice.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, as we mentioned, it's a double-edged sword in a lot of aspects.
SPEAKER_1: So it is what it is sometimes.
SPEAKER_1: With Monkey Island and Ron Gilbert, I guess it was no one expected that announcement.
SPEAKER_1: And then there's a lot of fans that love Monkey Island and they have expectations.
SPEAKER_1: Like, I've been lurking or sometimes participating in a few adventure fan communities and Monkey Island fan communities on Facebook.
SPEAKER_1: So there was a time when everyone said that Chris and Monkey Island is pretty ugly and the first and second games are the best.
SPEAKER_1: And now it's shifted a bit because probably new members joined which played Monkey Island a bit later and they started with Chris and Monkey Island.
SPEAKER_1: And now they say that the previous game is Chris and Monkey Island.
SPEAKER_1: And I mean, it's always a matter of which game you started with, or which one you liked the most, or which one created the fondest memories.
SPEAKER_1: And the new Monkey Island game had a completely different style from anything that was done before, which I think is fine because Chris and Monkey Island was completely different too.
SPEAKER_1: And it was really good.
SPEAKER_1: And then Escape From Monkey Island was also completely different.
SPEAKER_1: And it wasn't that amazing because the 3D graphics weren't that great back then.
SPEAKER_1: But I think it's great that they tried it and they experimented and they wanted to kind of do something different there.
SPEAKER_1: So almost every Monkey Island game kept innovating in our style.
SPEAKER_1: So I think it was fine from my perspective.
SPEAKER_1: As for fans, as I said, it was unexpected.
SPEAKER_1: And a huge wave of fans suddenly find out that this game is coming out pretty soon.
SPEAKER_1: And they have feelings.
SPEAKER_1: And they went to Ron Gilbert's blog, and they just expressed their feelings, which is understandable.
SPEAKER_1: But it was just so overwhelming because there's so many fans that, well, Ron Gilbert, I guess, felt a bit overwhelmed and a bit, I don't know, maybe he was angry, maybe he was upset.
SPEAKER_1: But at the same time, it shows that there's so many people that love your IP and he created the original game, so it's his legacy.
SPEAKER_1: So you have to appreciate that number of fans as well.
SPEAKER_1: So I think, again, it's a double-edged sword.
SPEAKER_1: You see one aspect, which is like, there's so many fans.
SPEAKER_1: And the other aspect that, well, fans were like surprised by the announcement.
SPEAKER_1: And they had a lot of feelings there.
SPEAKER_3: You're already starting getting the same problem, kind of, if we set that in quotes, because it's not really a problem, as I said, it's more like appreciation from the fans.
SPEAKER_3: And that is, hence, they are having high expectations.
SPEAKER_3: But if you look in the Steam forums for the new Vampyr game, people already ask questions like, hey, how about French, English, Spanish, German?
SPEAKER_3: So, are you planning to get some funding from a publisher, or will you do it with Bill Tiller totally independently?
SPEAKER_1: I guess we will have to see.
SPEAKER_1: We would love to get a nice publisher to help us out.
SPEAKER_1: And not only with funding, but also with marketing and platform relations, and I don't know, all kinds of other connections, and PR, and marketing capabilities.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think having a partner is always good if the partner is like a good fit.
SPEAKER_1: So, we will be looking for a publisher at some point, and not very actively, but we are already looking for a publisher as we speak.
SPEAKER_1: So, that's definitely an option.
SPEAKER_1: As for financing, we have most of it covered.
SPEAKER_1: Not all of it, but we have a lot of it covered.
SPEAKER_1: And a huge help was actually the Creative Europe Media Fund, which is for European companies.
SPEAKER_1: And since we are developing a big chunk of the game here in Europe, we applied for that funding, and we got it.
SPEAKER_1: So, it helps a lot because it's specifically for narrative games and Broken Sword 6, which is being developed right now.
SPEAKER_1: It also got the same funding.
SPEAKER_1: And Red Thread Games from Norway, they also got the funding for a few of their games, which is like Ragnar Thornquist was the creator of The Longest Journey.
SPEAKER_1: So, he makes pretty nice games.
SPEAKER_1: So, it's a really nice fund for narrative games like that, because they have become a niche nowadays, but they also communicate a lot of messages.
SPEAKER_1: Like, we can teach about emotions, we can teach about, we can teach logics, if it's a Point And Click Adventure, we can teach about, I don't know, art and culture and all kinds of aspects.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think the world needs adventure and narrative games.
SPEAKER_1: And I think it's really good that there's funds like that.
SPEAKER_1: So, we got some funding from that, and we are investing our own funds, and Bill is doing that as well.
SPEAKER_1: So, I think we're pretty confident that we will have the funds to do it.
SPEAKER_1: Like, I mean, we're not pretty confident.
SPEAKER_1: We are really confident, but it will depend how big the game is and how soon we can finish it.
SPEAKER_1: So, the publisher would definitely help with funding and the other aspects that I mentioned.
SPEAKER_1: So, it's not off the table by any means.
SPEAKER_3: Hmm, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: When I spoke to other creators, they also said it depends on how much they want to be involved in the creative process.
SPEAKER_3: And that's especially true for adventure games.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, I don't know if you saw our Charles Cecil interview that we had?
SPEAKER_3: No, sorry.
SPEAKER_3: You didn't.
SPEAKER_3: Ah, okay.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, because he mentioned there he was totally unhappy with how THQ Nordic...
SPEAKER_3: No, no, sorry.
SPEAKER_3: Back then it was still THQ before they went bankrupt.
SPEAKER_3: How they, well, wanted the fourth game to look and stuff.
SPEAKER_3: So he lost a bit of freedom there to actually get the funding for the game.
SPEAKER_3: It's interesting.
SPEAKER_3: I never asked him.
SPEAKER_3: So now I thought the sixth installment is actually funded by the reforged sales.
SPEAKER_3: But you said, yeah, he got also some funding of those European game funds.
SPEAKER_3: Quite interesting there.
SPEAKER_3: Wonderful.
SPEAKER_3: You also mentioned, I don't know if we can mention it here, that your long time plan is also making a Steam release of the Broken Sword 2.5.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, especially now that ScumVM has fixed almost all the bugs in the engine.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, I would love to see it on Steam at some point.
SPEAKER_1: Because a lot of people played the game over the course of, what is it, 16 years now.
SPEAKER_1: And I think there is still more people that would play it.
SPEAKER_1: And again, on the forums, like on the Facebook groups, where adventure fans are participating, they keep discovering the game.
SPEAKER_1: And they keep talking about it.
SPEAKER_1: Like, it's not a big audience probably, but there's still an audience.
SPEAKER_1: So if it was on Steam, I think it would make it easier for new players or like for Broken Sword fans to discover it and actually play it.
SPEAKER_1: And I mean, because why not?
SPEAKER_1: It's a free game.
SPEAKER_1: We wouldn't charge anything for it.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe we might add donations or something, but that's optional as well.
SPEAKER_1: So it would be a free game for the players.
SPEAKER_1: It would be, I don't know, fun for us to actually see people engaged.
SPEAKER_1: So why not?
SPEAKER_1: But it's also a bit of work to actually upload it to Steam and get it working properly so it doesn't crash on new computers and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: But we'll see.
SPEAKER_1: So that's definitely an option that we had considered before and we keep considering it every once in a while.
SPEAKER_1: Hopefully, it will happen someday.
SPEAKER_3: That's actually the beauty of ScummVM.
SPEAKER_3: You don't have to worry about compatibility with new computers and new operating systems because as long as ScummVM runs, the game runs as well.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, that helps a lot.
SPEAKER_1: That helps a lot.
SPEAKER_1: It's actually funny that when I watched your interview with Marius from our Broken Sword 2.5 team, he said, I think you asked him jokingly whether Broken Sword 2.5 would get a reforged version, and he said, definitely not, and I would actually love to make one.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, he even added, I'm so glad I got out of the video game business, like, okay.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, he's not in the industry right now, so for him, it's probably like, it would be a lot of work to get into it and understand what's needed to be done for an HD version.
SPEAKER_1: But for me, I mean, I can see it's made, I can see it done.
SPEAKER_1: I think that style is pretty good for upscaling nowadays, because there's a lot of good algorithms to upscale images, and Broken Sword Reforged actually applied some modern algorithms to upscale some of the animation, because it's a lot of work to actually repaint everything.
SPEAKER_1: So they got some help from modern tools that they actually partly developed in-house.
SPEAKER_1: We could do that as well.
SPEAKER_1: We could apply some upscaling, and we could maybe repaint some of the stuff that needs repainting, and make a pretty and beautiful modern-looking game out of that.
SPEAKER_1: But it wouldn't be easy.
SPEAKER_1: It would be quite a lot of work, so it has to be...
SPEAKER_1: I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: We have to find the right moment for that.
SPEAKER_1: But I'm not saying that we're going to do it in any way, but it was just funny that when he said that it's not going to happen, I thought, that's actually a good idea.
SPEAKER_3: Well, he said he thought about it, made an attempt in 2017, but dropped it afterwards.
SPEAKER_3: I also know that in this interview, I also mentioned that there was a fan game that did this, and just recently, they released another edition, so it's actually done four times, and that was Sekme Kraken Between Time And Space.
SPEAKER_3: They actually released a fourth edition of the game, so they put hands on it three times to improve the game.
SPEAKER_3: In the latest edition, you can actually choose in the main menu, which of the versions of the game you want to play.
SPEAKER_3: So it's like, do you want the 2008 version, or do you want the one from 2015, or do you want the one that has all the bugs fixed, but misses some content, so the director's cut.
SPEAKER_3: So it's amazing that this fan project is still going on and re-releasing and re-eventing itself.
SPEAKER_3: But then of course you have those purists who say like, no, don't touch it, because it's unique and original, you know.
SPEAKER_3: Just like the original Star Wars movies were missing for many, many years, until some group of YouTuber restorians restored the original material from some master, they got them hands on.
SPEAKER_3: So I see that there are different opinions.
SPEAKER_3: But now let me ask you, what is actually you plan for the studio?
SPEAKER_3: So you will be working on the new Vampire game and that's it?
SPEAKER_3: Or do you also have other plans?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, we do have other plans too.
SPEAKER_1: Because the Vampire Story game we're making together with Bill, who has some people on his side, like Dave Harris, for example, and some other people working together.
SPEAKER_1: So they do cover quite a big part of development.
SPEAKER_1: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_1: So we don't have to do everything on our side, which frees up our hands to do something else at the same time.
SPEAKER_1: And we have the framework that we can use, and it's much easier to create a game for us now because we have the engine.
SPEAKER_1: Obviously, we have to update it and add some features if a game is not completely identical gameplay-wise or graphically, or even update the version of the engine and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_1: So there's work to be done on the technical department, but not as much as for the first game.
SPEAKER_1: So now we mostly have to create the backgrounds, characters like music, writing, and everything.
SPEAKER_1: And we just have to put it into the game.
SPEAKER_1: So we can parallelize that, because you can find multiple artists to paint the backgrounds or model the characters or even like for...
SPEAKER_1: If you develop a game for two years, for example, you don't need a full-time person for modeling 3D characters.
SPEAKER_1: So the same person can model characters for two or three games at the same time, like mixing up the tasks in between.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, we are trying to kind of work on multiple projects, because we can.
SPEAKER_1: We do have the experience now.
SPEAKER_1: We do have the tools.
SPEAKER_1: And we want to actually make more games, because life is short.
SPEAKER_1: And we have a lot of ideas.
SPEAKER_1: So if we can, we want to do that.
SPEAKER_1: And we are also, you can actually find on Steam that we are working on one completely different kind of game, which is a simulation management type of game.
SPEAKER_1: Because we have this awesome publisher partner, which creates management games.
SPEAKER_1: And at some point, we decided that we can try to make a game like that with them.
SPEAKER_1: And we are, and it's really interesting as well.
SPEAKER_1: It's completely different.
SPEAKER_1: It's really challenging.
SPEAKER_1: It takes a lot of time, but it's fun.
SPEAKER_1: It's interesting.
SPEAKER_1: And I keep getting back to the idea that we love experimenting in the team and in the company.
SPEAKER_1: So it's a nice experiment in addition to just making new narrative games.
SPEAKER_3: Is one of those projects also a successor to Crowns And Pawns, or is that not an independent IP?
SPEAKER_1: Either way, I couldn't say right now.
SPEAKER_1: It will be announced at some point, but you don't want to spoil it too soon.
SPEAKER_1: And things happen, life happens.
SPEAKER_1: You don't want to announce it in January 2025 and then publish it in 2030, for example, because then people will get a bit tired of waiting.
SPEAKER_1: So we will announce it when we see that it's a bit closer to being done, like not like return to Mike Island when they announced it like six months before release.
SPEAKER_1: We do want to announce it sooner, but not four or five years before release.
SPEAKER_1: So it's a bit too soon to say right now.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, I mean, the metrics are different there because I remember Ron Gilbert also talking in our podcast when we interviewed him, like Disney will put the IP to rest.
SPEAKER_3: They would never allow us to make another Monkey Island.
SPEAKER_3: And interestingly, he even included that quote of his interview in the trailer when he announced the new Monkey Island.
SPEAKER_3: I was like, yes!
SPEAKER_3: So he took that from this interview and was like, wow.
SPEAKER_3: So he said it a couple of times, I guess, also in other interviews.
SPEAKER_3: But that was actually the general sentiment of Disney.
SPEAKER_3: Whatever they touch, they would put to rest and put on ice.
SPEAKER_3: And then it turned out, no, they're actually doing something with all those IPs.
SPEAKER_3: They've bought.
SPEAKER_3: And so it's nice to see that also some older Disney games are reappearing on Steam suddenly and stuff.
SPEAKER_3: So I guess people are just overly expecting the negative in a way, you know.
SPEAKER_3: So for me, it's nice because now I'm discovering a new IP, Vampyr, A Vampyr's Story in 2008.
SPEAKER_3: It wasn't in the picture for me, you know.
SPEAKER_3: It was a time where I didn't really play adventure games.
SPEAKER_3: So it's nice that you were able to make your dream come true and, you know, make games for living because people always think that's a dream job, a dream come come true and, you know, so.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, for me it is, but it's also tough.
SPEAKER_1: You know, it's a creative industry and you never know what people will like or hate or what's going to become a hit or if it's going to be a total failure.
SPEAKER_1: So financially, it's really challenging.
SPEAKER_1: But for self-realization, I think it's a great industry because you keep creating something, you keep producing something new all the time.
SPEAKER_2: It's not replicating whatever there has been created before, unless it's a remake.
SPEAKER_1: But then again, you also create this kind of new HD style for a remake as well.
SPEAKER_3: So, yeah, I love this industry.
SPEAKER_1: But getting back to one of the first questions about other team members in Broken Sword 2.5, most of them, it was really interesting that in the art department that I led at some point, many of the people weren't actually artists.
SPEAKER_1: Like when I joined the team, there was this art director or lead artist who was a programmer, or at least he became a programmer at some point.
SPEAKER_3: But he was really good at making the backgrounds and planning the stuff.
SPEAKER_4: And he created this kind of overview of all the locations that we need to make.
SPEAKER_1: And then I don't know what the reason was, but he left the team.
SPEAKER_1: And I took over as the lead artist or the art director.
SPEAKER_2: And other people, like the character designer, she was also a programmer, or she became a programmer.
SPEAKER_5: And now I checked her LinkedIn profile.
SPEAKER_6: She's a senior programmer at some company.
SPEAKER_3: But she did make really nice character designs.
SPEAKER_6: Like the first and second on the Broken Swords, they were quite low resolution and the characters were quite pixelated.
SPEAKER_6: And we did what John Cecil and his team did now with the Reforged version.
SPEAKER_6: We actually took the pixelated characters and had line drawings for all of them.
SPEAKER_6: And then we downscaled them for the 800 pixel resolution.
SPEAKER_1: But we did make the kind of the HD versions for all the characters.
SPEAKER_1: And the character designer is Alda.
SPEAKER_7: She made really pretty designs back then.
SPEAKER_8: But she is a programmer.
SPEAKER_9: And then we had this animator, character animator, who was a physicist.
SPEAKER_6: And then he became a programmer or something like that in the end.
SPEAKER_6: So almost all of the people in the art department became programmers or technical people for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_6: And I myself actually went on and finished the bachelor and even master's degree in software engineering.
SPEAKER_3: At some point, I came back to the art.
SPEAKER_1: Because as I mentioned, we founded the company with my brother, who is even more technical.
SPEAKER_5: So he is almost strictly a programmer and a really awesome technical supervisor.
SPEAKER_3: So I didn't have to do so much programming in the team, sorry.
SPEAKER_1: So I got back to the art and art directing and being a technical artist in a way.
SPEAKER_6: So I do some programming, some shader programming, some visual effects, some art directing.
SPEAKER_8: So anything in between that can cover a bit of both of the fields.
SPEAKER_3: But yeah, but I did come back, or I never left the gaming industry.
SPEAKER_5: But other people from Broken Sword 2.5, for some reason, they decided that it was just a fun hobby project and they didn't make many more games.
SPEAKER_3: But interesting thing that I mentioned, the composer Daniel Farros from that project, we actually hired him to write the music for Crowns And Pawns.
SPEAKER_6: Because I knew him from that project and I just wrote him an email and I said, look, we need similar music.
SPEAKER_6: Can you do it?
SPEAKER_8: He said, sure.
SPEAKER_8: Okay.
SPEAKER_4: And he did.
SPEAKER_5: So that was fun to actually meet him again.
SPEAKER_2: And we met him in person after that a couple of times.
SPEAKER_8: So that was fun as well.
SPEAKER_11: And there was also a second composer of Broken Sword 2.5 and that was Michael Rother.
SPEAKER_8: Yeah.
SPEAKER_11: And he also does still game music for game titles and movies and so on.
SPEAKER_12: So that's nice.
SPEAKER_12: So we have at least three people now that went on to make games.
SPEAKER_11: True.
SPEAKER_11: But if I'm not mistaken, he also did it before the Broken Sword 2.5.
SPEAKER_11: Because when I looked preparing for the Broken Sword 2.5 interview, I saw not all of the team were teenagers.
SPEAKER_11: You had also some people that were already adults and contributing to the project, which leads me to think, how was it for you working as a teenager on such a big project having so much influence and a burden to carry to finish that?
SPEAKER_11: Or was that like you were naïve and didn't think about it when you were young?
SPEAKER_13: I think a bit of both.
SPEAKER_1: So when I joined it, to me it seemed like the project, like big chunk of it was already done.
SPEAKER_13: And at some point I understood that it wasn't.
SPEAKER_6: There was still a lot of work to be done, especially in the art department.
SPEAKER_6: So they did have the engine probably almost done back then, or at least a big part of it done.
SPEAKER_6: They did have the script, the story and everything.
SPEAKER_8: But the art was far, far from being done.
SPEAKER_8: So there was a lot of work to be done there.
SPEAKER_3: But I don't know, I just joined.
SPEAKER_6: No one was rushing it.
SPEAKER_6: Everybody was working in their spare time and no one was like pressuring each other too much.
SPEAKER_1: Like we would think each other sometimes like, hey dude, are you still on the team?
SPEAKER_9: Are you gonna do something in the near future?
SPEAKER_3: And some people would say that, no, I don't have time anymore and they would leave.
SPEAKER_1: And some people would say, yeah, I think I will have some time on the summer vacation or spring vacation or other times in their life.
SPEAKER_10: So it was pretty chill, but we kept motivating each other.
SPEAKER_1: And I heard that in your interview, Marius mentioned that a lot of people worked independently or at least semi-independently.
SPEAKER_12: And that's completely true.
SPEAKER_10: We just would kind of talk a bit on the forums.
SPEAKER_10: We would catch up.
SPEAKER_1: We would show the status.
SPEAKER_2: And that would motivate other team members to do their own work in their departments.
SPEAKER_7: And I think that was pretty nice.
SPEAKER_9: And for me, it was a really good experience.
SPEAKER_5: And obviously, it was a bit naïve back then.
SPEAKER_3: But with time, I actually learned some.
SPEAKER_1: I became, I think, the person that I mentioned who was the art director in the beginning.
SPEAKER_10: He left when I was still probably 15 or maybe 16 years old.
SPEAKER_1: And I was the most active 2D artist in the team at that moment.
SPEAKER_1: So I said, I could probably try and take over that role, and other people in the team said, OK, you can try.
SPEAKER_5: And so I did, and I started making even more art and started trying to help other people in the team.
SPEAKER_5: And newcomers would join the team.
SPEAKER_1: So I would explain to them about the style and what we need and what the progress is on the project, and sometimes give them specific tasks that they need to do.
SPEAKER_1: So I can't say that the project management was very professional in that project, but it was an interesting experience to do that.
SPEAKER_7: And I think it was a really nice learning experience.
SPEAKER_3: And I realized that I could do that in life.
SPEAKER_4: I could lead a team.
SPEAKER_4: I could also do work in a game development project.
SPEAKER_7: So I loved every bit of it.
SPEAKER_7: Even though it was a bit challenging at times, and when you wouldn't do anything for a few months, you would start nagging yourself, like, ah, I should probably get back and do something.
SPEAKER_6: So sometimes it would be a bit straining, but at the same time, it was like, when you do do something in the project, it's really motivating because you see the progress and you would do a new background or a new character, and the programmers would put it into the game, and then you see them animating and playable.
SPEAKER_9: And that was nice.
SPEAKER_7: I loved that.
SPEAKER_5: And yeah, I think it was nice that it was a long period of time, and I personally grew up in that time because I started when I was 15 and we released the first version when I was 20 probably.
SPEAKER_7: And then I was probably 22 when we released the English voice-overs.
SPEAKER_12: So it's a big difference between a 15-year-old and a 22-year-old.
SPEAKER_11: Right.
SPEAKER_1: But that project actually helped me grow and understand the industry better and a lot of the aspects in game development.
SPEAKER_12: So yeah, I think it was nice.
SPEAKER_1: And at some point, we set the deadline that we're going to release it, and in 2008.
SPEAKER_12: And I think we postponed the deadline one time.
SPEAKER_11: You did, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_13: To start, sorry, to October of 2008.
SPEAKER_1: And then at some point, it was still not looking great, because as I mentioned, we were missing some of the cutscenes and some of the other animations.
SPEAKER_3: So I think that summer and September before release, I worked a lot on the project.
SPEAKER_8: I just wanted it done.
SPEAKER_6: I didn't want to postpone the deadline any longer.
SPEAKER_6: And I think I was one of the people that said that we shouldn't postpone it because some other people said, maybe we shouldn't rush it, maybe let's postpone it again.
SPEAKER_6: And I said, no, we're just going to do it.
SPEAKER_12: Right.
SPEAKER_3: I did finish.
SPEAKER_6: And other people were motivated by the deadline as well.
SPEAKER_6: So Johannes, that did a lot of 2D animations and other people in the team, they kept pushing and making new animations and working together and motivating each other.
SPEAKER_6: And as I said, when I saw that not all of the cast scenes were finished, I said, I will do it.
SPEAKER_12: I can make a cast scene.
SPEAKER_6: It's not going to look perfect, but I can do it.
SPEAKER_12: So we did it.
SPEAKER_5: We released it at that date.
SPEAKER_5: And it was really nice, fun and a huge, huge learning experience.
SPEAKER_11: How did that transition to your latest adventure Crowns And Pawns?
SPEAKER_11: Did you manage to take something that you learned from that?
SPEAKER_3: A lot.
SPEAKER_11: And also I think it's a lot stressful now that your financial backing has to be stable in the background, right?
SPEAKER_11: Because you have to sustain a living.
SPEAKER_11: You have to pay the bills somehow, you know?
SPEAKER_10: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_1: So there's a lot of challenges, challenges working in the industry and having a business in the industry.
SPEAKER_13: But it's also, as I mentioned, it's fun.
SPEAKER_12: I mean, you always feel rewarded personally.
SPEAKER_12: Like I love going to work.
SPEAKER_1: I love working on the projects and I love working with the people that I work with.
SPEAKER_1: So it's sometimes challenging to keep the finances and find the finances and manage some people sometimes because some freelancers are busy.
SPEAKER_6: You have to somehow find other people or manage the time of the people that you want to have on the team.
SPEAKER_9: So there's tons of challenges in having a business, but I like it.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, all things considered, I think it's really positive for me.
SPEAKER_1: And I learned, as I mentioned, I learned a lot of in Broken Sword 2.5, like from the management perspective as well from the creative perspective.
SPEAKER_6: And Crowns And Pawns has a lot of similarities to Broken Sword because the narrative takes place in the real world, but it has some historical facts and some relocations and some mystical or fantasy elements, like relics that have magical powers and things like that.
SPEAKER_1: So it has a lot of similarities that we wanted to have, mostly because I worked on this project on Broken Sword 2.5.
SPEAKER_1: And I think the experience helped.
SPEAKER_1: But obviously, when you have your own team and you have to have money for that, it took a long time to learn a lot of new things and to gather the money for the project, as I mentioned before.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, I used a lot of the experience from Broken Sword, and I learned a lot of the new stuff, having a business, and I still love doing it all.
SPEAKER_1: We didn't announce the new one on GOG yet, but we will definitely, I mean, if everything goes well, we will definitely have it there.
SPEAKER_11: It's quite interesting.
SPEAKER_11: I mean, I don't know actually, because I've heard from other developers that GOG also sometimes denies games.
SPEAKER_1: They do, because they have this manual selection process, which is similar to Steam Greenlight, as it was in the very beginning, where the Steam employees would look at the games and evaluate their quality and everything.
SPEAKER_1: So I think that's fine, because it's curated content.
SPEAKER_1: So the quality is probably better on average, but it's also sometimes sad when they don't accept the game, but they do like adventure games.
SPEAKER_4: So I think if you make a quality adventure game, it's like 99% chance that they will accept it.
SPEAKER_1: So I think I'm pretty confident that we will have A Vampyr's Story at a bad scale on GOG as well.
SPEAKER_11: I totally forgot what adventure game it was, but I know it was from an Argentinian studio.
SPEAKER_11: And the forums, people asked, why there are no GOG release?
SPEAKER_11: And they replied, because they got denied.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_13: Yeah.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah.
SPEAKER_12: Yeah, that happens, but it's on the bright side.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, sometimes it's the bright side, sometimes it isn't, but Steam still on average has, I don't know, 85 to 90 percent of sales for all games.
SPEAKER_1: So, you know, even if GOG gets denied, it's just a fraction of your sales, so you shouldn't get too sad.
SPEAKER_5: I mean, it's nice when they accept the game, and I love gog.com, and they recommend it to a lot of players, but I mean, if they don't want the game there, I guess it's their loss as well.
SPEAKER_11: Right.
SPEAKER_11: I mean, the main difference for me as a player is GOG is DRM-free, which Steam isn't always.
SPEAKER_11: So that's the thing.
SPEAKER_11: Anyway, thanks for taking the time to talk to us, and to talk to me at least here.
SPEAKER_11: It was very interesting to hear all what's going on.
SPEAKER_11: I mean, finally talking to somebody who actually made his dream come true, right?
SPEAKER_11: So it's amazing, because people always think it's sugar-coated and everything is awesome, but you could also fail, I guess.
SPEAKER_11: I'm very excited to see what The Vampyr's Story is turning out to be.
SPEAKER_11: Can you say if there's any release dates planned?
SPEAKER_6: Yeah, I know that everyone wants to know, and we would love to know too, but we just don't know yet and we don't want to give any promises, because when you give promises, then if you don't realize them, then people are just upset about that.
SPEAKER_10: So we don't want that yet.
SPEAKER_8: As soon as we know something more concrete, we will definitely announce it.
SPEAKER_8: So stay tuned, I guess.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, I mean, hopefully not in other eight years.
SPEAKER_13: No, definitely not.
SPEAKER_10: If everything goes well, it will be just a regular normal development time.
SPEAKER_11: Awesome.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, we should invite you back and also Bill Tiller a few months once the game is out, because that would be really interesting.
SPEAKER_11: I mean, you already got fans totally being in disbelief on Steam.
SPEAKER_11: I guess that's the positive side.
SPEAKER_11: People are already saying they are buying the game and they didn't even see a lot of the game yet.
SPEAKER_9: So yeah, that's exciting.
SPEAKER_1: That's nice.
SPEAKER_10: Well, that's what motivates you.
SPEAKER_1: People that love what you do and love your art or other creations.
SPEAKER_1: That's always nice.
SPEAKER_11: May I ask you, I don't know if I asked you that, did you always want to be a game developer at some point?
SPEAKER_10: I mean, from some kind of age, like around 14, probably, I realized that it would be nice to make games.
SPEAKER_6: That's when I started and as I mentioned, I joined the Broken Sword team when I was probably 15 years old.
SPEAKER_6: So from then on, I was pretty sure that I want to do this, not anything else.
SPEAKER_6: And before that, I mean, when you're 10 or 11 years old, you're just a kid.
SPEAKER_10: You don't know anything.
SPEAKER_6: Right.
SPEAKER_11: You have no idea about life.
SPEAKER_3: I was completely unsure what I was going to do.
SPEAKER_6: And even when I was 17 or 18 years old, I was still unsure if I was going to do art or programming or whatever.
SPEAKER_6: So I knew that I want to make games, but I wasn't sure what I want to do specifically in the gaming industry.
SPEAKER_11: So which direction?
SPEAKER_11: Yeah.
SPEAKER_11: Exactly.
SPEAKER_11: Wow.
SPEAKER_11: Well, thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_9: I mean, thank you.
SPEAKER_11: Awesome.
SPEAKER_11: So where can people find out more about what you do?
SPEAKER_13: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: So I'm not sure if I mentioned enough.
SPEAKER_13: The company is called Tag of Joy.
SPEAKER_2: So you can go to tagofjoy.com or tagofjoy.ld.
SPEAKER_12: And you can also find the company on Steam.
SPEAKER_1: And you can find Crowns And Pawns Kingdom of Deceit on Steam.
SPEAKER_1: You can also find, not only on Steam, actually, it's also on GOG, and it's also on the Epic Store, and it's also on Nintendo Switch.
SPEAKER_3: And it might come to other consoles sometime in the future.
SPEAKER_1: And you can also find the A Vampyr's Story, A Bat's Tale on Steam, which was announced a couple of months ago.
SPEAKER_2: And the original is, I think the original isn't on GOG anymore.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah.
SPEAKER_11: Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_11: Keep in touch.
SPEAKER_13: Thank you.
SPEAKER_11: Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_11: Have success.
SPEAKER_11: Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_13: Thank you.